Land Prayer/ Welcome and Discussion with Chief Lynette Allston

Earth prayers or “Land Prayers” recognize that we all walk on originally tribal lands and that environmental sustainability is critical to long-term survival of the human species. Lynette will lead us in such a prayer and then discuss the history and modern condition of her Nottoway Tribe, calling on social workers to become more aware of indigenous peoples in the state.

Credit Hours: 0.5
Level:  All levels of experience

Debra Riggs, Welcome by Debra and Morning Coffee Break

Chief Lynette Allston, Land Prayer - Welcome and Discussion with Chief Lynnette Allston

Life-long friends with over a decade of collaboration in the fields of youth engagement, creative arts and community building, poets CJ Suitt and Kane Smego explore what it means to nurture cross-cultural relationships. In this captivating performance and workshop, the duo reimagine healthy masculinity and celebrate the unique perspectives that we all carry, sharing their stories in verse and guiding participants in telling their own. Beyond the poetry, this program is an invitation to dialogue, fostering social-emotional learning and leading students in building a more connected campus community.

• Celebrate multiculturalism
• Foster social-emotional learning and development
• Help build a more inclusive culture
• Model healthy masculinity, cross-cultural dialogue, and community building
• Raise social justice awareness
• Lead participants in telling and sharing their stories through creative writing and team-building activities

Credit Hours: 2.5
Public Health Priorities Hours: 2.5
Level: All levels of experience

Kane Smego, The Bridge Project - Finding Connection in a Time of Division

CJ Suitt, The Bridge Project - Finding Connection in a Time of Division

Zentangle is an American style of drawing that promotes concentration and creativity while also boosting well-being. Invented by a monk and artist, Zentangle combines art with meditation and is a fun, easy way to relax through the creation of drawn shapes and structured designs. Try your hand at this unusual but therapeutic art form! Have your Zentangle kit from your Conference Engagement Package on hand so you can join in on this interactive workshop.

Credit Hours:1.5

Level: All levels of experience

Jennifer Cottrell, Zentangle®, One Stroke at a Time

Family treatment is such an important part of social work practice. It is always valuable to develop new skills for this significant intervention. This workshop reviews different approaches to working with families and provides hands on opportunities to learn creative, artful interventions for systemically helping clients.

• Participants will review systems theory
• Participants will explore different approaches to family intervention and assessment
• Participants will actively develop strategies and techniques for working with families

Credit Hours: 3
Ethics Hours: 1
Level:  All levels of experience

Theresa Beeton, Artfully Working with Families

Ronald Clark, Artfully Working with Families

This introductory training to trauma and PTSD provides the learners with a comprehensive exploration of the psychological trauma field, the nature of trauma (sexual abuse, combat, and natural disasters), how trauma affects individuals, grief reactions, racial distress and traumatic stress.

Also included in this training, is the exploration of the professional’s response to trauma, vicarious traumatization, the use of trauma-informed care as a crisis intervention, comorbid disorders and general treatment issues.

• Learners will become familiar with the basic literature on trauma, post traumatic stress disorder and resilience
• Learners will explore the impact of trauma from a cognitive, neurobiological/physiological, clinical and ecological perspective
• Learners will have a basic working knowledge of trauma and its impact in society, as well as the knowledge of basic strategies for treating trauma victims
• Learners will become familiar with trauma and its comorbid disorders
• Learners will explore cultural factors that affect trauma work, research an conceptualizations, including major controversies in the field
• Learners will examine the most current evidence-based practices in trauma for treating adults, adolescents and children
• Learners will be able to recognize the signs of compassion fatigue, burn out and secondary stress disorder

Credit Hours:  3

Ethics Hours:  1

Level: All levels of experience

Dr. Kenyuatia Gash, LCSW, BCD, MAC, Effects of Trauma vs PTSD

Cultural humility is centered on life-long learning and critical self-reflection, recognition and challenging of power imbalance that are inherent, and upholding institutional accountability. This session will provide information to social workers on cultural humility, while also focusing on the impact of oppression in the lives of the families served and the ways in which social workers can work to transform their practice individually, interpersonally, and institutionally.

