9th Annual Conference

In this presentation, we will share a case study on our resilience-building externship program designed to support staff and clients at an integrated care program serving people with chronic mental health, substance abuse, and poverty-related challenges in South Los Angeles.
Our team and the agency’s program director understood that taking care of staff is an essential part of taking care of clients. We also recognized that many of the staff have been intimately impacted by mental health, substance abuse, and trauma related to systems involvement similar to the clients they serve. So we co-developed an externship program model that could resource staff and clients with practical and accessible stress-management tools and address staff secondary trauma and burnout.
Our externs provide two 30-minute weekly drop-in workshops, one for staff and one for clients, in 6-month placements. In these workshops, participants learn and practice mindfulness and movement strategies to identify their own stress physiology and confidently implement appropriate self-regulation.
This session will include: a brief description of the project need, multi-modality somatic service delivery approach, program design and implementation, and a multimedia presentation of the first-hand experiences from our team, the site program director, past externs, and staff and client program participants. It will conclude with small group discussion about the potential of implementing this program model at participants’ organizational settings and sufficient time for Q&A.

The presenter has over ten years of anti-violence advocacy experience serving foster youth, LGBTQ survivors of domestic violence, and incarcerated survivors of sexual violence. She has facilitated resilience-building workshops for corrections agencies and non-profit organizations and she has presented at the National Sexual Assault Conference and several state sexual assault conferences. She is a certified Resilience Toolkit Facilitator.

resilience, stress, relaxation, nervous system, movement, mindfulness, staff, clients, co-design, burnout, secondary trauma, embodiment, case-study, mental health, homelessness, poverty-related challenges, substance abuse, recovery, self-care, providers

Presentation/Lecture with Discussion: present information and engage the learners in discussion about the material.

This session is appropriate for all audiences and skill levels