Associate Research Professor Hsiu-Ju Lin is working on several federally funded projects related to the opioid crisis. She is a co-investigator on a Nation Institute of Drug Abuse funded Diversity Supplement study for Transitions Clinic Network: Post Incarceration Addiction Treatment, Healthcare, and Social Supports (TCN-PATHs). To read more about the TCN-PATHs project, visit the UNC Center for Health Equity Research website.
Beyond Borders: The Human Rights of Non-Citizens at Home and Abroad
Relieve Anxiety with Emotional Freedom Technique – Theory and Practice
Catherine Ewing, LCSW, MDiv
2-parts:
Wed, Feb 23, 1 – 3:30 pm & Wed, March 9, 1 – 2:30 pm
4 CECs
$80 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$100 – All Others
Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.
Life as we’ve known it has been turned upside down and inside out. Change, loss, fear and uncertainty all add to our already high stress levels and worrisome thoughts. Based on feedback from her previous Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) presentations, Catherine Ewing expanded this program to a 2-part webinar. In the first session, you will learn the basics of EFT (tapping). We will explore how it can relieve anxiety and help bring our clients and ourselves back to a place of inner peace.
In the second session, we will have an opportunity to share our tapping experiences during the previous two weeks, ask questions, and have time for additional practice. If time permits, we will do a group tapping experience based on the energy of the group and what feels most helpful and appropriate to help you move forward in your tapping practice.
Please join us for this 2-part webinar to learn the basics of EFT and walk away with a tool that will change your life. This is the perfect time to learn this simple, but powerful technique for yourself and your clients.
In this engaging webinar, we will:
- learn the Basic Recipe that is the basis for all of EFT
- learn the 8 standard tapping points
- have a direct experience of the benefits of tapping
- learn how to use EFT for self-care and with clients
- have time to practice and gain confidence in using EFT
The Foundation for Understanding Mental Health
Qur-an Webb, MSW and colleagues from Welcome2Reality
Wed, Oct 20, 2021
2 pm – 4 pm
2 CECs
$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others
This webinar was created to provide a base level understanding of mental health challenges and disorders from stigma to trauma to treatment and more. The training will be delivered in an interactive format by including activities, promoting discussion and creating a safe space for to engage in critical conversations around mental health and what we can do to promote better mental health wellbeing and functioning.
We will discuss the factors that puts someone at risk or protects them from developing a mental illness, including the influence of trauma. We will examine the effect of stigma on the perception of mental illness on the individual and societal levels, including how this is often internalized. We will explore some of the most common mental health disorders and then bridge into discussing treatment methods, how to identify signs versus symptoms, barriers to treatment and ways in which we can work to eliminate stigma, promote treatment engagement and emphasize the importance of self-care.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the prevalence of mental health challenges and disorders
- Explore risk and protective factors for developing a mental illness
- Discuss the impact of trauma and the physiological manifestation of signs and symptoms as they influence mental health
- Discuss the impact that stigma has on the perception of mental illnesses on the societal, communal and personal level
- Learn some tips for eliminating stigma, engaging in treatment and the importance of self-care
Finding and Improving a Trauma-Informed Workplace Using Brain Science
Friday, Sept 24, 2021
10 am – 12 pm
2 CECs
$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others
Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.
Our growing awareness of the importance of trauma-informed care goes beyond clinical work with individuals. It includes the organization and practices of the whole agency system. Helpers cannot treat their clients any better than they themselves are treated. In addition, as we consider the high toll that working with trauma survivors can take on treaters, it is increasingly clear that self-care practices are not enough. In this era of staff shortages and high turnover, the agency must take action to sustain the hope and energy of its workers. What are these actions?
When staff feel they are connected with each other and the agency, and are using and developing their best selves, they are calmer and more effective. Trauma-informed care means using the relationship as the primary vehicle of change. Staff cannot have open-hearted relationships with clients unless they feel safe and connected. We will share strategies for developing a protective social environment.
Participants will be able to:
- Define a trauma-informed workplace and list five components.
- Develop a list of questions to ask in a job interview to learn more about organizational practices.
- Critique their current organization through a polyvagal and trauma-informed lens.
- Appraise and discuss their own personal contributions to a culture to sustain employees and develop a plan for future action.
