PRESERVICE TRAINING



57150029146500workshop for helping professionals & caregiversINSTRUCTOR GUIDEThis workshop was made possible by The California Child Care Resource & Referral Network and The California Department of Social ServicesAcknowledgmentsThis guide was developed for use in conjunction with The California Child Care Resource and Referral Network’s Bridge Trauma Informed Care Training & Coaching certification curriculum. The following individual contributed to the development of this curriculum:Charlotte Williams, LCSWTrauma Informed Care Training & Coaching ManagerContent Expert/Workshop PresenterReproduction is authorized, except for commercial purposes, provided CCRRN and CDSS are acknowledged. PDF download available upon request.c/oDomenica Benitez, Director of Provider ServicesThe California Child Care Resource & Referral NetworkProvider Services1182 Market Street, Suite 300San Francisco, CA 94102Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Historical & intergenerational trauma workshop introduction PAGEREF _Toc534614855 \h 3WELCOME &INTRODUCTIONS PAGEREF _Toc534614856 \h 4ACTIVITY: CREATING OUR CUPS PAGEREF _Toc534614857 \h 4THE DEVELOPING CHILD PAGEREF _Toc534614858 \h 8JOB AID: LEARNING ABOUT A FAMILY’S CULTURE PAGEREF _Toc534614859 \h 13JOB AID: IMPACT OF POSITIVE, TOLERABLE, AND TOXIC STRESS PAGEREF _Toc534614860 \h 15SANKOFA: SURFACING HISTORICAL TRAUMA PAGEREF _Toc534614861 \h 19ACTIVITY: MAPPING HISTORICAL TRAUMA PAGEREF _Toc534614862 \h 32JOB AID: COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY HISTORICAL TRAUMA IN AMERICA PAGEREF _Toc534614863 \h 33ripple effects of historical trauma PAGEREF _Toc534614864 \h 37JOB AID: HISTORICAL TRAUMA AND ACES PAGEREF _Toc534614865 \h 40ACTIVITY: HISTORICAL TRAUMA & ACES PAGEREF _Toc534614866 \h 41ACTIVITY: HOUSEHOLD DYNAMICS PAGEREF _Toc534614867 \h 46ACTIVITY: MESSAGES AND ATTACHMENT PAGEREF _Toc534614868 \h 52IMPLICATIONS FOR HELPING PROFESSIONALS PAGEREF _Toc534614869 \h 53JOB AID: STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT CAREGIVERS’ SELF-AWARENESS, INSIGHT, & BEHAVIOR CHANGE PAGEREF _Toc534614870 \h 58JOB AID: TIPS FOR PREPARING TO ENGAGE BIRTH PARENTS PAGEREF _Toc534614871 \h 65ACTIVITY: EXPLORING & REFRAMING RESISTANCE PAGEREF _Toc534614872 \h 66JOB AID: TIPS FOR PREPARING TO ENGAGE CAREGIVERS PAGEREF _Toc534614873 \h 67JOB AID: ENHANCING RESILIENCY IN CHILDREN & ADOLESCENTS PAGEREF _Toc534614874 \h 70JOB AID: ACTIVITIES THAT SUPPORT POSITIVE CULTURAL IDENTITY PAGEREF _Toc534614875 \h 76ACTIVITY: IDENTIFYING CORE STRENGthS & SIGNS OF STRUGGLE FOR CHILDREN PAGEREF _Toc534614876 \h 80ACTIVITY: engaging families AS A HELPing professional PAGEREF _Toc534614877 \h 85reflections PAGEREF _Toc534614878 \h 87refeRENCES PAGEREF _Toc534614879 \h 90Historical & intergenerational trauma workshop introductionSESSION OVERVEIWEven though there is a more solid theoretical understanding that historical and intergenerational trauma impacts how family dynamics are created, the impact this has on a family’s willingness to engage community service providers is often missed by those in the helping profession. This missed opportunity serves to exacerbate problematic family patterns of behavior and their lack of willingness to engage service providers, as family dynamics are labeled dysfunctional and caregivers as perpetrators. With the?context of the family’s historical and intergenerational trauma, providers are re-positioned to frame what may seem maladaptive as the family’s survival strategies in the face of their historical and intergenerational trauma and provide trauma-responsive care. During this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore their own family history and dynamics, the systemic factors that serve to perpetuate traumatic responses and may present as barriers to service engagement, and best-practice strategies to enhance child and family resiliency.?? SESSION OBJECTIVESThis workshop is designed to help participants:Define historical and intergenerational trauma.Explain the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma on family systems and household dynamics.Identify barriers to service engagement for families experiencing intergenerational patterns of trauma transmission.Utilize best-practice, culturally-responsive, trauma-informed strategies to enhance service engagement and family resiliency.TOTAL WORKSHOP TIME: 3 HoursMATERIALSInstructor GuideParticipant GuidePowerPoint deckClickerCupsMarkers, Pens, Colored PencilsSticky note paperWELCOME &INTRODUCTIONSINSTRUCTOR’S NOTESIntroduce yourself. Provide participants with an outline for the day. Review the class description provided in their Participant Guide and below. The impact of historical and intergenerational trauma on family systems is gaining more visibility in the child welfare field, which is important to consider as child welfare professionals engage and assess families with trauma experiences. This course is designed to expand the child welfare professional’s ability to understand, assess and engage family systems impacted by historical and familial intergenerational trauma. Participants will have the opportunity to explore their own family history, the family histories of clients, and the systemic factors that perpetuate traumatic response and place children at risk for maltreatment. Participants will be provided trauma-informed principles to consider when engaging, assessing and making intervention recommendations for families displaying the effects of unresolved traumatic grief.ACTIVITY: CREATING OUR CUPSHave participants decorate the cups provided using images, symbols, phrases, words, etc. that best represent who they think they are. On the sticky notes provided, have participants write a caregiving practice, belief, ritual, etc. that they love, a practice that they may not love or enjoy, but forms an important part of their identity, and a practice that while the participant may or may not engage in; the participant could be persuaded to practice given the right circumstances. In summary, participants are to identify a total of three caregiving practices: one they love; one they absolutely do not like; and one they feel neutral about. Have participants place the folded sticky note into their cups once they are finished. Invite participants to share their reflections.INSTRUCTOR’S NOTESRead and discuss the learning objectives for the class. Explain that at the completion of training, participants should be able to demonstrate the above learning objectives. Explain that this is a highly interactive course and is designed to provide opportunities to apply theories and techniques to assessing, engaging and working with families who may demonstrate signs of historical trauma and intergenerational trauma.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR’S NOTESThis process should be a model for feedback and teaming that we hope for child care providers to be able to use in training and with families. This point should be made transparent to participants.Be here now: Many, if not all, of those in attendance maybe doing so at the expense of being able to respond to other work responsibilities. The participants of the class have both personal and professional lives outside of the class. As best as possible, encourage the participants to give themselves permission to tend to emergency matters that may arise and once those matters are resolved try to return to the classroom Participate: Makes for a more enriching training experience when everyone in the class can share and hear multiple perspectives on any given concept. When only a handful of people guide the dialogue the voices of all participants get left out. Answer your phone outside of the class then return to the room.Speak for yourself & Be open: Many times, we default to speaking for others which can get in the way of being able to accept that we do not all share the same perspective on every issue. Try to be aware of when this happens and open to the possibility that others may not share the same view as you.Confidentiality: Group members should not discuss outside of the group what other members say. Want the learning environment to be a safe environment for all participants to discuss cases and concerns openly.ELMO: Enough. Lets. Move. On. Reserve this agreement for when parking lot issues arise that may warrant discussion or follow-up outside of the available class time.THE DEVELOPING CHILDINSTRUCTOR NOTESExplain. The Maasai were one of the most powerful, intelligent, and fearsome tribes in Africa. According to historical accounts, a greeting that was passed between warriors of this group was “Kasserian Ingera,” which means, “And how are the children?” For the Maasai, the well-being of the children was top priority so much so that even those without children would answer by saying “All the children are well.” To say this meant that there was continued peace and safety and that their values of protecting the young and in a larger sense, those most vulnerable, persists (Degruy, iii). So, we will begin today’s class by asking, how are the children? As we seek to find answers to this question, we must first ground ourselves in a shared understanding of healthy child development and the requisite components, including the impact of culture on development. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR’S NOTESShare. You may recall that there are many schools of thought and theories on development. Despite these differing conceptions, however, thanks to science and the scientific study of child development we now know some basic principles about development. Briefly provide an explanation of each of the principles, then have participants illustrate each of the principles in a large group format using personal and professional case examples. For example, one provider may respond with regards to the developmental principle of “cumulative” by saying that a child in the provider’s care was not exposed to reading early on and at age 5, the provider does not feel the child is ready for kindergarten because of the difficulty with pronunciation and identification of words. Development is an ongoing, dynamic process that begins with conception and does not end until death, which means it involves continuous change throughout one’s life. We are always developing. Development is directional. Most developmental processes evolve in predictable, defined directions. Development typically proceeds from simple to complex. For example, a child must develop basic motor skills to stand, walk, run, catch and throw before having the advanced motors skills required to play basketball. The pace of that development varies. Development may involve stages. At certain, often predictable times in one’s developmental process emerge new and different abilities. The predictable time frames in which these new skills emerge are referred to as developmental stages. Early tasks and abilities that form the foundation for later development and more complex behavior patterns. An example of that is a four-year-old who has well-developed language and social skills. A year earlier, this child may have responded to frustration by having a tantrum. However, with having practiced, mastered, and integrated new language and social skills, the child can more effectively remove the source of frustration and “use words” to find a salutation. Initially, this process may be somewhat difficult for the child, but with time and practice, it becomes easier. Development is Cumulative. A child who fails to acquire and master early foundational developmental tasks will have more difficulty acquiring, practicing and mastering the demands of later developmental stages. Without intervention, the child’s development becomes more delayed, or may show increasingly challenging and/or concerning patterns over time. The negative effects of early developmental deficits increase as the child grows and the environmental demands increase in complexity. Given that early developmental tasks form the foundation for later development and more complicated tasks, understanding the stages of development are important for early detection of delays and timely intervention. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR’S NOTESCulture can be viewed as a total system that regulates life within a group of people. It consists of values, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and standards of behavior. The interplay and expression of these facets of culture exert a powerful influence on every domain of development. Consequently, child development cannot be assessed without a basic understanding of the cultural environment that surrounds and shapes a child’s experiences.In general:?Culture may set parameters or limitations on aspects of an individual’s development.?Culture creates context and expectations for human development.?Cultural preferences often result in some behaviors/traits being rewarded while others are ignored. Those behaviors that are rewarded flourish; those that are ignored often disappear. The benefit of identifying cultural influences is to help determine when a child’s developmental progress is considered normal or abnormal within the context of the family’s culture. According to specific goals envisioned for children, different cultures provide a variety of child-rearing environments and obtain different behavioral outcomes. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR’S NOTESProvided on the slide are indicators used to classify cultural groups. The list includes:Race/EthnicityGender identitySexual orientationLanguageGenderSexual identityGeographic locationAsk. Can anyone come up with any other indicators not listed. Participants may identify:Differing developmental and physical abilitiesAge groupsLifestyles & InterestsLiving or work spacesTo name a few.Have participants identify the top five elements that most contribute to and influence their own cultural identity. If time allows give participants a few minutes to share with the group as they feel comfortable. Discuss how these traits might impact their work as a helper. Process elements, privileges and cultural norms/expectations with the group. Discuss how these elements, privilege and culture influence your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Ask. What cultural beliefs or values influenced your decision to work with children? How might your own cultural beliefs and values have a positive impact on your work with families? How might a family’s beliefs, values and practices differ from your own and how might this impact your ability to establish a professional helping relationship with the family? JOB AID: LEARNING ABOUT A FAMILY’S CULTUREHow to Learn More about a Family’s CultureConsider the following questions that would be appropriate to include in an intake with families:?How can this information help you understand the parent??How can this information help you understand the child??What is (are) the primary cultural group(s) with which the family identifies??Does the family have strong social connections with other members of their culture??What specific cultural values are important to the family??Are there any cultural norms that may affect the children’s development??What characteristics of individual family members influence the family’s functioning??For how many generations has this family lived in the United States??Are there generational conflicts between parents and children resulting from a clash between a family’s traditional culture and contemporary U.S. culture??How much do prejudice, stigma, or immigration laws play a role in how well the family is able to function??How might services be tailored for this family to address their unique cultural needs??Responses to these and other questions will help determine casework interventions and whether they are needed at all.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESIn order to begin to dismantle the magnitude and contemporary effects of historical trauma, it is important to remind ourselves of today we have come to define and capture trauma. Hopefully, this next section of the class will serve as a review for the participants. Feel free to insert questions along the way in order to examine the participant’s knowledge and understanding of trauma from previous trauma-informed courses.