Calendar
As we enter the remaining weeks of 2024, many of us are reflecting on the things that we are grateful for, such as: friends, family, and memorable moments. Some look forward to seeing the colorful fall foliage, while others get excited to experience their first taste of winter. Regardless of your preference, as one year closes out, another one begins.
Although this time of year can be filled with gift giving, decorative ornaments, and comfort food, there are other pieces that can be less pleasant: traffic, long shopping lines, and the remembrance of those no longer with us, to name a few. In many places, it is dark when you wake up for work and dark when you get out of work. Over time, these things can impact your mental and physical health overall. When these variables are coupled with challenging or high-stress work environments, it can be easy for anyone to become increasingly overwhelmed. This may show up in work performance, decision making, and with peer-to-peer relationships.
Based on popular demand and direct requests from colleagues working in the human services field, CWLA is happy to again offer the How to Succeed Against Compassion Fatigue training. This learning opportunity will encourage active participation and shared learning. The following areas will be discussed:
- Contributing factors that can create/exacerbate compassion fatigue in the workplace
- Examples of what compassion fatigue can look like for direct service staff, supervisors, and managers
- How compassion fatigue can impact agency morale, client relationships, and assessments
- Tips, strategies, and suggestions on ways to take a proactive approach to reducing compassion fatigue with early identification techniques that promote psychological safety
Trainer: Marcus Stallworth, LMSW, CWLA Director, Training and Implementation
Parenting is challenging, particularly when you are parenting a child from a hard place. TBRI ® Empowering Principles will provide an in-depth look at ways to empower your children by meeting their unique physical needs and creating an environment in which they can succeed. This session includes information on sensory processing and practical tools and skills to help children regulate their emotions and behaviors. This multi-disciplinary training is designed to give caregivers, volunteers, and professionals who serve children and families the knowledge and practical skills they need to bring hope and healing.
CWLA has partnered with Welcome2Reality, LLC to present the engaging four-part training series, Dear Black Male. We invite you to join us for a training that will provide an overview of the history and culture of African Americans with a focus on recognizing cultural mistrust, issues faced, and perceptions of Black males. Through lecture and discussion, participants will identity how efforts to adequately provide for Back males can be linked to the fight for larger social justice goals for themselves and their communities. Participants in this training will:
- Develop an understanding of the importance of the role of the historian in interpreting African American history;
- Expand their knowledge and awareness of the disproportionality of Black males who are institutionalized and the impact it has on communities;
- Learn the most common mistakes professionals make when working with Black males and how to avoid them; and
- Engage in dialogue to identify strengths-based practices and interventions that foster family health and resilience.
This training is open and welcome to everyone. The training format will incorporate lecture, discussion, video, and group activities. The following topics will be covered during the four (4) two-hour training sessions:
Trainers:
Anthony Gay, BA is the Director of Curricula Development at Welcome2Reality, LLC. Anthony is passionate about teaching and conducts research, develops training modules /curricula, and facilitates training. Anthony spent several years as a full-time trainer, developing or co-authoring training modules on fatherhood, professionalism, cultural competency, trauma, working with adolescents, family-centered assessment, and human trafficking. For over ten years, Anthony has been focused on improving communities by advocating for equality for fathers. Anthony is a member of a national fatherhood network that shares resources and ideas to improve fathers’ and families’ outcomes. Anthony is a leader in the realm of fatherhood in Connecticut and hosts numerous fatherhood themed events throughout the year, promoting positive fatherhood. As a result of his dedication, Anthony has received numerous awards recognizing his work with fathers and families.
