Expanding the Toolkit: Trauma-Informed Practice Institute

The CWRU Center on Trauma and Adversity will host the 3rd Annual Expanding the Toolkit: Trauma-Informed Practice Institute in October 2021 virtually.

The focus of this year’s Institute is on healing from the inside out. Four nationally renowned keynote speakers will focus on the role of the nervous system in healing from individual, intergenerational, and collective trauma. Following each keynote, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in facilitated discussion, hear from panelists, or engage in self-care offerings.

The Institute will attract thousands of helping professionals worldwide, including mental health professionals (social workers, counselors), direct service providers (child welfare, residential staff), peer support professionals, educators, and human resources. The goal of the Institute is to provide resources and information to promote a more resilient, interdisciplinary network of practitioners; enhance interprofessional collaboration and connectedness among a network of transdisciplinary professionals providing trauma-informed care; and improve the quality of care for individuals, families, and communities experiencing trauma and adversity.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Kai Cheng Thom, MSc, is a somatically trained coach, consultant, and conflict resolution practitioner working at the intersection of mind, body, and collective soul. She is also an internationally published, award-winning author and the developer of the Loving Justice methodology. Grounded in the neuroscience of trauma as well as over a decade of experience in mental health and community organizing practice, Kai Cheng will provide participants with a politicized lens for understanding embodiment as trauma-informed practice as well as several practical frameworks and strategies for developing dual awareness and collective liberation in the context of service provision. Kai Cheng will also provide a brief introduction to her Loving Justice model, a spiritual and somatic lens on conflict resolution and trauma.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Dr. Mariel Buque is a Columbia University-trained licensed psychologist, holistic mental health expert, and sound bath meditation healer. Her work centers on helping people heal their whole selves through holistic mental wellness practices and on healing wounds of intergenerational trauma. She also focuses on delivering healing and anti-racism lessons and workshops, as she believes in the liberation of our minds and of oppressive systems as necessary qualities of our overall wellness. Dr. Buque will be speaking about the neurobiology of intergenerational trauma and collective stress, how to identify and cope with burnout, and how to access ancestral wisdom. Dr. Buque will share the importance of prioritizing joy and engage participants in experiential practices to promote a settled and resourced nervous system.

Thursday, October 7, 2021
Dr. Bruce Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy and an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University and La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia. His work on the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma on the developing brain has impacted clinical practice, programs and policy across the world. Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of best selling book The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog. Dr. Perry's most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, was released in 2021. Dr. Perry will be speaking about the integration of principles of developmental neuroscience into clinical practice with traumatized children and families. He will also provide an overview of his Neurosequential Model©, a developmentally sensitive, neurobiology-informed approach to clinical work (NMT), education (NME) and caregiving (NMC), and sport (NMS).

Friday, October 8, 2021
Dr. Shawn Ginwright is one of the nation’s leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and a Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. His research examines the ways in which youth in urban communities navigate through the constraints of poverty and struggle to create equality and justice in their schools and communities. Dr. Ginwright is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flourish Agenda, Inc., a national nonprofit consulting firm, whose mission is to design strategies that unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities. Dr. Ginwright will be speaking about Healing Centered Engagement as the future of healing and a necessary next step beyond trauma-informed care that utilizes an asset-based, culture and identity-informed framework to promote well-being.


Healing Centered Cleveland
While the Institute will be offered virtually worldwide, the Center on Trauma and Adversity is committed to engaging our local community in deeper learning and moving towards a Healing Centered Cleveland. 

Our final keynote speaker, Dr. Ginwright is the founder of Healing Center Engagement (HCE), which is a non-clinical, strengths-based approach that advances a holistic view of healing from trauma and re-centers culture and identity as a central feature in personal well-being. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. This approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma beyond trauma-informed care and offers a more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

While interest in trauma-informed care continues to grow, there are many questions around how an organization or system may embody a model that is defined differently by different groups and in most definitions is limited by a lack of integration of the role of collective trauma, race-based and identity-based traumatic stress, and system driven adversity in many of the challenges facing our city.

Cleveland Half-Day Facilitated Discussion
The Center on Trauma and Adversity will host an in-person (pending COVID-19 safety precautions) viewing of the live broadcast of Dr. Ginwright’s keynote presentation for local Cleveland individuals who are doing work in the field of trauma. If you work in the Greater Cleveland Area and are able to attend the half-day faciliated discussion, please register for this option below.
 

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