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: IMPACT OF POSITIVE, TOLERABLE, AND TOXIC STRESSContrary to what many of us think, “stress” in and of itself is not such a terrible thing. Stress plays an important function in helping us grow, adapt, and function successfully in a world full of joys and challenges. Learning how to navigate stressful situations is an important part of development starting early in childhood. Managing stress is an important adoptive skill that we all need to develop to navigate and function in this world successfully. Stress in and of itself is not such a bad thing. Exposure to positive and even tolerable stressors in manageable doses can help us strengthen our stress response and enhance resilience. However, exposure to chronic and complex trauma can generate toxic levels of stress that alters the development of our stress response system and disrupts our ability to cope adaptively. When we experience a stressor in our environment, our bodies turn on certain stress response systems to help us gear up to manage whatever it is. To increase the amount of available energy you need to take on the stressor, whether it be an exciting opportunity or a threat, your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, respiration increases and stress hormones, most notably adrenaline and cortisol, rush through your brain and body to give you the boost you need. A stress response system that is overly activated for prolonged periods of time, especially in childhood without the buffer of supportive adult relationships can strain this muscle and derail normal brain development. This can cause detrimental effects on the child’s physical and emotional functioning across the lifespan. The first type of stress is POSITIVE STRESS. Positive stress refers to stress that is experienced as mild or moderate and only lasts for a short amount of time. Positive stress impacts your body by briefly increasing your heart rate and mildly increasing cortisol levels so that you can take on the stressor. The stressor itself could be experienced as something positive or negative. For example, performing in a play, singing at a concert, taking an exam, or getting an injection at the doctor could all be experienced as “positive” stress. By managing positive stressors well early in life, we develop adaptive coping skills and build resilience. The second type of stress is TOLERABLE STRESS. Tolerable stress involves a more severe stress response than positive stress and has the potential to negatively impact a child/adolescent's brain development because it involves longer lasting challenges. Examples include: death of a loved one, divorce/separation of caregivers, or unexpected physical injury. The stress response system in the body and brain remain geared up at a higher level and for a more prolonged period in response to tolerable stress than in response to positive stress. As a result, tolerable stress can cause temporary alterations in brain development. Stress hormones flood the brain and activate lower level, more primitive brain structures that help us react quickly to external threats and deactivating higher and more advanced brain structures responsible for critical thinking and contextual processing. Although the immediate reaction may help us evade threats in survival contexts, (i.e. the fight/flight/freeze reaction), this temporary survival-in-the-moment reaction can cause negative consequences, including muscle strain, headaches, sleep disturbance, hormone fluctuations, loss of appetite, and low frustration tolerance. These short-term negative impacts can be exacerbated or ameliorated depending on the individual's ability to access internal and external coping resources. Attuned caregiving relationships can help mediate the impact of tolerable stress by helping the child’s stress response systems return to baseline after the immediate threat is managed. In the absence of internal coping resources and supports, these short-term consequences can jeopardize long-term functioning as tolerable stress turns into toxic stress. TOXIC STRESS refers to the extreme, frequent, and chronic activation of the body’s stress response system that can cause extensive damage to the physical and psychological well-being of those impacted. Toxic stress can wreak havoc on brain development as the stress response system remains overly activated and leaves the rest of the brain running on fumes.(Center for Youth Wellness, 2014)INSTRUCTOR NOTESRecall, that early experiences, especially traumatic ones, shape human development. We develop ways to cope, survive, and defend ourselves against deep and enduring wounds. The brain signals the body to respond to a perceived threat and the body prepares. Ordinarily, when the threat is gone, the body returns to “baseline.” If an ongoing threat is perceived, the body doesn’t return to baseline, remains prepared for threat, resulting in a “trauma response”. The switch is stuck in the “on” position. As a result, trauma can interfere with thinking, memory, attention, and feeling and expressing emotion. Thoughts and reminders of a traumatic experience make emotions difficult to regulate. These changes can affect how the brain processes information, which in turn causes physiological changes. Survivors may be responding to the present through the lenses of their past and strategies survivors used to cope may be misinterpreted by professionals as “non-compliance and maladaptive.” Often, people are unaware that their challenges are related to trauma. Unfortunately, all too often, these behaviors are treated with methods that do not incorporate an individual’s trauma history which further serves to exacerbate and prolong the impact of the trauma.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESRemember. The ACE’s study illustrates how toxic stress in childhood contributes to long-term adverse health consequences for adults, including substance abuse, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and early death. Participants completed a questionnaire indicating if they experienced any of 10 identified “adverse childhood experience”:Abuse: Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Sexual AbuseNeglect: Physical Neglect, Emotional NeglectHousehold Dysfunction: Mental Illness, Incarcerated Relative; Mother Treated Violently; Substance Abuse; DivorceAlmost 2/3 of study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than 1/5 reported three or more ACEs. They found that the adverse outcomes in health- lung disease, liver disease, heart disease, cancers, alcohol and other drug use among other health conditions are also linked to the effects of early life stress on the development. Higher cumulative ACE scores have been shown to increase the odds of smoking, heavy drinking, incarceration, and morbid obesity, along with increased risk for poor educational and employment outcomes.Higher cumulative ACE scores have been shown to increase the odds of smoking, heavy drink-ing, incarceration, and morbid obesity, along with increased risk for poor educational and employment outcomes and recent involvement in violenceINSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESInvite. Have participants follow along in their Participant Guide to “fill in the blanks” regarding what research has shown to be most helpful in trauma recovery. The underlined portion in the Instructor Guide below indicates the missing words.Experiences of trauma are frequently linked to intergenerational patterns of trauma transmission. Caregivers are frequently direct or indirect contributors to their children’s trauma; such contributions are part of the intergenerational patterns of trauma transmission. Studies have concluded that about one third of parents maltreated as children will go on to abuse or neglect their children.Even for children who have experienced complex or interpersonal trauma at the hands of their caregiver,Trauma recovery is significantly impacted by the caregiver’s response and reactions to the traumatic experience. Studies have consistently found that children who have a nurturing and supportive relationship with their parents are less symptomatic following a trauma than children who receive less support from their caregivers. In fact, in studies that have compared the potential influence of multiple different factors on children’s trauma, such as the characteristics of abuse, identity of the offender and the frequency and duration of abuse, caregiver support consistently emerges as one of the most important predictors of childhood functioning. SANKOFA: SURFACING HISTORICAL TRAUMAINSTRUCTOR NOTESThroughout history people have subjugated, enslaved and exterminated one another. At times, this was done for the cause of a king or queen, other times, in the name of a religion, god, tribe, or country. At the center of this behavior was the desire to expand and consolidate power for a certain group of people. While these crimes against humanity form a very real part of our historical and collective consciousness, the acts of atrocity, very much continue today across the world and here in the United States. The typical cycle of is such that the those with power oppress those with less power and/or those who are more vulnerable, who in turn oppress those even less powerful and/or more vulnerable than they. Unfortunately, this pattern of oppression has left rippling effects on the generations to follow for the oppressed and those who oppress ultimately robbing us of our humanity. “Who can become truly human, when they gain so much for the pain and suffering of those whom they oppress and/or take advantage of…and who can be truly human under the weight of oppression that…robs them of a future,” and saps them of their humanity, (Degruy, iv.) The principle of Sankofa proposes that in order to heal and reclaim our humanity one must face and own the atrocities committed in the past; however traumatic. Within the context of the loss of humanity in the United States, those oppressed must be able to identify, however difficult, the injuries received first-hand and passed down from one generation to the next. For those who have been perpetrators of their injuries to humanity and those who continue to benefit, will have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the wounds that come with being the cause and the beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering (Degruy, iv-3). If we know that untreated trauma gets passed down across generations and that the most effective way for trauma recovery is how the caregiver responds, being able to address the historical wounds that impact our families and children today is imperative.INSTRUCTOR NOTESTo conceptualize the healing required to address historical trauma, social science researcher, Dr. Desjaria and member of a Canadian indigenous group, used the phrase, “Emptying the Cup,” (2012).As beings, subjected to colonialization, oppression, racism, to some degree, Dr. Desjaria contends, all our cups have been filled with negative ideals about ourselves and others, which have negatively impacted our beliefs, values and behaviors. It is through self-awareness that we learn how to identify what we carry in our cups that impact negatively our ways of being and eventually learn how to empty our cups of these negative ideals. In doing this, we reposition ourselves to begin healing by filling our cups with positive and empowering messages and strategies and by making space for more affirming ideals that enable us to reframe what we think of ourselves. In as much as we need to be aware of what we hold in our cups, it is imperative to begin to ask what it is that our families hold in their cups? The answers to what may exists in a family’s cup enables the helper to ask one of the most important questions, what happened to you? Throughout the remainder of today’s class, challenge yourself to reflect on how an informed understanding of the impact of historical trauma and its intergenerational effects may impact the relationships you build with your families and to consider your own misconceptions about the families with whom you work and to think beyond the limitations of historical and current models that frame the work they do with children and families.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESAcross ethnic and racial cultures, ethnographers and anthropologists have found there are three primary principles that guide behavior:In almost all cultures, the primary parental responsibilities are protection of the young and transmission of the culture to the offspring.Parents learn to parent as they were parented.Cultural norms set standards and expectations for parents and shape parent-child interactions.(Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P.,1983).Given that ethnic cultures have different socialization practices, how each of these principles translate into practice vary greatly. In addition, what is viewed in one culture as normal development, as well as the practices needed to achieve such development may be seen by another culture as strange, deficient, or even pathological. It is important to note that it is very easy to fall into the trap of ethnocentrism, (i.e., judging other cultures’ norms as strange or abnormal if they deviate from the norms of mainstream American culture) and providers should consider this when working with children and families. In fact, in America, there is a history of ethnocentrism in social science research. Early social thinkers used to categorize the quality of a culture according to how a society measured up to the standards of White, European & Western industrialized nations. This belief was used to uphold the idea of “White supremacy,” in America and throughout the world. African groups, Irish, Italians, etc. were among many societies around the world who did not live up to European standards and so were considered inferior. In America, considerable efforts must be made to prove white superior to others. In fact, in an attempt to justify slavery, Thomas Jefferson in The Portable Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia by M. Peterson, expressed contempt for blacks stating that, “They smelled bad and were physically unattractive, required less sleep, were dumb, cowardly and incapable of feeling grief…therefore…blacks, whether originally a distinct race or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites in the endowments of body and mind.” In fact, Jefferson’s feelings were so strong that he suggested blacks be removed from all contact with whites, so as not to taint the white race (Degruy, 2005). In the 1900s and until as late as 1958 people of color, often Africans and Native Americans were placed in zoos and put on public display as a form of voyeuristic entertainment. In addition, to further provide support for the inferiority of people of color, America served as ground zero for intelligence testing; although scientists agree that intelligence cannot be measured. Contrary to popular belief, Alfred Binet, while considered the father of intelligence testing, noted for others not to think of his test as an accurate measure of intelligence. The impetus for Binet’s test was to see if there was a way to capture the students that might require remedial attention earlier, so they did not fall behind the other students and he could provide attention sooner (Degruy, 2005). Nevertheless, the first people to be tested were Polish, Russian, Italian, and other southern and eastern European immigrants arriving to America; many of whom did not speak English. During the routine physical examinations, they were given a test in a foreign language, English, to measure their Intelligence. They did not perform very well. As such, scientists concluded that individuals from Poland, Russia, Italy, and other countries were the least intelligent of citizens arriving (Degruy, 2005).INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESAsk. What are the races of humanity? Participants may answer using any one of the following indicators:Identification by colors, black, white brown, yellow, red. African, European, Asian, Native-American, Hispanic/Latino, Pacific Islander. Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid. Validate participation. Explain. Despite the terms used to denote racial categories, science has come to show that the genetic make-up of human beings indicates that there are no real differences between human beings, such that we can use physical characteristics or even geographic location to differentiate groups. Nevertheless, the common indicators used to differentiate racial groups include: skin color, hair texture, facial features, and so on. The underlying assumption is that there are genetic/biological differences across humans that separate them. However, science shows that groups cannot be separated by physical characteristics due to the many contradictions seen physically and socially. For example, The Bushmen of southern Africa look as much Asian as they do African; Pacific Islanders have both African and Asian features; the Ainu of Japan look more European than Asian; the Aborigines of Australia, who often look African, commonly have very straight or wavy hair, and are frequently blond as children. These are but a few contradictions that exist when trying to solely separate group based on physical characteristics (DeGruy, 14). James King, author of The Biology of Race, stated, “Race is a concept of society that insists there is a genetic significance behind human variation in skin color that transcends outward appearance. However, race has no scientific merit outside of sociological classifications. There are no significant genetic variations within the human species to justify the division of races.” While groups cannot be differentiated solely due to genetics/biology, King’s point that race is a sociological construct leads us to our discussion on racism. In their Participant Guide, the following prompts are provided. You can choose to ask as a large group or first have participants answer in a small group, then report back out to the large group.Can Whites in America engage in racists acts: Typically, everyone will agree yes. Then ask,Can Blacks in America engage in racists acts? You may get the same response as previously with a few people objecting.Now ask the participants to identify the ways in which White people engaging in racists acts adversely impact the lives of Black people as a group? Typically, the participants can form a list that may include the following:Economically through hiring practicesHaving little to no access to health careOverrepresentation in the criminal justice systemUnderrepresentation in the university systemRedlining and other discriminatory practices barring them from finding housing, childcare, etc. in their areas of their choice, etc.Finally ask, in what ways does Black people engaging in racists acts against Whites adversely impact the lives of White people as a group? Participants will typically list biased/and or discriminatory acts that Black people can engage in towards White people, nevertheless, the second requirement of the question will not be satisfied, in that whatever the act engaged in, it will fail to adversely impact the lives of Whites as group. Then there may be silence as participants allow this point to settle in.Explain. Even though, people of color may not have biological differences from White people given the systematic sociological merits and privileges that come with “Whiteness,” while people of color can in fact demonstrate prejudices and at times even feel hatred toward white people, perhaps even inspiring fear in many, the reality is that people of color lack the social capita and power needed to affect the lives of white people, as a group and systemically. People of color feeling’s against whites have not denied a white person entrance into college, allowed white people to remain overrepresented in the criminal justice system and underrepresented in higher education, get a loan for anything save a pay day loan, receive fair treatment by the criminal justice system, and so on. Explain. While race as a biological indicator is a myth, racism is very much alive and well. Racism is the belief that people differ along biological and genetic indicators and that one group’s biological and genetic features are superior to another group coupled with and compounded by the power to negatively affect the lives and limit the options of those perceived to be inferior. For that reason, when a white person says, “I do not see color,” or “I do not see race,” while race does not exist, that person, whether intentional or not, communicates to a person of color a blindness of the sociological advantages. hierarchy, power, and privilege attached to race that is unacknowledged and unaddressed. The history of America cannot be told without acknowledging how tightly racism has been woven into every nook and cranny of America’s cultural roots and foundation (DeGruy, 13-15). Solicit feedback.