- Utilize polyvagal theory to examine staff reactions to safety and danger and develop an action plan to increase staff connectedness and safety either as an employee or as a supervisor.
More details about the webinar:
This webinar will first address the process of seeking a job in an agency that takes care of its workers. What should the interviewee look for? What questions should they ask?
The webinar will then address the role of the individual employee in creating and enhancing a trauma-informed system. What can one person do? The new field of polyvagal theory will help participants understand how safety and danger affect their own behavior and that of their co-workers, including the role of implicit bias. A tool to develop insight into one’s own experiences of safety at work will be introduced. A sense of safety is greatly enhanced by connectedness. Participants will also examine how the racist climate influences our sense of safety and danger, and how self-awareness and specific strategies can help us bring anti-racism into our treatment. Other areas that have been shown to be essential for worker job satisfaction are voice and choice and a sense of purpose and efficacy. Participants will explore actions they personally can take to evaluate and improve these factors in their work settings.
The webinar will also address the role of supervisors and leaders in creating a sustaining workplace, including a checklist of possible action steps.
Impact of COVID-19 On Services for People with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions
How Our COVID and Re-entry Experience Can Help Us Be More Powerful Healers
Wed, July 14, 2021
9 am – 11 am
2 CECs
$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others
Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete.
We have all had to endure many changes and stressors during the pandemic crisis. How can we use our experiences to enhance our clinical compassion? Participants will examine their experiences during this crisis and consider what they can learn from them in areas such as:
- Living with a sense of constant danger
- Being cut off from loved ones
- Ever-changing and difficult to understand rules and advice
- Loneliness
- Loss
- Being unable to access resources
- Handling multiple stressors at once
- Lack of resources
- Uncertainty and fear of the future
- The complexities of returning to the world
Now, we are re-entering our worlds and moving towards our new normal. What have we learned that we want to keep? How can we observe our own responses in trying to achieve a sense of safety, and learn from them about the journeys that our clients take? How can we translate this new awareness into changed practices for our work and our lives?
Learning objectives:
- Participants will identify and explore their own COVID19 experiences.
- Participants will connect these experiences to events that are common for their clients, and explore how clients manifest these stressors in ways that now makes more sense.
- Participants will identify the features of their own reactions to the loosening of restrictions and to assurances of greater safety, and through this gain a greater understanding of the body’s mechanism of danger and connection.
- Participants will translate this new understanding into changes they will make in their practice.
Social Justice Issues in Supervision
This webinar provides at least one hour of content on cultural competence
Patricia D. Wilcox, LCSW and Aminah Ali, MSW
Mon, June 28, 2021
1 pm – 3 pm
2 CECs
$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others
This webinar focuses on trauma-informed supervision through a social justice lens, an approach to supervision that begins with the personal and extends to the professional. Personal histories, identities, characteristics and psychological experiences of supervisors, as well as structural and environmental conditions of the organization, are considered in supervision. This perspective promotes the role of the supervisor as a leader in establishing a culture within their team that is responsive to and inclusive of the positionalities and unique experiences of clients and colleagues. Supervisors are encouraged to remain vigilant in their commitment to social justice by leading their teams and organizations in achieving truly inclusive diversity.
Participants will be able to:
- Define their social work values and create a plan to promote social justice in their roles as leaders within the organization
- Find how to improve their interactions with supervisees by identifying the positionalities and unique experiences of supervisor and supervisee
- Critique the culture of the organization by partnering with their supervisees
Appraise and discuss implicit bias and how it impacts the supervisory relationship and work with clients - Discuss with supervisees the applications of racism and inter-generational trauma-informed perspectives in supervision and practice and prepare a plan to utilize this knowledge within their practice
Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete
Boundaries in the Time of COVID-19
Jennifer Berton, PhD, LICSW, CADC-II
Tues, June 15, 2021
10 am – 12 pm
2 CECs
$40 – UConn SSW Alumni and Current Field Instructors
$50 – All Others
What do you do when you are experiencing the same thing that is causing the anxiety, depression, trauma, and general turmoil that your clients are needing you to help address? How do you maintain boundaries when we are collectively going through this challenge together? Where do clinical boundaries intersect with human boundaries? Come having a healing conversation about how COVID is straining your boundary skills and what to do about it.
Webinar link will be emailed when your registration is complete
Congratulations, Grads!