Qur-an Webb, MSW is the Director of Operations at Welcome2Reality, LLC. Qur-an has been in the social work field for over 20 years and is the Connecticut Chapter Lead for Media Literacy Now, which focuses on education around media literacy. In this role, Qur-an was instrumental in getting Public Act No. 15-94 and Public Act No. 17-67 passed in Connecticut, which now mandates school systems to educate the safe use of social media and computer programming instruction, and in creating an advisory council related to digital citizenship, internet safety, and media literacy. He also works as an independent contractor and is an adjunct instructor. Qur-an is the vice president of the Association of Black Sports Officials. In this role, Qur-an advocates for the rights of and opportunities for Black sports officials and pushes for equality among officials. He also provides training and professional development opportunities domestically and internationally for the company.
Parenting is challenging, particularly when you are parenting a child from a hard place. TBRI ® Empowering Principles will provide an in-depth look at ways to empower your children by meeting their unique physical needs and creating an environment in which they can succeed. This session includes information on sensory processing and practical tools and skills to help children regulate their emotions and behaviors. This multi-disciplinary training is designed to give caregivers, volunteers, and professionals who serve children and families the knowledge and practical skills they need to bring hope and healing.
Parenting is challenging, particularly when you are parenting a child from a hard place. TBRI ® Empowering Principles will provide an in-depth look at ways to empower your children by meeting their unique physical needs and creating an environment in which they can succeed. This session includes information on sensory processing and practical tools and skills to help children regulate their emotions and behaviors. This multi-disciplinary training is designed to give caregivers, volunteers, and professionals who serve children and families the knowledge and practical skills they need to bring hope and healing.
Promoting Positive Change in Communities by Confronting Poverty
Louisiana CASA is excited to host our third webinar series. This series is brought to you in partnership with the Louisiana Children’s Trust Fund so we are required to ask participants certain demographic questions during registration. Once you register, an email will be sent to you that includes the link to join the webinar. We hope to see you there!
Youth Trauma and Resilience in Poverty
There are unique challenges faced by young individuals growing up in impoverished environments. From exposure to violence to systemic inequalities, this presentation will examine how poverty shapes their experiences and how, despite adversity, many youth demonstrate remarkable resilience. Our presenters will explore protective factors, coping strategies, and community support that contribute to their ability to thrive.
SPEAKER
Dr. Loria Hudson founded Transformations Wellness Center, LLC, and Children Are People Too, a nonprofit organization. She has been educating couples, helping families for over 20 years, and advocating for families, relationships, and marriages. Her work has helped countless couples and families overcome challenges and build stronger, more resilient relationships with themselves and others, leading to a more compassionate and understanding world. Dr. Hudson’s other body of work stems from seeing clients from ages 7 – 70 in Monroe, Louisiana, providing Mental Health Services, assisting Louisiana Center Against Poverty, which is established in Lake Providence and Monroe, Louisiana, teaching young girls ages 9-17 in Louisiana (Girl Power!), a prevention and intervention social change program that promotes positive behavior, enhances social skills, and improves academic performance. In addition to teaching males and females ages 8-17 Life Skills and COPE to help increase their self-esteem, develop healthy attitudes, and enhance their knowledge of essential life skills – all of which promote healthy and positive personal development. As a mental health professional, educator, author, Certified Life Coach, and licensed minister, Dr. Hudson holds a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy specializing in couple therapy and a master’s in clinical Mental Health specializing in Substance Abuse. Thanks to these skills, she developed tools that have changed all areas of her work. She continues to help transform people’s lives and resides in Monroe, LA, with her husband of over 26 years and one daughter and son. Together, they have five daughters and one son. Dr. Hudson’s practical solutions to real-life issues have a captivating appeal that captures listeners. Her motto is “To Thine Own Self Be True,” which helped build her marriage.
What does it mean to be “color brave?” In her TED talk “Color blind or color brave?”, accomplished businesswoman Mellody Hobson explores having candid conversations about race that can help us better understand each other’s perspectives and experiences. Gaining this information is at the heart of our ability to build authentic relationships and to attain cultural dexterity. One strategy for achieving this bravery is through cultural humility, which has been defined as the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented in relation to aspects of cultural identity as defined by that person. Cultural humility challenges us to suspend what we know, or think we know, about a person based on generalizations about their culture. This two-part training session will also discuss the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system. We will offer participants an opportunity to be reflective and introspective about how they manage race relations in their professional and personal lives in hopes of equipping them with tools they can use to better understand and serve the families that they encounter.