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESHistorical Trauma theory was developed using findings from a relatively new body of research. However, the phenomena were first observed in the 1960s by clinicians throughout Canada who were noting that an alarming number of clients seeking services had parents and primary caregivers who second generation Holocaust survivors. The clients were presenting with traumatic symptoms without being able to identify a specific precipitating traumatic event. These individuals expressed feeling deeply impacted by their caregiver’s experiences. In 1995, the term “historical trauma,” first appeared in clinical literature following the findings of, then Columbia University professor, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart. Brave Heart and Debruyn (1998) utilized the literature on Jewish Holocaust survivors and their decedents and pioneered the concept of historical trauma. Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart defines historical trauma as a constellation of characteristics associated with massive, cumulative group trauma across generations. A key difference between historical trauma and the exposure to trauma, as previously discussed, is that without healing or even acknowledgment of the impact of the historically traumatic event, the survival responses, that were adaptive in the face of the trauma, get passed on to the next generation. For these communities, historical trauma impacts those who were directly exposed and has the potential to impact subsequent generations.Those who study this topic ground their research in three related frameworks that allow us to consider the overall development of historically traumatized populations as compared to the overall development of the White mainstream culture.Psychosocial theory-traumatic stressors can increase susceptibility to disease and have other negative influences on human physiology.Political-economic theory looks at the impact of political, economic, and structural inequalities on the individualSocial-ecological systems theory identifies and evaluates dynamics and interdependences between the past and present, proximate and distal, and course of life factors that contribute to disease.Grounded in each of the theories, four distinct assumptions underline historical trauma theory:Mass trauma is deliberately and systematically inflicted upon a target population by a subjugating dominant population. In most circumstances, the group upon to whom the trauma is inflicted shares a specific identity or affiliation that can be related to ethnicity, nationality, and/or religious beliefs.Trauma is not limited to a single catastrophic event, but continues over an extended period;Traumatic events reverberate throughout the population, creating a universal experience of the trauma, andThe magnitude of the traumatic experience derails the population from its natural, projected historical course resulting in a legacy of physical, psychological and social conditions that persist across generations. A key difference between historical trauma and the exposure to trauma that others may experience is that without healing or even acknowledgment of the impact of the historically traumatic event, it gets passed on to the next generation, just like chronic and/or complex trauma.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESIn 2006, researcher Michelle Sotero developed a conceptual model to understand better the origination of historical trauma and the pathways that link historical trauma experiences to current physical and social manifestations of trauma symptoms. In most circumstances, the group upon to whom the trauma is inflicted shares a specific identity or affiliation that can be related to ethnicity, nationality, and/or religious beliefs. By denying the humanity of those subjugated to subjugation, White Europeans used several tactics to justify the behavior. Those tactics included:Overwhelming and chronic psych & physical violenceDisplacementWealth deprivationErasure and denial of cultural beliefs and values for those oppressedThe dominate group enforces subjugation through various means including military force, bio-warfare, national policies of genocide, ethnic cleansing, incarceration, enslavement, and/or laws that prohibit freedom of movement, economic development, and cultural expression. Although overt permission of this subjugation may decrease over time, the legacy remains in the form of racism, discrimination, and social and economic disadvantage.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESThe conceptualization and ultimately the empirical study of how historical trauma passes from one generation to the next are complicated by many factors. One complexity relates to teasing out the direct and the indirect effects of historically rooted traumas on contemporary problems, like maladaptive coping behaviors. For example, the direct effects of lived historically traumatic experiences on an individual’s behaviors may produce indirect effects on subsequent generations by way of (un)learning caretaking strategies, caretaker mental health problems, broken kinship networks, and preoccupation with a caretaker’s own need to heal. Another complication is the diverse names used in the literature to describe the effects of historical trauma (e.g., intergenerational trauma, soul wound, and collective unresolved grief). In the literature, the impact of historical trauma on communities has been portrayed as historical trauma as what lies at the roots of a community’s injury, the product of the community’s historical injury (e.g., historical or colonial trauma response), and as a mechanism for intergenerational transmission of problem behaviors, as historical-trauma related stressors and as historical cultural loss. For the purposes of your role as a helper, it is important to note that a historical trauma can serve as all three: the cause of a community’s injury, can be an outcome of a community’s historical injury and can serve to pass along traumatic injury. Let us take a moment to review both the direct and indirect ways in which historical trauma gets passed from one generation to the next. As previously stated, Sotero theorized that historical trauma occurs in three stages. During the first stage, a population of people are subjected to a traumatic experience by a dominant group. As such, those that are directly exposed to the trauma will display a range of traumatic symptoms. For this population of individuals, the universal experience of this subjugation creates significant social, physical and psychological trauma responses. Due to exposure to life-threatening living conditions and death, brutality, starvation, and disease, first generation survivors are left with physical ailments, malnutrition, and high rates of diseases. Trauma response in primary generations may include PTSD, depression, self-destructive behaviors, severe anxiety, guilt, hostility, and chronic bereavement. The psychological and emotional disorders may lead to chronic physical health issues. Without adequate, trauma informed and culturally responsive resources for healing those directly exposed may pass on the effects of the trauma on the second and subsequent generations. Direct transmission occurs when a specific trauma symptom is passed from the parent or primary caregiver directly to the child via modeling and learned behavior. This occurs when a child of traumatized parent thinks, reacts, and behaves in distorted ways due to direct exposure to the parents’ trauma symptoms (e.g. avoidance, re-experiencing, hyperarousal, negative cognitions and mood, dissociation). Indirect transmission occurs when a traumatized parent’s caregiving skills are negatively impacted by their unresolved trauma and as such the individual developed maladaptive coping strategies that get passed down to the subsequent generation. Parents and primary caregivers are the most important mediator influencing if the trauma response, whether linked to 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th generation trauma, will be transmitted to the next generation. We will examine several different pathways through which parents and primary caregivers can transmit the trauma response from one generational to the next. We must keep in mind that parents can transmit trauma responses directly or indirectly and consciously or unconsciously. Also, trauma transmission often involves a combination of both direct and indirect pathways.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESIn addition to direct and indirect exposure to trauma, in their everyday lives, children and subsequent generations are also exposed to overt and covert contemporary violence through microagressive acts. Microaggressions are current events and are often covert in nature. They are defined as events involving discrimination, racism, and daily hassles that are targeted at individuals, many of whom come from diverse racial and ethnic groups. Microaggressions are chronic and can occur daily. Therefore, a group of people may be susceptible to both historical trauma and microaggressions, and the microagressive acts can perpetuate the trauma. Researcher Wing Sue and his colleagues identified three types of microaggressions:Microinsults-communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity (eye rolling during a discussion about slavery and its current impact on the African American community).Microinvalidations- communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color. EX: A white person stating to a person of color that they do not see color, which denies that person racial and ethnic experiences. EX: A non-native person asking someone of AIAN culture whether he or she is a real Indian. This demands an explanation that few others are required to deliver. Microassaults-Explicit racial derogation character primarily by verbal or nonverbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim. EX: Name calling, avoidant behavior, or purposeful discriminatory acts. Microagressive acts may be clear and recognizable, but they are often subtle and hard to define, articulate and address. According to Wing Sue and colleagues, the power of microaggressions lie in their invisibility to the perpetrator and, oftentimes, the recipient. The burden of interpreting and responding to a microagressive act falls on the individual. The target of the act must determine whether the incident was intentional or perhaps reflects misunderstanding or ignorance and then decide about whether to address it. Bring attention to the incident may promote a further negative response, such as anger, denial, and accusations. Microagressive acts do not need to be specific or verbal but can refer to an environment that are either intentionally or unintentionally unsupportive to a person because of his or her racial identity. Microaggressions affect the internal working model or psyche of the individual victim and the group to which the person belongs. They also deliver persistent, inaccurate messages about a group of people and as a result, obscure the true cultural nature of the group and replace it with a stereotype. While each event might be tolerated in isolation, the overall cumulative effect of microaggressions can be devastating. Research has demonstrated that microaggressions through the form of daily discrimination can result in more distress and stronger negative health outcomes than time-limited episodic discrimination.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESHistorical trauma has been experienced by many groups of people in the United States of America. These groups include: First Nations People, Immigrants, such as Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking persons, the survivors of African slavery and their descendants to name a few and other exploited and persecuted populations.ACTIVITY: MAPPING HISTORICAL TRAUMAAssign participants to groups of about three to five people identified by an impacted community. In their Participant Guide are three Job Aids for three different communities in America that have been impacted by historical trauma. Assign participants to groups of three to five identified by an impacted community. Instruct participants to read about their impacted community, individually, first. Then, with their small group, have participants identify the trauma’s the community experienced as well as the responses experienced and the direct and indirect ways in which the trauma may have passed from one generation to the next. Have each group share and explain their responses as a large group. Allow participants 30 minutes to complete the activity with their small group, then allow another 20 minutes to debrief as a large group.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY HISTORICAL TRAUMA IN AMERICAThe Lakota For the last 500 years, individuals from dominant European cultures have engaged in behaviors that have resulted in the purposeful and systematic subjugation and destruction of the various Indigenous groups throughout the Americas. The colonization of the North America’s lands by European explorers and the newly formed American government between 1500 and 1900 resulted in the genocide of 60% to 99% of indigenous groups (Deserly & Lidot, 2015; Weaver & Heartz, 1999). Every tribe and nation in the Americas felt this massive loss of life as this genocide generated great feelings of sadness and loss. The population of Native Americans in North America decreased by 95% from the time Columbus arrived in 1492 and the establishment of the United States in 1776. Most of the Native American population died due to its lack of resistance to diseases such as small pox, diphtheria, measles, and cholera that Europeans brought to North America. While some of the exposure to these illnesses was unintentional on the part of the Europeans, it has been documented that many times Native American people were purposely subjected to these diseases. In 1763, for instance, Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered his subordinates to introduce small pox to the Native American people through blankets they offered to the Natives. The Lakota sense of self was deeply tied to the well-being of the tribe and the ancestors. This deeply rooted bond created a sense of connectivity and purpose that fostered positive self-esteem and high personal regard. However, after the genocide of the Lakota people, the grief and sadness collectively endured by the tribe began to negatively permeate the well-being of individual tribe members and became part of the common identity (Weaver & Heartz, 1999). These experiences were further compounded when surviving tribes were prohibited from practicing ancient spiritual and cultural practices. This oppression effectively helped to strip tribal members of their common identity and begin the process of forced assimilation into White culture (Prucha, 1984). This experience of forced assimilation was not unique to the Lakota people; it was replicated many times over with multiple native tribes and nations. In addition, the forced relocation/geographic isolation of ingenious groups—both on reservations and in some urban communities—is often identi?ed as a contributing factor to many of the current systemic disparities experienced by this population including those in health, mental health, economic, educational, and child welfare systems. Mourning practices were disrupted when an 1883 federal law prohibited Native Americans from practicing traditional ceremonies. This law remained in effect until 1978 when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was enacted. The taking of Native American lands was a primary agenda for most U.S. government officials in the 19th century. President Andrew Jackson approved the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the relocation of as many as 100,000 Native Americans. By 1876, the US government had obtained most of the Native American land and the Native American people were forced to either live on reservations or relocate to urban areas. To force the Native peoples to assimilate fully to the dominant white American culture and completely abandon their own culture, in 1871, the U.S. congress declared Native Americans wards of the U.S. government. The U.S. government’s goal was to assimilate them to the dominant White culture. Government and church-run boarding schools would take Native American children from their families at the age of 4 or 5 and not allow any contact with their Native American relations for a minimum of 8 years. The boarding school experience produced generations of children stripped of their cultural and spiritual traditions. In the boarding schools, Native American children had their hair cut and were forbidden to use their Native language or practice traditional rituals and religions. The disruption and decimation of economic systems, sustenance practices, spiritual practices, kinship networks, and family ties among Native groups stripped them of their culture, sources of self-worth, and mechanisms for coping. As a result, subsequent generations have been left with feelings of shame, powerlessness and subordination. Leaving their domestic lands led to a decline in socioeconomic resources for Native American families. Reservations were not the best lands for agriculture and hunting. Given that many families were not able to provide adequately for one another; families became dependent on goods provided by the U.S. government. Families experienced loss as a result of the violence associated with the colonialization, forced removals from native lands and subsequent attempts to “civilize” them, which led to increased premature deaths and general loss as a result of malnutrition and diseases for which families did not have the resources to treat. Not having these protective influences, created adverse psychological responses defined by angry/aggressive and withdrawn emotional states. Domestic violence and physical and sexual assault are three-and-a-half times higher than the national average in Native American communities. Suicide rates among Native Americans are 3.2 times higher than the national average and are the second leading cause of death for those from 10-34 years of age. The social impact of family disruption made it such that parental and extended family and kinship ties were broken as a result of the inability to provide safe and nurturing homes for the children. To cope with these losses, individuals began engaging in health-risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug misuse. Currently, Native Americans have the highest weekly alcohol consumption of any ethnic group. Today, almost 26% of Native Americans live in poverty compared to 12% for the entire U.S. population. Further, the physical impact on Native American individuals is that they are overrepresented in the areas of heart disease, tuberculosis, STDs, and injuries with diabetes being more prevalent with this population than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. The life expectancy at birth for the Native American population is 2.4 years less than that of all the U.S. population combined. Mexicans and Mexican AmericansMexican-origin individuals have had a 500-year legacy of domination and subordination by European powers, including the Spanish, English, Portuguese and French in Mexico and by White Americans in what is now the southwestern United States. According to the U.S. Census (2010), the term Hispanic refers to people whose origin is Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or another Hispanic/Latino regardless of race. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States and make up about 14% of the total population. Mexican-origin Hispanics, inclusive of Mexican Americans, Mexicans, and Chicana/os, represent 65% of the U.S. Hispanic population. As such, many Mexican-origin Hispanics have biological and cultural roots among the indigenous tribes of Mexico as well as Spanish colonizers. Prior to the arrival of Hernan Cortez and the conquest of Mexico in 1521, there was a flourishing civilization in the Americas. The arrival of European powers led to the establishment of Mexico as a colonial relationship to serve the social and economic interests of the various dominant powers. A social system was created based on race and place of birth. After the initial conquest, the Spanish instituted elements of social order that marginalized and subordinated the indigenous groups in favor of the Spanish elite. For example, the establishment of the Encomienda system forced the Mexican natives to become laborers and to provide tribute on the lands of the Spanish ruling class. The Hacienda system further exploited the Mexican natives as forced labor and made them indentured servants to the owners of various haciendas through the advancement of credit, also known as “debt peonage.” Native Mexicans who wished to move up the social ladder had to adapt into mainstream Spanish culture. Those with a European background enjoyed the wealth and prosperity that came from Spanish colonialism. Those with a native background were relegated to the lower rungs of the social ladder. As the U.S. border expanded west under the notion of America’s manifest destiny, America grew to become a neighbor of Mexico. In 1836, following a revolt by a group of settlers in Texas, a northern state of Mexico at the time, Texas became an independent republic. Mexican citizens were disposed of their lands and human rights violations ensued at the hands of Texas Rangers, who killed Mexicans and Mexican Americans with regard for human life. In 1846, the U.S. declared war on Mexico to further its westward expansion. Two years later, after winning the war, the Mexico and the U.S. signed The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As a result of the treaty, Mexico ceded almost half of its territory, including California, New Mexico, Nevada, and parts of Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Mexicans became a re-conquered people, and many were soon displaced from their lands. Both Mexicans and Mexican Americans were discriminated against, exploited as cheap labor, and not given the same political and land rights as White Americans. For many generations to follow, Mexicans and Mexican Americans have had to endure being scapegoated in times of economic downturns and view as a source of cheap, expendable labor in economic upturns. The legacy of Spanish colonialism compounded by white American neo-colonialism has led to the internalization of negative perceptions and stereotypes of Mexican Americans, leading to self-hate and alienation, lowered self-esteem, ethnic identity conflict, discrimination, racism and marginalization. Mexican Americans continue to experience oppression and subordination through anti-Mexican sentiment and the militarization of the United States-Mexico border as a result of the immigration dispute. Mexican-origin people living in the U.S. were subjected to deportation if they could not provide documentation that they were U.S. citizens. Mexican Americans were forced to attend segregated schools, live in segregated neighborhoods, and were often views as inferior to White Americans. Subsequently, misrepresentations of Mexican and Mexican American culture portrayed them as lazy, lacking initiative, and prone to commit criminal acts. Perceived social issues were blamed on “Mexican culture,” and schools forced assimilation by emphasizing English-only. Although the official Mexican border was created as a result of the signing of the treaty, it was not until 1924, Border Patrol was created, and the U.S. military presence increased in the region. Economic downturns and anti-Mexican sentiment led to massive deportations of Mexican-origin peoples during the 1930s, which continued through the 1950s with “Operation Wetback.” The legacy of Spanish colonialism compounded by White American neo-colonialism has led to the internalization of negative perceptions and stereotypes by Mexican Americans, leading to self-hate and alienation, lowered self-esteem, ethnic identity conflict, discrimination, racism, and marginalization. Physical and psychological violence continues today as Homeland Security “guards” the Mexican-United States border with repressive tactics such as “Operation Hold the Line” and “Operation Safeguard.” Subordination and social control of Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans have led to documented civil rights violations of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Over time, generations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans have begun to show increased rates of hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and Type 2 diabetes. In 2012, Hispanic Americans were 1.2 times as likely to be obese as non-Hispanic Whites. Poverty rates for Hispanics (24%) were more than double that of non-Hispanic Whites (10%) and 10% of Latinos live in deep poverty (with incomes below 50% of the federal poverty threshold), compared to seven percent of all people in the United States. U.S.-born Hispanics report higher rates of drug use, abuse, and dependence than Hispanics born outside the U.S. Further, these communities are exposed to targeted marketing of alcohol, accessibility to drugs, disorganized neighborhoods, and increased police surveillance. Overall, Hispanics have less formal education than the national average. One study found that Mexican Americans and white Americans had very similar rates of psychiatric disorders, however, when the Mexican American group was separated into two sub-groups, those born in Mexico and those born in the United States, it was found that those born in the United States had higher rates of depression and phobias than those born in Mexico. Enslaved Africans and African AmericansThe Middle Passage set the stage for what would define centuries of purposeful and systematic denial of humanity towards Africans and African Americans. Africans enslaved in the Americas marked a complete disruption from their land, people, customs, beliefs and languages, attachment, continuity to the past, and an expectable future. “There is little in slavery that is not traumatic: the loss of culture, home, kin, sense of self, the destruction of families through sale of fathers, mothers, and offspring, physical abuse, or even witnessing the castration of a fellow slave. Yet subjugation was its most heinous aspect, as it sought nothing less than annihilation of that which is uniquely human-the self.” Between the years 1500 and 1820, African slaves constituted about 80% of those who crossed the Atlantic from east to west. It is estimated that millions of Africans perished during the African Passage by the time the American practice of slavery was abolished in 1865. To rationalize the inhumanity of slavery, Africans were reduced to sub-human status and labeled “primitive.” Dehumanization was a unique and important feature of the North American slave trade because the government intentionally rejected the passage of laws to protect the physical safety of slaves as many white Americans believed Africans to be inferior. In 1884, the Encyclopedia Britannica defined the word Negro as referring to Africans who occupied the lowest position of the evolutionary scale. Accordingly, it was legal and socially permissible for slave-owners to subject enslaved Africans to any type of physical force. Therefore, by the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, which meant an African child born in the new world would also be a slave of his or her parent’s slave owner. Due to the success of tobacco as a cash crop in the Southern colonies, the demand to import more slaves for labor exponentially increased by the end of the 17th century than did the northern colonies. The South had a significantly higher number and proportion of slaves in the population where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture. Enslaved children who experienced puberty and gained adult competencies were frequently taken away from their parents. The wealth of the United States in the first half of the 19th century was greatly enhanced by the labor of African Americans. With the Union victory in the American Civil War, the slave-labor system was abolished in the country. In the aftermath of slavery, Jim Crow laws ensured that African Americans experienced increased struggles as they were afforded limited rights because of the persistent view by whites that they were inferior. Newly liberated African Americans did not receive mental health care for the probable post-traumatic stress following slavery, nor were they afforded economic reparations and social acknowledgement to account for generations of enslavement. Instead, newly freed African Americans were raped, castrated, and lynched. The American landscape sustained social, economic and political powerlessness for most African Americans. African Americans were excluded from poorhouses, orphanages, hospitals and state facilities. African Americans were segregated from employment and educational opportunities, and relegated to living in the poorest, most dilapidated neighborhoods, some of which remain the most notorious inner city African American neighborhoods in contemporary America. The concentration of poverty led to rising crime rates, domestic violence, drugs problems and other social ills that are typically addressed through public services and assistance. Even so, the few service providers in these communities were so often corrupt, abusive, and discriminatory that they are historically distrusted by African Americans. African Americans’ attempt to protest unfair laws and to advocate for their rights, were met with violence. The Civil Rights Movement dismantled legal barriers but not racial barriers. Although the numbers of African American business owners increased, there are far more African American prisoners. By 2007, African Americans accounted for nearly 50% of the nation’s prisoners. As such, African Americans have experienced multigenerational oppression that has led to racial disparities across several indices of well-being, including, social and political powerlessness, low wages, threat of violence, distorted standardized test scores, higher prison enrollment and crime victimization rates. These inequities have threatened many African Americans’ development of positive self-esteem and adequate family functioning. Current feelings of rage and passivity among many African Americans can be connected to the psychological functioning of enslaved Africans. Stereotypes of the enraged slave required that African Americans forge nonthreatening identities since survival necessitated that they stifle their natural response to oppression. Further, after witnessing the abuse and death of slaves who demonstrated aggression in reaction to the slave-owner’s brutality, some slaves utilized passivity as a survival technique. This dynamic is currently recreated as exhibited by African Americans who are careful not to be too outspoken because they fear retribution. For example, researcher and author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Joy DeGruy Leary (2005) theorized that many African American mothers may feel the need to assist their sons to quiet the urge to battle the oppressive system and may use excessive and harsh corporal punishment. This practice is associated with the practice during slavery when parents were overly punitive in order to save their children from savage punishment. Enslaved children were frequently taken away from their parents once they reached puberty. As such, enslaved mothers were less likely to provide praise to their children in fear that the slave owner would consider the child more “adult” and take the child away. In addition, fathers were kept away from their children and sold to live on plantations away from their families, devastating the slave family’s concept of family. In many instances, slave owners were free to have sex with their female slaves and father their offspring. This has created a sense of powerlessness and an internalized sense of oppression for many African Americans which correlate with chronic health problems like high blood pressure and hypertension, domestic violence, depression and post-traumatic stress. Today, African Americans are less likely than white Americans to receive mental health counseling and psychotherapy but are more likely to receive pharmacotherapy, which is problematic given that pharmacotherapy alone has been identified as being a minimally adequate form of mental health treatment. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSripple effects of historical traumaINSTRUCTOR NOTESHow is that adverse experiences from a community’s history can have such lasting power on subsequent generations? The answer lies within chronic stress’s ability to alter the trajectory of brain development from its foundation. Any alteration during this time can have significant implications for future development. Imagine a rocket launching straight into the air. Now imagine that right before you launched it, you tilted the rocket on the launch pad by one degree. It won’t seem like much, but the further up that rocket goes into the air, the further from its ideal course it appears to stray. Even the slightest alteration at the foundation can cause significant disruptions throughout development. Now imagine an entire community of rockets who have had trajectories thrown off by trauma. We encounter families in our work every day that are impacted by the rippling trauma responses of previous generations. Research helps us identify specific dynamics within families (e.g. silence, overdisclosure, reenactment, and identification) that transmit trauma directly from parents to children (i.e. from one generation to the next). Research also helps us identify how the trauma response can be transmitted indirectly from parents to children through troublesome parenting styles and behaviors (e.g. authoritarian parenting style, disconnected/insensitive interactions, low reflective functioning, and behaviors linked to disorganized attachment). INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESRevisit the ACE’s pyramid above depicting how adverse childhood experiences impact individuals throughout the lifespan, from conception to death. Adverse childhood experiences generate toxic stress that alters our stress response system disrupting the development of the brain. Disrupted brain development contributes to social, emotional, and cognitive impairment. To manage and cope, albeit maladaptively, with social, emotional, and cognitive impairment, individuals often develop high-risk behaviors such as substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, and criminal activities. These maladaptive high-risk behaviors contribute to disease, disability, and social problems. This pathway all too often ends at early death that could have been prevented. Now, let’s apply what we know about the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma to the ACE’s triangle. Historical and intergenerational trauma adds and underlayer to the load of the stress response system before a child is even born. The weight of historical wounds, legacies of persecution, and contemporary microaggressions can alter the baseline of our stress tolerance making it so that just a little stress can be overwhelming and toxic. Caregivers impacted by historical and intergenerational trauma are more likely to have experienced excessive and prolonged activation of their stress response systems from a young age resulting in seemingly “positive” and “tolerable” stressors to be experienced as “toxic”. Understanding how historical and intergenerational trauma increases the toxicity of normative stressors for many families we encounter in child welfare can help us identify more effective practice strategies. Identifying and educating parents and primary caregivers about the impact of adverse childhood experiences is critical allows us to establish a shared understanding of how trauma experienced by an individual in one generation can set forth a traumatic response rippling across future generations. In this way, we help our parents and other caregivers recognize the intergenerational transmission of trauma. In child welfare, social workers often work with families where child abuse or neglect is the trauma being transmitted. Research estimates that being abused and neglected caregivers are 1.3-5 times more likely to abuse their own children. In addition to knowledge about ACE’’s, we also want to identify and educate parents about the impact of historical trauma as many of the families we work with are managing additional, often invisible layers of traumatic stress in the form of historical trauma. We can describe these layers as invisible because families may not always recognize the current impact of mass trauma experiences that occurred 20-420 years before they were born. As we discussed earlier in the day, historical trauma can impact generations long after the initiation of a mass trauma experience, such as genocide, slavery, or forced migration. The mass trauma experience starts off with the subjugation of a population by a dominant group, and often followed by segregation and displacement, physical and psychological violence, economic deprivation, and cultural dispossession. These experiences often evoke a traumatic stress response across the first and second generations with such magnitude that the toxic stress ripples across future generations. As we talked about, microaggressions fuel the trauma response in future generations by serving as trauma reminders that reactivate historical wounds.