Workshop: Valuable Insights for Helping Traumatized Youth
By participating in this workshop, you will walk away with:
- Identifying and understanding trauma-based behaviors
- Ways to provide environments of predictability and continuity
- Expecting and contextualizing overreactions
- Practical solutions for discerning between oppositional-defiant behaviors and trauma triggered behaviors
- Focusing on wellness, competence, active listening and problem-solving
- Avoiding over-pathologizing reactions
- Knowing your limits and collaborating with professional interventions
The incidents of childhood trauma are increasing at alarming rates. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration documents that over 60% of children report at least one traumatic event by age 16. The effects of trauma present unique challenges for anyone interacting with youth, especially those classified as at-risk, displaced or disadvantaged.
This training provides an understanding of trauma in layperson’s language and offers helpful insights on ways to have positive, low-triggering interactions with teens.
It will feature an interview with Dr. J. Reid McKellar who has been treating middle and late adolescent children as a Clinical Psychologist for over 20 years. Dr. McKellar’s insights and practical advice will provide you with valuable and actionable resources.
We will also explore and offer guidance on the “other side” of working with traumatized youth, which is the mental and emotional health of the helper. Burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) are real hazards that must be acknowledged and actively counteracted in the lives of helping professionals. We’ll offer encouragement and suggestions on how to keep up on your self-care so you can stay healthy in your helping.
This 60 minute workshop offers clear, and actionable insights for interactions with traumatized youth. It is designed to meet the needs of social workers, juvenile probation officers, educators, and community or religious youth workers who are being confronted with trauma-based behaviors along with generally escalating patterns of defiance, anxiety, depression, and violence.