CWLA is pleased to present the three-part virtual training series that features the publication Working with Traumatized Children – A Handbook for Healing. Now in its third edition, Working with Traumatized Children has been updated to include new strategies and approaches for caregivers and others responsible for meeting the needs of children who are vulnerable.
Participants will gain a strengthened capacity to:
- Define what trauma is and differentiate it from stress
- Provide examples of trauma symptoms in children and adults
- Describe how trauma can impact children’s brains
- Advocate for the provision of safe environments when working with children and adults who have been affected by trauma
- Provide examples of how systems can be traumatizing or retraumatize people
- Explain the importance of understanding the vagus nerve when working with families and children who have been affected by trauma
- Express why self-reflective practices and supervision are important when working with this population
Training registrants will receive an electronic copy of Working with Traumatized Children, Companion Workbook which supplements the virtual training sessions. Training registrants are also eligible to receive a 30% discount on the purchase of hard copies of Working with Traumatized Children – A Handbook for Healing, Third Edition and Working with Traumatized Children, Companion Workbook. Use promo code WWTC-30 in CWLA’s Bookstore.
CWLA is inviting non-profit leaders and your key leadership staff to participate in this two-hour session, Assessing Our Capacity for Family Support and Prevention Programming, scheduled for Thursday, February 6 from 1:00 – 3:00 pm Eastern. To gain the most benefit from this interactive session, please make sure that you register as a team of at least 2 but not more than 4 persons. You will have the opportunity to work in breakout sessions with your team. There is limited capacity so please register early.
About the Session: There are a myriad of unique challenges and opportunities related to the development of family support and primary prevention programming for non-profit child welfare agencies. Many jurisdictions have been exploring a variety of approaches that prioritize more accessible, non-stigmatizing, and common-sense approaches to service delivery. There is a renewed emphasis on family engagement and involvement as agencies are being encouraged to collaborate with a wider range of community partners.
Non-profit child welfare agencies, especially those with long histories of providing deeper end services to children and families, are rethinking their purpose and the programs to align themselves more closely with public policy and the best practices related to family support and primary prevention. For many of these agencies, this is easier said than done and the practical reality of implementation can be daunting for an organization, its Board, its leadership team, and its frontline team practitioners. The adaptive and organizational culture changes are transformational but there is no established road map for how provider agencies might best achieve their goals.
This two-hour session will be a primer that frames the useful and practical questions on the road to redesign. The content will take participants beyond slogans and big picture themes and will emphasize a more detailed and operational approach to the task of redesigning an agency’s programs and practices.
The session will focus on The 7 P’s Exercise, which was developed by CWLA Senior Fellow, Paul DiLorenzo, during his thirty-five years plus of planning, developing, implementing, and managing community and neighborhood-based family support programming. Participants will be able to use the framework as a way of organizing their agency redesign journey. It is meant to make the planning process simple and straightforward. Though not meant to be an all-inclusive process, The 7 P’s Exercise will help an agency team create a “To Do” list for transformation, and at the same time, highlight existing strengths and opportunities that a provider might not have considered in their desire to become more primary prevention oriented.
This two-part training session offers participants an opportunity to examine the issue of implicit bias to recognize individual implicit biases and their impact on professional practice in child welfare. Discussion will occur on the issue of privilege and its impact on professional and personal relationships with people of color.
The session will invite courageous dialogue on the highly sensitive issues related to racial disparity and disproportionality of children in the child welfare system. Through the topics of white privilege and implicit bias, the trainers will help participants contextualize how these are some of the root causes of these disparities. This discussion will encourage participants to recognize and develop a deeper understanding of their role as professionals to work as effectively as possible with families and children of color.