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: HISTORICAL TRAUMA AND ACESNow, let’s apply what we know about the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma to the ACE’s triangle. Historical and intergenerational trauma adds and underlayer to the load of the stress response system before a child is even born. The weight of historical wounds, legacies of persecution, and contemporary microaggressions can alter the baseline of our stress tolerance making it so that just a little stress can be overwhelming and toxic. Caregivers impacted by historical and intergenerational trauma are more likely to have experienced excessive and prolonged activation of their stress response systems from a young age resulting in seemingly “positive” and “tolerable” stressors to be experienced as “toxic”.Understanding how historical and intergenerational trauma increases the toxicity of normative stressors for many families we encounter in child welfare can help us identify more effective practice strategies. Identifying and educating parents about the impact of adverse childhood experiences is critical allows us to establish a shared understanding of how trauma experienced by an individual in one generation can set forth a traumatic response rippling across future generations. In this way, we help our parents recognize the intergenerational transmission of trauma. In child welfare, we often work with families where child abuse or neglect is the trauma being transmitted. Research estimates that being abused and neglected caregivers are 1.3-5 times more likely to abuse their own children. In addition to knowledge about ACE’’s, we also want to identify and educate parents about the impact of historical trauma as many of the families we work with are managing additional, often invisible layers of traumatic stress in the form of historical trauma. We can describe these layers as invisible because families may not always recognize the current impact of mass trauma experiences that occurred 20-420 years before they were born. As we discussed earlier in the day, historical trauma can impact generations long after the initiation of a mass trauma experience, such as genocide, slavery, or forced migration. The mass trauma experience starts off with the subjugation of a population by a dominant group, and often followed by segregation and displacement, physical and psychological violence, economic deprivation, and cultural dispossession. These experiences often evoke a traumatic stress response across the first and second generations with such magnitude that the toxic stress ripples across future generations. As we talked about, microaggressions fuel the trauma response in future generations by serving as trauma reminders that reactivate historical wounds.Let’s take a closer look at how historical and intergenerational trauma can add to the dosage of toxic stress, which can have devastating consequences on brain structures and functioning from childhood on into parenthood. As noted earlier, alterations in prefrontal cortex development may limit decision-making skills, impulse control, and attention. Deficits in hippocampus functioning may lead to impaired memory and mood control. Alterations in amygdala functioning may result in caregivers overly attuning to negative stimuli in their environment, including misinterpreting their own children’s behavior as malicious. All of this hinders their ability to develop adaptive coping skills and strengthen their ability to manage stressful situations successfully. This can result in caregivers impacted by historical and intergenerational trauma having a lower threshold to manage tolerable stress before it turns into toxic stress. Not only does the toxic stress negatively impact their functioning in their role as individuals but also as caregivers. They are less likely to be able to provide support to their children who rely on them to serve as the stress regulation buffer. These parents are unable to regulate their own stress let alone carry the co-regulation duties of regulating stress for their children. This leaves them vulnerable to experience normative instances of positive and tolerable stress as toxic. This trickles down to their children who are left experiencing prolonged activation of their stress response systems from this young age. This toxic stress ripple effect hinders the next generation from developing adaptive coping skills. This creates a vicious cycle as these children are more likely to experience future instances of tolerable stress as toxic. As they grow up to have children of their own, they, too, will be less equipped to serve as a supportive buffer for their own children, who will also be more likely to experience developmentally normal experiences of positive and tolerable stress as toxic. As such, the detrimental impact of toxic stress cascades into the next generation. Miller and Chen (2010) talk about how children and adolescents develop a “defensive phenotype” in response to being raised in a harsh and unpredictable environment filled with ACE’s. They have exaggerated biological, emotional, and behavioral response to the environment because their brains and stress response systems are wired to be hypervigilant to threats. They are always on guard primed and ready to react if they need to. This developed as a short-term response to cope with legitimate threats at one point in time, but now it has detrimental long-term costs as they react in excessive ways to even small stressors that they misattribute as threats. If we think of what a survival response is, it is exaggerated and excessive. Fight, flight, freeze moments are all extreme reactions (i.e. you don’t hold back, run as fast as you can paying no mind to whether you will blow out your knee, hit as hard as you can no matter how hard you might hurt the other person, or retreat as deeply internally as you need to go numb). The problem is that these extreme all-or-nothing reactions often cause more personal and interpersonal damage than the “threat” warranted. For many of the children and parents with whom we work, these survival-in-the-moment reactions have been repeated and reinforced long before we have been involved, which can be very challenging to modify. ACTIVITY: HISTORICAL TRAUMA & ACESTurn to page ___ in your Participant’s Guide and think about a family with whom you are currently working. Identify the historical, intergenerational, and adverse childhood experiences that the child and parent have experienced. Fill in the segments of the triangles to explore how historical, intergenerational, and adverse childhood experiences have impacted there: ?Stress response systems and neurodevelopment?Social, emotional, and cognitive functioning?Adoption of high-risk or maladaptive coping skills ?Vulnerability to disease, disability, or social problems Now turn to page ___ in your Participant’s Guide and explore the linkages between the caregiver’s trauma history and their child’s trauma history, including incidents of abuse and neglect. Try to connect how a caregiver’s actions or inactions often included in the CPS Referral/Reason for Agency Involvement could have occurred in the context of their own trauma response. As you process this activity, acknowledge the challenge that this toxic stress ripple effect can feel as if it is set in motion long before we encounter a family. You can then reframe this challenge as an opportunity as it also illuminates opportunities, we must team up with families to halt the transmission and reorient the family back on course to physical, emotional, and behavioral health. As child welfare professionals, we can influence the transmission of trauma. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be hard to tell if we are helping a family reduce the risk of transmission or inadvertently fueling it. To better orient ourselves to knowing if we are helping or hurting, let’s take a deeper look at some of the toxic pathways through which the historical and intergenerational trauma response travel so that we are better able to recognize the signals of transmission.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESVIDEO: HEALING NEENIn Healing Neen, Tonier Cain shares the journey growing up as a child who experienced all 10 ACE’s and experienced many of the negative impacts on physical, emotional, and behavioral health described in the ACE’s study. After you watch the video clip, engage participants in a discussion about the following four questions. Suggested answers to each of the questions are provided below each question. Encourage participants to follow along in their Participant Guides as they watch the video.What ACE’s did she experience?All 10 ACE’sHow did Neen’s ACES impact Neen’s life…the lives of Neen’s children?Low stress toleranceFight/flight/freeze reactionsSubstance abuseCriminal activityChild welfare involvementIncarcerationWhat were the potential opportunities to intervene?Early childhood – adults in the school and community could have identified the signals of concern and intervenedChild welfare system – social workers could have engaged Neen…siblings, and…mother Criminal Justice System – numerous opportunities in the criminal justice system. Eventually, Neen participated in Tamar’s Children.Returning Citizen support programs – to support Neen during transition back into the communityWhat was the difference maker for Neen?Supportive relationship with the case worker - by engaging Neen around “What has happened to you?” rather than “What’s wrong with you”, Neen was re-positioned to explore the same question in the context of a safe, supportive, nurturing relationship with the case worker. Ask participants to think about how historical and/or intergenerational trauma impact Neen’s experience of adverse childhood experiences and transition to the next slide.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESWe will spend the next portion of the afternoon homing in on the specific pathways through which trauma can be transmitted across generations. Sotero’s model helped us conceptualize how mass trauma experience that impacts a large group can initiate a trauma response that ripples across generations. This rippling effect is not bound to mass trauma experiences but can also by initiated by an individual’s experience of trauma. The rippling effect may be compounded for those individuals impacted by the trifecta of historical, intergenerational, and interpersonal trauma. We will use the term “toxic roots” to describe these pathways that have invisibly contributed to a family’s trauma across generations. We describe them as toxic because they transmit the toxic stress of the trauma response. We describe them as roots because many of us of unaware of the power and life; however negative, that these family dynamics and parenting behaviors have in keeping families firmly rooted in traumatic responses. Note that families can be impacted by multiple toxic roots at the same time and subsequent generations can be impacted by different toxic roots. For example, a grandmother may refuse to tolerate any discussion of the family’s trauma history with her children. Her children may grow up to be parents of the next generation who do the opposite. They may talk about their family’s trauma history in gory detail with their young children that propels the trauma response forward.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESLet’s look at how historical and intergenerational trauma contributes to four troublesome household dynamics that can directly transmit the trauma response from directly parents to children (Anchoroff, 1998):SILENCE: In the context of historical and intergenerational trauma, caregivers may go to great lengths to avoid talking about anything linked to their interpersonal experiences of trauma or reminders of historical trauma to avoid the distressing thoughts and feelings associated with it. Family members including children may or may not be aware of their parents’ or ancestors’ experience. Either way, they may find themselves intentionally or unintentionally avoiding issues that may trigger their parents’ distress. Avoidance sends the message that distressing emotions are intolerable and should not be discussed. This can lead to children not feeling safe or supported in bringing up other sensitive issues, which prevents them from learning how to regulate emotions. OVERDISCLOSURE: Over disclosure represents the flipside of silence. Rather than avoid all things related to the traumatic experience, some individuals experience re-experiencing symptoms where they constantly think about, talk about, or replay their trauma experiences. In the context of historical and intergenerational trauma, caregivers who struggle to manage their traumatic stress may consciously or unconsciously pass on traumatic stress by talking about their or their ancestors’ experiences too excessively and graphically for children and adolescents to manage. Underlying this behavior may be caregiver’s conscious or unconscious positive intention to keep their children safe by preparing them for survival in a dangerous world. However, caregivers underestimate how damaging the flooding effect can be on their developing stress response systems.IDENTIFICATION: Caregivers triggered by traumatic reminders may react in ways that appear worrisome and unpredictable to their child. In the absence of an attuned and supportive caregiver, these children tend to overidentify with their caregiver or ancestor and feel responsible for their distress. Children and adolescents are at risk of developing parallel symptomatology as they try to understand how they feel by overidentifying with them. Overidentification can also result in a role reversal between caregivers and children. When their child experiences distress, they may feel an overwhelming level of distress in response. The inadvertent and paradoxical response is that the child feels the need to co-regulate the caregiver’s emotions rather than the other way around. This overwhelms their vulnerable stress responses systems that are not strong enough to take on this responsibility and carry the load of co-regulation. REENACTMENT: Caregivers who experience trauma often consciously or unconsciously reenact traumatic experiences, whether linked to interpersonal, intergenerational, or historical trauma. Family members, especially children, may play out different roles in the trauma reenactment without realizing it. This can result in children internalizing the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of those involved in the original traumatic experience, including survivors, victims, and even perpetrators of the trauma. ACTIVITY: HOUSEHOLD DYNAMICSAs you think about these four dynamics, are there families with whom you are currently working that might be displaying signals of these toxic roots? If so, use the space below to describe how each of these dynamics look within the family you have identified.SILENCEOVERDISCLOSUREIDENTIFICATIONREENACTMENTINSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESNow, let’s look at how historical and intergenerational trauma impacts caregiving practices creating additional indirect pathways transmitting trauma across generations. Remember that parents and primary caregivers have the most important mediating role influencing whether the trauma response is passed along. In order to better understand the toxic roots of “authoritarian parenting style”, let’s first look at what the research says about the pros/cons of different parenting styles. Research highlights the mediating role that parenting styles has on increasing or decreasing the development of trauma symptoms in children. Baumrind’s four parenting styles vary on the dimensions of support/warmth and control:AUTHORITATIVE caregiving is the gold standard of parenting as it promotes an effective balance of discipline, nurturance, positive communication, maturity demands, and firm control when necessary. AUTHORITARIAN caregiving emphasizes parental control and utilizes physical and verbal correction to overdisciplined children at the expense of their need for emotional support and guidance.PERMISSIVE caregiving overemphasizes children’s autonomy before they are ready to manage the demands that come along with it. While they can be highly nurturing, they avoid disciplining children for fear of the discomfort