• Define anti-racism and isms and describe how each are demonstrated
• Articulate the implications and conditions of bias
• Recognize the principles and attributes of cultural humility
• Utilize cultural humility to address bias

Credit Hours: 1.5

Ethics Hours:  0.25

Public Health Priorities Hours:  1.5

Level: All levels of experience

Brandynicole Brooks, PhD, LICSW, The Complete Compassion Workshop: A Workshop on Addressing Secondary Traumatic Stress and Cultural Humility as an Anti-Racist Approach

75% of Social Workers operate in emotionally stressful environments and are prone to experience vicarious trauma. Resiliency is the solution for social workers to reduce the impact of emotional stress and vicarious trauma, and this requires self-awareness, self-reflection, and individualized self-care plans. Social workers have an ethical responsibility to service clients within their areas of competence and maintain professional boundaries. Leading resilient social workers requires promoting self-awareness, professional competence and boundaries, and self-care plans in a psychologically safe work environment, where vulnerability is awarded and not punished. Social work leaders, clinical supervisors, and agency leaders need effective tools and strategies to lead social workers through vulnerable situations that require resiliency. This workshop is designed to equip social work leaders with providing supportive supervision that will decrease work-related stress, improve performance, and provide a nurturing, psychologically safe environment for resilience and professional success. 

• Attendees will define resiliency through identifying self-awareness, self-reflection, and individualized self-care plans
• Attendees will closely examine the ethical responsibility for professional competence and boundaries, including cultural competence for diverse populations
• Attendees will define and understand the four (4) stages of psychological safety-inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety
• Attendees will review four (4) vulnerable situations that require resiliency and the benefits of a psychologically safe environment to decrease the impact of stress and vicarious trauma
• Attendees will learn several leadership strategies to promote resilience in a psychologically safe environment, including effective use of individual and group supervisions

Credit Hours: 3
Ethics Hours:  1.5
Level: Beginner

Sheena Lyle, LCSW, CCTP, Leading Resilient, Social Workers in a Psychologically Safe Environment

Students will learn how their grandparents impacted their own upbringing. How they are not healing from what they directly experienced, but unhealed wounds of those who raised them. Learn how interrupting these cycles takes time, emotional energy, and recognition. Learn ways to decolonize our views of human behavior. Unlearning the beliefs that generations behind us considered guideline to survive such as deserving any form of verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Lastly, how breaking generational trauma is part of a radical revolution to our loved ones, and we may not get along with them as we dismantle the oppressive system. 

• Ancestral and Transgenerational trauma in the LatinX community
• Identifying uncomfortable feeling as normal and enforcing personal boundaries
• Attachment styles in relationships

Credit Hours: 1.5
Public Health Priorities Hours: 1.5
Level: Beginner

Magaly Vicente, LCSW, Breaking Generational Curses Means Discussing Uncomfortable Topics

Conducting a Youth or Student Threat Assessment requires specific knowledge of the risk and protective factors of school and youth violence. This presentation will provide the current basic knowledge, understanding and available violence assessment tools in order to assess a youth's level of risk to others, themselves and/or the school environment when the youth has made a substantive threat that requires a Threat Assessment to consider the youth to return to school which also includes recommendations of a school safety plan of the youth's psychosocial needs such as mental health intervention, school services and family services.

• Participants with become familiar with the basic knowledge of how to conduct a Threat Assessment
• Participants will be exposed to the types of threats that need to be identified and the possible motives of youth violence
• Participants will learn about the various threat and risk assessment tools that assist in identification of the level of threat of the youth

Credit Hours: 3

Ethics Hours: 1

Level: Moderate

David R Boehm, LCSW, ACSW, Youth Threat Assessment: The Basics

Research on the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) will be summarized. Case studies will be presented which detail the innovative trauma-informed approaches being implemented in schools throughout the nation. Strategies for creating successful community partnerships and specific content that can be utilized to design trauma-focused programs will be discussed. The findings of a recent research project that examined student support personnel's perspectives on the ACES exposure of students in the Richmond, Virginia area will be revealed. Student support staff's views on the impact of collective trauma on students' functioning, including repercussions of the COVID-19 Pandemic and recent incidences of racial injustice, will be described. Prevalent traumatic experiences of students and typical academic, behavioral, and educational needs of students with ACES exposure will be explained. Current trauma-focused programming in school systems in the Richmond, Virginia area will also be discussed. 