that confrontation would bring. UNINVOLVED caregiving provides no warmth and no control. These caregivers are often consumed with managing their own needs or wants and are physically and emotionally unavailable to their children. INSTRUCTOR NOTESThe all-or-nothing dynamics associated with authoritarian and permissive parenting (and the “nothing” dynamic associated with uninvolved parents) result in children who struggle to tolerate and manage stress associated with mild and moderate conflicts that are part of normal development. Authoritarian and permissive parenting styles lack this balance and are both linked to increased externalizing and internalizing disorders in children. On the other hand, authoritative parenting styles are linked to reduced externalizing and internalizing behavior problems in children. This makes sense if we think about young children’s need for a balance of warmth and control. Schwerdtfeger et al. (2013) examined the impact of trauma on parenting styles and how these parenting styles increased or decreased risk of trauma transmission to their children. They found that parents who experienced trauma were more likely to employ an authoritarian parenting style marked by verbal hostility, physical coercion, and low nurturance. Verbal hostility, specifically, was the strongest predictor of emotional and behavioral symptomatology associated with mood, hyperactive, and oppositional disorders in children. Neppl et al. (2009) conducted a longitudinal study to examine what factors influence one’s parenting style. Well, Neppl et al. analyzed data from participants across three generations to see if there are certain factors that mediate whether harsh or positive parenting practices are transmitted from one generation to the next. In other words, what influences whether I parent my own children the same way my parents did? Additionally, they examined whether certain child behaviors evoke different parenting styles. Is there something that my child does that makes me more or less likely to parent positively or harshly? What they found is that there are specific mediating factors accounting for intergenerational continuity in parenting styles, both harsh and positive parenting behavior. “Harsh parenting” is marked by interactions that are hostile, antisocial, and angry/coercive, which are indicative of authoritarian parenting styles. “Positive parenting” is marked by interactions involving open communication, responsive listening, and assertiveness, which are indicative of authoritative parenting styles. They found that second generation parents were more likely to parent harshly if their parents used harsh techniques and positively if their parents used positive parenting techniques. This confirms what we all may have observed in our practice: we learn specific childrearing behaviors from our parents and are likely to incorporate these behaviors in our interactions with our own children. Parents’ externalizing behavior problems (as measured by crimes against people and property, substance use, and careless driving) mediated the relationship between harsh parenting across the three generations. This occurred in a reciprocal process. First generation harsh parenting practices resulted in increased externalizing behavior problems in adolescents of the second generation. These externalizing behavior problems continued into adulthood and increased the likelihood of the second-generation adult employing harsh parenting practices with their own children of the third generation. Additionally, externalizing behavior problems in the third-generation child further increased the likelihood of their parent employing harsh discipline practices. Regarding mediating factors for positive parenting, academic attainment influenced whether a parent in the second generation was likely to adopt the positive parenting practices they received from their parent in the first generation with their own children in the third generation. How does this fit with what you have observed from families with whom you have worked? How might this information influence your practice?INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESDisorganized attachment relationships often develop in children as a result of being frightened and scared of their caregiver, from whom they are trying to seek reassurance. These caregivers are both a source of comfort and a source of fear, which presents an unsolvable dilemma for distressed children. This internal conflict results in children acting in odd, confused, disoriented, or dissociative ways that signal heightened emotional and behavioral dysregulation. The toxic root of disorganized attachment is particularly relevant for child welfare workers because 51% of maltreated children develop disorganized attachment compared to less than 15% of non-maltreated children. Only 14% of maltreated children developed secure-attachments compared to over 60% of typical children (Cyr, Euser, Bakermans-Kranenburg, and Van Ijzendoorn, 2010). These children are subject to the vicious cycle as these odd behaviors make it less likely that they will receive a supportive response from their caregiver. Without a parental buffer, these children are extremely vulnerable to stress and show elevated stress response compared to more securely attached children. Disorganized attachment bonds create a toxic pathway for trauma transmission. This makes sense given what we know about the powerful role that attachment bonds play in healthy childhood development. Our attachment relationships formed during the first two years of life shape our internal working models of “relationships”. They are formed in response to the emotional communication or dance between caregiver and child. They set the tone for future relationships by establishing expectations about the “self” and the “other.” Early attachment style is often carried on into adulthood and is reflected in our ability or inability to relate to others, be self-aware, and regulate emotions. The attachment bond can mediate whether the historical and/or intergenerational trauma response is transmitted through messaging about the self, the world, safety and danger. Ask participants to reflect on page __ in their Participant’s Guide. What messages did you receive from your primary caregiver regarding yourself, your ability to get your needs met, whether others would be willing and/or able to meet your needs, and the ability of the world around you to accept and support you?ACTIVITY: MESSAGES AND ATTACHMENTWhat messages did you receive from your primary caregiver about?YourselfYour ability to get your needs metWhether others would be willing and/or able to meet your needsThe ability of the world around you to accept and support youIMPLICATIONS FOR HELPING PROFESSIONALSINSTRUCTOR NOTESThus far, we have discussed the detrimental impact multiple generations of unresolved injuries due to trauma that continue to present day can have on families. The product is that there are now communities with deeply embedded wounds left over from generations of unaddressed and unresolved mental, emotional, and physical trauma. The good news is that we are learning more about how to harness the concept of neural plasticity to rehabilitate the impact of toxic stress on the brain. We can apply what we just talked about with attachment theory and neuroscience to identify strategies to help parents and children enhance resiliency. Since the trauma occurred on multiple levels, any approach to healing must include a thorough assessment of the impact on the individual, the family, the community, and society. The final part of this class will focus on how you can use your position as a helper to influence change in multiple generations at the same time. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESDr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart identifies four phases of helping families heal from historical trauma. We can use this information to identify strategies for ongoing engagement with the child, caregiver, birth parent, and resource parent. Let’s explore ways that you as a helping professional can support families in working through these barriers and breaking free of these toxic undercurrents stemming from historical and intergenerational trauma. CONFRONTING HISTORICAL TRAUMA: The first step is educating ourselves with historical knowledge of groups who have experienced mass trauma, subjugation, oppression, economic deprivation, and cultural repression going back to precolonial times. We need this knowledge to be equipped to have meaningful conversations with our families who may or may not be aware of the toxic elements of historical trauma. UNDERSTANDING THE TRAUMA: As we confront historical trauma, we want to ensure that we maintain a safe space where individuals feel heard, understood, and validated as we work together to understand the trauma response. We want to communicate in a way that recognizes that initial denial may serve as functional and protective coping skill but can get in the way of healing. We want to talk with caregivers about how generations born long after the mass trauma experience can experience physical, psychological, and social challenges related to historical trauma, including poor affect tolerance, numbing, hypervigilance, substance abuse, re-experiencing, avoidance, depression, and death identification. We want to invite conversation around dealing with mistrust and validating mistrust as a reasonable reaction to historical trauma. RELEASING THE PAIN: We want to promote opportunities for individuals impacted by historical trauma to access culturally relevant healing practices and treatment models that emphasize resilience. We want to promote opportunities for our families to collectively mourn and heal. We also want to promote opportunities for families to celebrate their positive group identity and reweave their personal and family narratives to incorporate their strengths. TRANSCENDING THE TRAUMA: We want to emphasize reverence and continue to emphasize positive cultural identity of groups impacted by historical trauma. Together, we need to counter overt and covert themes of coercive patterns of power and control (via historical legacies and microaggressions) enacted by the dominant culture that get in the way of positive cultural identity formation. We want to partner together to create new narratives that recognize negative influences on their cultural identity and identify how and why certain behaviors were learned. We are starting right here in this room as we examine our cups. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESThose in the helping profession (e.g., social workers, mental health workers, etc.) often talk about the power of relationships. What some of us might not realize is that research shows us that safe, stable, nurturing relationships (SSNR’s) help halt and heal intergenerational trauma. As a helping professional, we can serve as the safe, supportive, and nurturing relationship that a caregiver may need to break free from the undercurrents of historical and intergenerational transmission. In this way, we have an opportunity to create a corrective emotional experience for a caregiver in need of such an experience. SAFE = the extent to which a child is free from fear and secure from physical or psychological harm within their social and physical environmentSTABLE = the degree of predictability and consistency in a child’s social, emotional, and physical environmentNURTURING = the extent to which a caregiver is available and able to sensitively and consistently respond to and meet the needs of their childThrough your relationship, you can support families in realizing that historical and intergenerational legacies of grief, loss, racism, maltreatment, and other traumatic events are not inevitable for future generations. Through our relationship, we can help parents, children, and adolescents become more self-aware and build insight. Insight can prompt positive behavior change. With positive behavior change, the opportunities for future generations are endless. Remember that the connection between insight and behavior change is not a given. Your relationship and engagement with families are critical in helping parents and children turn insight into behavior change. In social work practice, relationships are the key change agents and engagement is all about putting our relationship into action. In child welfare practice, we strive to engage with families in a family-centered, strength-based, and solution-focused way that builds collaborative partnerships with families. The most successful partnerships are marked by open and authentic communication that supports disclosure of culture, family dynamics, and personal experiences. This all sounds wonderfully simple, but we know that it is much more complex than that. We must anticipate and work through barriers that get in the way of building positive relationships with clients. What are some of the barriers that you have experienced in building positive working relationships with children? With youth? With birth parents? Sometimes, helping professionals avoid talking with caregivers about their trauma histories. Why might this be? We want to reduce this barrier by helping all professionals understand the importance of engaging birth parents around their histories and increasing their confidence in their ability to engage and respond to caregivers effectively around their histories. When we avoid asking caregivers about their trauma histories, we are contributing to the conspiracy of silence, which reinforces avoidance and communicates to the caregiver that they ought not talk about their past and/or should be ashamed of their past. Having an opportunity to break the silence by talking about their experiences in a way that they feel in control and in a psychically and emotionally safe environment can be profoundly powerful and healing. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT CAREGIVERS’ SELF-AWARENESS, INSIGHT, & BEHAVIOR CHANGEHelp parents make sense of (translate) extreme behavioral and emotional reactions that their children display…debrief after parent-child visits and help build the caregiver’s empathic capacity. This is a parallel process as we are aiming to build social worker’s (and resource parents) empathic capacity for caregivers by increasing their understanding of the context of parental maltreatment. Refer to difficulties in the attachment bond as a “blockage” implying it can be worked through rather than damagedIdentify aspects of caregivers’ attachment or trauma histories that are inhibiting them from attuning to the child.Help parents reflect on identifying their vision for success before the stress got in the way. Remembering original hopes can revitalize lost affection and generate increased motivation to make changes. We must keep in mind the elements of behavioral change…Motivation/Capacity/Opportunity/Confidence. If the parent’s original vision was unrealistic (i.e. my child will love me in the way my mother never did), this is an opportunity to grieve that vision, and recreate a healthier, more realistic vision of success. Help parents increase awareness of their own triggers. Parents need to be attuned to their own body reactions and learn how to recognize feelings at lower levels of intensity so that they are better equipped to utilize adaptive coping skills at low levels of stress, before their instinctive stress response systems take over.Many parents feel helpless in helping their child regulate their distress. You want to act like a play by play coordinator narrating the benefits of simple reciprocal bonding activities such as…. list them. Given them a list of simple things they can do and identify the benefits. Given that we cannot “see” the adaptive rewiring occurring in the brain, we need to share with parents what’s happening on the inside. It is super helpful to teach parents what subtle signals to look for as confirmation of the positive changes. This will reinforce the skills they are learning. Help parents create new adaptive narratives of their relationship with their child. Help parent and child make sense out of what happened so that the child does not feel intrinsically bad. Help parents claim their children. Often, we overlook how parents can passively enter the role of being a parent, especially with unplanned pregnancies. This has important implications because we need to help parents gain touch with their feelings so that they can assist their children gain touch with their own. We can do this by using active listening skills to identify and label feelings when reflecting what parents sharing with us. We want to teach parents how to co-regulate their child by tuning into their feelings and putting them into words. Resource parents can do this for children placed in their homes. Both resource parents and birth parents want help a child co-regulate their feelings by reading the emotions underlying their behaviors, attune to these feelings however intense they may be, respond with warmth and empathy, and help their child make meaning out of these behaviors. Ideally birth and resource parents will team up on this process as it may be difficult or taxing. Not only might it be challenging to identify the feeling underlying the behavior, it also takes a lot of energy to manage the physical and emotional reactions occurring vicariously.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESThe protective factors we help build in present generations support resiliency in future generations generating a positive ripple effect. We also can support current generations in transcending the historical trauma response by remembering, acknowledging, and mourning historical wounds of past generations. The catalyst for this positive ripple effect is your relationship with the family. Despite our best intentions, we are all prone to developing stereotypes filled with misinformation about different groups. Knowledge and awareness that we do not know something is much more useful because it opens space for us to learn accurate information obtained directly from the family as experts. We want to assume nothing to make space for our families to explore and define their own experiences within their cultural and family experiences. implicit or perceived power differential They may bring assumptions and preconceived notions about the child welfare role and agenda into the relationship. We need to listen and affirm what they share as it is their experience. We do not want to jump too quickly to “explain it away” or placate their experiences simply because we are uncomfortable in our own experience of distress of the situation. our own internal barriers or blind spots that get in the way of our ability to build effective relationships. For example, many of us may come from the same cultural, racial, ethnic, or religious background with historical roots extending to the same mass trauma. Yet, historical trauma impacts each one of us in a unique way based on the pathways carved across generations. Some of us may share similar adverse childhood experiences, yet these experiences impact us in different ways. We can often find ourselves over-identifying or projecting our own experiences on our clients. Some of us are unaware of this process. For some, we grow impatient and frustrated when our birth parents, children, and adolescents do not respond to certain challenges the way that we did, despite sharing similar adversities. Hidden weight of historical and intergeneration trauma that many of us carry. We need to recognize that many of the families involved in child welfare carry deep wounds from experiences that have happened to their people in addition to what has happened to them as individuals. This will open us up to being more attuned and empathic with our clients. Remember this when working with our birth parents, who may not be aware of the causes or consequences of these wounds. They can benefit from learning about the cumulative impact of historical, intergenerational, and interpersonal trauma. We need to acknowledge and validate the rational roots of cultural mistrust for many of our clients. “Helping systems” that may seem benign to the dominant group may be deeply traumatizing to minority groups that have been persecuted in the past. Dr. Joy DeGruy is nationally recognized researcher, author, and social worker who has written extensively on the theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) (DeGruy, 2005). PTSS helps us conceptualize how many behaviors and beliefs demonstrated in African American families may be rooted in survival adaptations necessary for enduring the threating and inhumane conditions of slavery. She notes that unresolved historical trauma of slavery contributes to patterns of behavior including vacant self-esteem, ever-present anger, and racist socialization, that get in the way of achieving their potential. In child welfare context, PTSS undermines their ability to be safe, stable, and happy. DeGruy emphasizes that healing starts by leveraging the strengths, including emphasis on family relationships, strong community ties, and religious affiliation. As professionals partnering with families impacted by the residual effects of slavery, we must first acknowledge the history and how present-day racism, discrimination, oppression, and microaggressions perpetuate the legacy of historical trauma. Attachment baggage that both parties (professionals and clients) may bring to the table. Dozier and Bates (2004) note that treatment relationships often function as attachment relationships. Families in child welfare are particularly vulnerable to disorganized and disrupted attachment relationships. Many caregivers with unresolved trauma had disorganized attachment bonds with their own parents and now display “unresolved” attachment styles as adults. This is supported by research in the field. Green (2012) examined the quality of relationships between low-income traumatized women and their health-care providers. They found that the women who had unresolved attachment styles (about 50%) reported significantly more negative interactions with providers than women with healthy attachment styles. This presents a significant problem for traumatized women who are underserved for their emotional, physical, and potentially prenatal health care needs despite being more highly in need of such services. Trauma exposure is linked to decreased access to routine and preventative care. In child welfare, we talk about experiencing “resistance” when engaging our caregivers. This study can help us reframe resistance and identify possible attachment-related contributing factors.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESBy engaging in asking, listening, accepting, affirming, and remembering, the goals are that caregivers will:Have the opportunity for change moment as they experience (maybe for the first time) the experience of feeling seen, understood, and accepted by another person.Learn about the impact of traumatic experiences and early adversities.Have an opportunity to reflect and talk about how their life experiences have affected their lives, their capacities as an individual and as a caregiver.Develop compassion for themselves and identify internal strengths for how they have managed to survive given their adverse experiences.Engage in activates that will foster resilience by increasing emotional regulation capacity and self-efficacy.As helping professionals preparing to partner with families impacted by historical and intergenerational trauma, we can use the information we know about toxic roots to help us identify opportunities to support families at multiple levels including the child, the parent/caregivers, and the parent-child relationship. As we prepare to intervene at the parent/caregiver level, we must acknowledge that parent’s unresolved trauma is a common element in the intergenerational trauma transmission. Unresolved trauma underpins the toxic veins of silence, overdisclosure, reenactment, identification, and disorganized attachment. When we talked about assessment, we noted that many times, caregivers may deny or minimize the impact of prior trauma. For some, this is related to trauma symptoms of avoidance as they will go to great lengths to avoid talking or thinking about anything related to their trauma. For others, this might fall in line with negative cognitions and mood, specifically helplessness and hopelessness. They think that “there is nothing that anyone can do to undo what happened to me” or “take the trauma out of me”. Often, these individual’s self-identity is tied to their trauma, so they do not recognize the past traumatic experiences as something to talk about. It is just the way they are and the way the world is. Helping professionals want to acknowledge that they cannot undo the traumatic experiences of caregivers, but they can do several things to engage more effectively around their past trauma. Remember that every interaction is an intervention. Let’s explore these elements in more detail:PREPARING:First and foremost, we need to be prepared to establish a safe space to have a meaningful conversation with our birth parents. This involves several dimensions of safety including the following:?Physical safety refers to the absence of threats of physical harm in the environment and the caregivers believe that they are physically safe. ?Psychological safety refers to the absence of threats to one’s emotional safety and ability to self-protect. This involves a caregiver feeling safe with oneself and belief that they are in control of any internal threats such as self-destructive impulses or reactions that could put themselves in harm’s way.?Social safety refers to the absence of abusive and coercive relationships and the caregiver’s belief that they are connected to others who are well-intended and respect boundaries. Once we have partnered with our caregivers to create a safe space for a meaningful conversation, we are ready to put our relationship into action. We will want to prepare ourselves to be fully present in the conversations by minimizing distractions, relaxing our minds and bodies, and anticipating potential triggers that may require our own self-regulation skills in the moment. ASKING:The element of asking starts with asking permission to share information about trauma and adverse childhood experiences. We want to orient our caregivers to our rationale, which is that we want to share the latest and best information about parenting and health and that includes information on the impact of traumatic experiences on parents and children (e.g. “What we know from the latest research on parenting is that things that happen to us when we are young – both good and bad – can affect our health for our whole lifetime. The good news is that we also know some things we can do to buffer some of those experiences so that we can be the kind of parent that we really want to be, be healthier, and do things in life that we really want to do.”). This gives us the opportunity to share information about the impact of historical, intergenerational trauma, and adverse childhood experiences. At this point, we can ask a caregiver if they would be open to sharing information about their own experience of adverse childhood experiences. Be sure to communicate that the caregiver is in control of what they choose to share or not to share. Whether they choose to share at this time or not, you can chisel away at any feelings of shame attached to trauma by normalizing adverse childhood experiences as part of many people’s life stories. LISTENING:As a caregiver shares information about their history, you want to honor their sharing by using through supportive and active listening. Be mindful of how your mind and body are reacting to what the caregiver is sharing. Self-regulation is critical to being fully present in the moment with the caregiver. Be patient and allow the caregiver to share information at their pace. Caregiver may need time during silence pauses to decide what information they want to share and how they want to frame it. We do not want to fill up silence with placating statements or nervous filler to reduce our own anxiety. We need to model how to listen and follow the sharer’s lead. Be mindful that verbal and nonverbal cues convey that you are attuned and hearing what they have to say. We want to convey openness to hear more without pressure to give more detail than she is wanting to give (e.g. “I heard you say ___, I’m wondering if this is something you want to talk about now or maybe another time.”). As the caregiver shares information, you are in the position to model co-regulation, a skill that many of our caregivers in child welfare did not experience from their own caregivers. Providing signals of care with attentive eyes, responsive head nods, nonjudgmental and neural facial expressions, relaxed posture, and regulated breathing convey to the caregiver that they are physically, psychologically, and socially safe. Be mindful of these signals of care when you reflect what you have heard using a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice. You are trying to convey that what they have shared is nothing to be ashamed of. For some caregivers, you may be the only one to respond this way.ACCEPTING:You want to accept and affirm what the caregiver has shared. We want to acknowledge their experiences and validate their feelings. We want to affirm the courage that it takes to share sensitive information and connect this courage to an action step towards strengthening resilience in themselves and for their family. Remember that we are always striving to be balanced in our engagement with families, always looking for strengths. Here is an opportunity to partner with families to identify and label strengths and protective capacities (e.g. “With all of the things that you just described, how have you managed to ___?”). You can help parent envision future instances of strengths in action (e.g. “How would you like your child’s life to be different?”). This can help open a conversation about what it might mean (both positive and negative) for a parent to change. Some caregivers may feel conflicted or distressed thinking that doing something new represents a rejection of their own caregiver. You can validate and provide reassurance (e.g. “We didn’t know back then that some of these experiences we talked about that happen when we were younger stick with us. We thought they were too young, would forget, or bounce back, but now we know. How will you make things different for your child?”) This can help diffuse defensiveness about the caregiver’s relationship with their own parents. This communicates to caregivers that we assume their best intentions. As we accept and affirm what caregivers share with us, we strive to inspire hope and confidence that they can achieve their vision of success. REMEMBERING:Throughout your engagement with birth parents in your case practice activities, including home visits and parent-child visits, you want to remember what they have shared and continue to ask, listen, accept, and affirm the experiences that our birth parents choose to share. We want to honor these experiences that make up their life story. We do not need to be in a therapeutic relationship with our birth parents to ask, listen, accept, and affirm. By engaging in these elements of safe, stable, nurturing relationship, we are in a better position to help caregivers learn how historical and integrational trauma may be impacting themselves as individual and parents and their children. Child welfare professionals can partner with caregivers to identify and label which historical and intergenerational pathways might be impacting their family. This can empower caregivers to be more intentional about leveraging their strengths and choosing actions that promote an alternative healing path for their family. Two of the most powerful driving forces of resiliency across the life span are emotional regulation and self-efficacy. There are various activities promote emotional regulation beyond engagement in formal therapeutic interventions. Activates such as mindfulness exercises, reflection, massage, coordinated body movement, yoga, dance, singing, drumming, exercise, play, boxing, kickboxing, martial arts and other sports-related activates can all rebuild and enhance neural pathways in the brain that promote a more adaptive stress response system. We can reinforce and enhance resiliency by incorporating positive connection with others during these activates. Self-efficacy refers to a one’s belief that their actions influence what happens to them. Trauma can interrupt the development of self-efficacy as individuals have experienced the loss of voice and choice and feeling powerless in face of harm. This makes it hard to respond to a future challenge with effort or believe that anything they do will make a difference. This can contribute to learned helplessness and hopelessness. When our caregivers appear “resistant” to engaging with us or service providers, we must be able to recognize if it is learned helplessness in action. To counter this, we must emphasis voice and choice as much as possible. We must be mindful of any implicit power differential the client perceives and be proactive to minimize signals we send of power and control. We can do this by offering options and inquiring about client’s preferences.Reference the JOB AID: TIPS FOR PREPARING TO ENGAGE CAREGIVERS that is provided on page___ in the Participant Guide. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: TIPS FOR PREPARING TO ENGAGE BIRTH PARENTS?Understand that parents’ anger, fear, or avoidance may be a reaction to their own past traumatic experiences and not to the child welfare professional. ?Remember that traumatized parents are not “bad” and that approaching them in a punitive/blaming/judgmental way will worsen the situation rather than motivate a parent to change. ?Build on parents’ desires to be effective in keeping their children safe and reduce their children’s challenging behaviors.?Recognize how a parent’s history of traumatic experiences may inform current functioning and parenting.?Help parents understand the impact of past trauma on current functioning and parenting, while still holding them accountable for the abuse and/or neglect that led to involvement in the system. For many parents, understanding that there is a connection between their past experiences and their present behaviors can empower and motivate them. ?Pay attention to ways that the trauma response can play out during team meetings, home visits, court hearings, and other case practice activities. Help parents anticipate their possible reactions and develop adaptive ways to respond to stressors and trauma triggers.?Become knowledgeable about trauma-informed services and evidence-supported interventions in the area so that you can refer clients to services that will more effectively help them meet their underlying needs and make meaningful behavioral-based changes. ?Partner with service providers on behalf of your clients. Collaborate with outside providers to communicate effectively about service planning. Reinforce the action components that service providers are working with parents on during your visits with parents. (Region X ACEs Planning Team, 2015)INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSACTIVITY: EXPLORING & REFRAMING RESISTANCEImagine that one day, you are sitting at your kitchen table and hear a knock at the door. You open the door and a “professional” introduces themselves and tells you that they are here to help you and your family. After a short period of time, the “professional” tells you that it is in you and your children’s best interest to stop various traditions, traits, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs. . .How would you feel if it was a family tradition you liked?How would you feel if it was something that you felt neutral about? How would you feel if it was something that you didn’t like? How would you respond back to this professional? How would your actions change or stay the same in response to the professional telling you to change?JOB AID: TIPS FOR PREPARING TO ENGAGE CAREGIVERSUnderstand that the caregivers’ anger, fear, or avoidance may be a reaction to their own past traumatic experiences and not to the helping professional. Remember that traumatized caregivers are not “bad” and that approaching them in a punitive/blaming/judgmental way will