• Learn about the impact of ACES on mental health and academic progress
• Learn about mobilizing community support for trauma focused services
• Learn steps for implementing trauma informed approaches

Credit Hours:  1.5
Level: All levels of experience

Chanda Bass, DSW-C, LCSW, C-SSWS, CCTP, CATP, Traumatic Experiences and Subsequent Needs of Students in the Richmond Region

This presentation aims to present the experiences of a social worker traveling to over 35 countries to learn about community services and programs. The participant will learn about human trafficking and HIV camps in Thailand, an orphanage in France, and child labor in India amongst other stories. The presenter will share how to organize or join international programs and how to collaborate with international universities and organizations.

• Learn about international social work
• Discuss international work programs and experiences
• Learn to organize or join international programs or how to collaborate with international organizations

Credit Hours: 1.5
Public Health Priorities Hours: 1.5
Level: All levels of experience

Cynthia Catchings, Social Working Around the World

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” (Jack Kornfield) Being an effective social worker means having compassion for those we support and serve. Often, though, we forget to turn that compassion inward, and this leaves us feeling incomplete. When we dedicate ourselves in this way, we find ourselves facing secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and, eventually, burn out head on. The Complete Compassion Workshop was curated by a clinical social worker with her own experience of STS and burn out to provide tangible resources and support to other social workers faced with this occupational hazard. Through evidence-based assessment and interventions, this workshop will provide you with the framework to strengthen your resilience, increase your compassion satisfaction, and ultimately address the signs and symptoms of STS.

• EXPLAIN the ways in which STS symptoms can show up in their personal and professional lives
• EXAMINE the impact of STS symptoms on job satisfaction and client outcomes
• ASSESS personal resources to address STS symptoms
• IMPLEMENT strategies to address the symptoms of STS

Credit Hours: 1.5
Ethics Hours: 0.25
Level:  All levels of experience

Brandynicole Brooks, PhD, LICSW, The Complete Compassion Workshop: A Workshop on Addressing Secondary Traumatic Stress and Cultural Humility as an Anti-Racist Approach

Using a reproductive justice framework, this presentation introduces the concept of self-managed abortion (SMA). The audience will gain an understanding of the role of social workers in relation to SMA, legal issues, and how to help stop the criminalization of our clients for self-managing their own abortion care. The presentation will also address how the social work code of ethics informs our practice when a client chooses to self-manage their abortion.

• Participants will gain information about the prevalence of self-managed abortion (SMA), the reasons that people choose this method, and the safety and efficacy of the practice
• Participants will be able to define reproductive justice and understand how it intersects with the theory of harm reduction when applied to the practice of self-managed abortion
• Participants will learn about the legal issues involved with SMA and actions that may contribute to a client's risk of criminalization
• Participants will understand how the social work code of ethics can inform their practice when a client is considering or has participated in a self-managed abortion

Credit Hours: 1.5
Ethics Hours: 0.25
Public Health Priorities Hours: 1.5
Level: All levels of experience

Tamara Marzouk, MPH, LICSW, Harm Reduction and Social Worker Discretion: Fighting client criminalization for self-managed abortion

Lauren Paulk, JD, Harm Reduction and Social Worker Discretion: Fighting client criminalization for self-managed abortion

This course will teach attendees what healthcare professionals on the front lines have experienced working during the pandemic and what effect this has had on their mental health and wellness. Utilizing short screening tools can help you as a clinician gain an understanding into their level of stress, anxiety, depression, or trauma experienced, and encourage them to seek proper help and self-care to stay mentally and emotionally well while we continue to work in this pandemic. Once you know what the screening tool options are and you are aware of how to use them, you will also learn of the options for recommendations to help encourage self-care and treatment based on the needs of the healthcare professionals that were screened. 

• Understand the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare professionals' mental health and wellness
• Understand the mental health screening tools and how to use them
• Understand how to refer healthcare professionals to needed resources, both holistic and non-holistic

Credit Hours: 1.5
Ethics Hours: 0.5
Public Health Priorities Hours: 1.5
Level: All levels of experience

Tanisha Robinson, LCSW, LICSW, Mental Health Screening Tools & How and When to Use Them

As findings from neuroscience and quantum physics converge with ancient wisdom, the understanding of our capacities and connections as humans is expanding. This interactive session explores some of these findings and their applications to social work. Participants will be invited to engage in practices that tap into the wisdom of the body, ways of knowing, and ways of being that go beyond the limits of intellect.

Credit Hours: 1

Public Health Priorities Hours: 1 

Level: All levels of experience

Salome Raheim, PhD, ACSW, Cultivate Your Superpowers!