worsen the situation rather than motivate change. Build on caregivers’ desires to be effective in keeping their children safe and reduce their children’s challenging behaviors.Recognize how a caregiver’s history of traumatic experiences may inform current functioning and caregiving.Help caregivers understand the impact of past trauma on current functioning and caregiving, while still holding them accountable for the safety and well-being of their children. For many individuals, understanding that there is a connection between their past experiences and their present behaviors can empower and motivate them. Pay attention to ways that the trauma response can play out during team meetings, home visits, and other case practice activities. Help caregivers anticipate their possible reactions and develop adaptive ways to respond to stressors and trauma triggers.Become knowledgeable about trauma-informed services and evidence-supported interventions your area so that you can refer children and families to services that will more effectively help them meet their underlying needs and make meaningful behavioral-based changes. Partner with service providers on behalf of your families. Collaborate with outside providers to communicate effectively about service planning. INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESChildren involved in the child welfare system, whether in-home or out-of-home, are disproportionately impacted by traumatic stress stemming directly from experiences of abuse, neglect, and violence. They are also impacted indirectly by exposure to their own caregiver’s response to trauma. As we explore how to intervene at the child and adolescent level to halt the transmission of historical and intergenerational trauma, remember that engaging the birth parent in the child’s interventions is critical. Think about if we trained all the direct case carrying social workers on the new case plan integration model but didn’t train the supervisors. Social Workers would not be able to access the support they need in troubleshooting a challenging case plan let alone a crisis if those providing the support did not have the same framework. Think about how all the benefits that the child may have gleaned from therapy. They may be more aware of their thoughts and feelings and able to identify and label a range of feelings at different intensities. They may be able to utilize different coping skills when needed to reduce the intensity of distressing emotions. If the birth parent is not engaged in this process, how can we expect them to know what the child’s triggers are, reduce the presence of triggers, be aware of signals that the child is triggered, and know how to respond effectively to support their child? Remember that caregivers are the key change agents for their children. As child welfare professionals, we have an opportunity to influence both birth parents and resource parent’s ability to support their children and adolescents in managing traumatic stress. The work we do helps reduce the risk that they grow up to be adults with unresolved trauma histories vulnerable to passing along the trauma response to their children.We want to reinforce skill building as an opportunity for both children and parents to enhance their capacity. We can use Trauma Systems Therapy tools such as the “Child Ecology Check-In”, “Moment by Moment Assessment”, “Priority Problem Worksheet” and “Emotional Regulation Guide” with children, adolescents and their parents (Saxe, Ellis, and Kaplow, 2007). (Trainers should note that some participants may be trained in the Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) tools identified above but others have not.) We can engage caregivers in using tools with their children and themselves. This serves as a parallel process as parents increase their own emotional and behavioral regulation skills as they learn how to support their child’s ability to do the same. We can weave these skills into action components in the service plan. For example:?Increasing awareness of triggers that activate our stress response system. Triggers can include signals of perceived threat to emotional or physical safety, such as signals of rejection, abandonment, physical or sexual harm. The signals are often related to trauma reminders, though the connections can be hard for clients and supportive adults to recognize. Triggers can include microaggressions. As we talked about this morning, microaggressions keep the historical trauma response going by illuminating signals of threat in the present day such as ongoing racism, discrimination, and oppression. Microaggressions, ranging from microinsults to microassaults, sustain their power by “hiding” in plain view. They are so common that they are often invisible to the perpetrator and even recipient. Microaggressions can be devastating for group identity as individuals internalize these persistent and inaccurate messages about individuals who identify with certain groups. This takes a cumulative toll on groups impacted by historical trauma. The more we can shine a light on microaggressions that thrive on their invisibility, the more we can disarm them.?Using Moment by Moment assessments and Priority Problem Worksheets as guides in helping us identify triggers, and patterns of triggers. Identifying triggers is a skill that parents, and children can develop. Triggers can be subtle and tricky to recognize. For example, “signals of rejection” could include “being told no, harsh tones of voice, not receiving praise when another child or sibling receives praise”. We team with caregiver, both resource parents and birth parents, to process instances where children or adolescents demonstrate dysregulated behavior and work backwards to identify the triggering stimulus. Active listening, summarizing, and labeling will help our caregivers learn the process of identifying triggers. ?Brainstorming adaptive coping strategies for how children and adolescents can manage their emotional and behavioral response to triggers. By recognizing triggers, both children and caregivers will be more attuned to their internal stress response and better equipped to choose a response, including using coping skills at lower levels of arousal, rather than react in maladaptive ways.?Completing Emotional Regulation Guides with their child/adolescent so that caregivers, children, adolescents recognize what happens in their body and mind during their own regulating/revving/re-experiencing/reconstituting states. As they communicate information from this guide with each other, they are also communicating what helps them de-escalate versus what does not. This promotes self-awareness and empathy. ?Identifying and practicing adaptive coping skills to replace maladaptive ones. ?Challenging negative thoughts and beliefs and replacing them with positive alternatives. Remember that we always strive to be rigorous and balanced in our engagement with families. This includes not only identifying action components that identify and replace maladaptive behaviors with positive alternatives but also focus on enhancing strengths and resiliency factors. Please review the following JOB AIDE for some examples:INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: ENHANCING RESILIENCY IN CHILDREN & ADOLESCENTS?Supporting children’s capacity to learn, to relate to others, to use imagination, and to see them as part of a community.?Developing children’s awareness and regulation of feelings, as well as skills and strategies for letting others know how they feel. ?Encouraging children's relationships with their peers, their caregivers, and their parents.?Teaching self-care: Making time for healthy eating, exercise, and rest supports parents’ efforts to feel strong and teaches children good habits to last throughout their lifetime.?Emphasizing the positive: Helping parents remember and celebrate important events either within the family or in the larger culture. ?Singing songs with children, drawing pictures with them, looking at photographs together, acknowledging and honoring important holidays and dates. ?Enhancing a strong parent–child bond: Developing a consistent, loving bond by showing affection and responding to children’s needs can help them feel secure and support the parents’ effectiveness.?Reading together: Sharing books and stories has numerous benefits for children and parents, including language and literacy learning, creating routines, and fostering a love of learning and discovery through books. Books are also great tools that can open and support conversations about positive feelings and difficult events experienced by either the child or the family.?Encouraging social skills: Teaching children how to make friends and reaching out to your own friends can help your child see what it means to be friendly and learn to get along with others. Make time for and encourage children to play with peers and participate in positive group activities such as sports or clubs.?Maintaining a daily routine: Knowing what to expect can be comforting to children and adults. Keeping a routine and follow simple daily rituals such as reading a story each night together before bedtime can also be reassuring.?Nurturing positive self-esteem: It is important to build upon strengths. Parents can help children trust themselves and to try new activities by complimenting their successes and helping them to learn from their hardships.?Practicing self-reflection: Taking time to reflect on life is one of the most important things parents can do to gain perspective and problem-solve. Some ways to cultivate productive self-reflection include keeping a journal or talking with others about positive events or getting through difficult times.?Creative projects such as taking photos, creating artwork, or making music and sharing those art forms with children provide meaningful opportunities for reflection and communication across the family.(Beardslee et al., 2010)INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESMary Dozier and her colleagues have put together a model called Attachment and Biobehavioral Catchup (ABC) to enhance attachment between children and caregivers, both biological and foster parents (. We can draw on her research and model to enhance our practice with families around attachment. One step is to reinforce Dozier’s four dimensions of quality caregiving duding our interactions with birth and resource parents:?SYNCHRONY: Caregivers need to read their children’s cues, both nonverbal and verbal, to balance how much support they provide in each situation. When caregivers follow their child’s lead in interactions, children develop stronger self-regulatory capabilities. When caregivers are overly intrusive and take over despite a child being ready and able to take on a challenge, that child misses an opportunity to experience a sense of control over the environment and build their self-regulation skills. This same missed opportunity occurs when caregivers ignore or reject their children’s cues. ?NURTURANCE: Caregivers who respond to their children's distress in nurturing ways by using signals of care, help their children develop expectations that they can count on at least one person for support. This fosters the development of a secure attachment. On the other side, caregivers who respond to children’s distress in scary, unpredictable, or distressed ways themselves often results in disorganized attachments. Children involved in child welfare have higher rates of disorganized attachment, which can set off a vicious cycle as they are less likely to seek support from caregivers, whether biological, kinship, foster or adoptive, which elicits a rejecting response from caregivers. ?STABILITY OF CARE: Research shows that disruptions in relationships with caregivers increases the risk of developmental delay and emotional and behavioral dysregulation. This is particularly challenging in child welfare when children and adolescents are removed from birth parents due to imminent safety issues and cannot maintain the continuity of their relationship with their caretaker. In this sense, the child welfare system has contributed to a disruption in stability of care. We want to support stability as best we can once a child is removed and placed in foster care. However, many Resource Parents struggle to maintain the child’s stability of care because they are overwhelmed trying to manage the child’s intense episodes of emotional and behavioral dysregulation. Placement disruptions exacerbate this issue and increase risk of future placement disruptions. ?COMMITMENT: Caregivers who demonstrate commitment to their child in their words and actions support positive self-perceptions in their child. In a study on foster parent commitment, Dozier found that foster parents who had fostered fewer children showed higher levels of commitment. This went against what some would have anticipated given the value we place on veteran foster parents. Part of this is linked to their repeated experiences of separating and saying goodbye to foster children placed in their homes. Their expectations of what a relationship with a foster child looks like may have changed over the years as they have become habituated to separating from them. It is hard to convey commitment to children when, to some degree, you are envisioning future separation. Dozier observed that foster parents high on commitment tended to express more delight in interactions with their child. Looking at this information from a systems perspective, we want to take a two-pronged approach. The first is prevention: we want to prevent trauma from occurring by intervening directly with at-risk caregivers before children are born, during prenatal phase, and in early childhood when children are most vulnerable. The second is early intervention: we want to provide swift intervention for infants and toddlers who experience adverse childhood experiences, including abuse and neglect, at are at risk for disorganized attachment (Dozier, Zeanah, and Bernard, 2013). Dozier and her colleagues created the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catchup Model (ABC) to do just that. It is a 10-week in-home model that focuses on enhancing parents’ ability to provide nurturing care when children are distressed, following the child’s lead when children are not distressed, and not behaving in frightening, intrusive, or threatening ways around the child. Even though it is beyond the scope of our role to engage our parents and children in this model to fidelity, we can certainly incorporate strategies that have been found to be useful in increasing parental behaviors linked to secure attachment and decreasing behaviors linked to insecure and disorganized attachment. The idea is that we want to support parents and children who are at-risk of disorganized attachment in achieving “earned-secure attachments”. The model emphasizes the importance of parental synchrony and nurturance. To support synchrony, the clinician shares information about the importance of synchrony and coaches’ parents on how to follow their child’s lead when their child is calm and not distressed. Clinicians provide in-the-moment praise and coaching when parents demonstrate synchronous behaviors. To support nurturance, the clinician shares with parents how children who experience early adversity often behave in ways that push parents away and evoke a harsh, non-nurturing response, even though what they are really communicating is the need for support and nurturance. Parents watch videos of non-related children to see how some children signal their distress and others do not. However, both need the support and nurturance regardless. Again, the clinician provides coaching and labeled praises when parents can recognize their children’s needs and read their signals.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESRemember to be balanced, solution-focused, and strengths-based in working with families. That means we want to build upon and leverage existing strengths. For many families impacted by historical and intergenerational trauma, they may be unaware of their own strengths and protective capacities. This about the hidden weight of negative messages they may be carrying in their cups. You want to recognize, identify, label positive traits and behaviors at every opportunity. Ideally, you want to engage and connect with families in such a way that they recognize, identify, and label their own strengths and protective capacities. This is particularly important so that we can partner with clients to redefine and reframe their presenting challenges (i.e. “what are we worried about”) in light of their strengths (i.e. “what is working well”). This supports our trauma-informed engagement as we honor the adaptive behaviors our caregivers have demonstrated in-light of or in-spite of past trauma. The following strengths-oriented questions can be incorporated into your ongoing work with families:The history that you provided suggests that you’ve accomplished a great deal since the trauma. What are some of the accomplishments that give you the most pride?What would you say are your strengths?How do you manage your stress today?What behaviors have helped you survive your traumatic experiences (during and afterward)?What are some of the creative ways that you deal with painful feelings?You have survived trauma. What characteristics have helped you manage these experiences and the challenges that they have created in your life?If we were to ask someone in your life, who knew your history and experience with trauma, to name to positive characteristics that help you survive, what would they be?What coping tools have you learned from your ____ (fill in: cultural history, spiritual practices)Imagine for a moment that a group of people are standing behind you showing you support in some way. Who would be standing there? (You can include individuals who are living or deceased.)How do you gain support today? What does recovery look like for you?(SAMHSA, 2014)As you gather information regarding the family’s strengths, look out for the following protective factors that the Indigenist Stress-Coping Model identifies as “cultural buffers”. According to Walters and colleagues, cultural buffers play an important role in helping individuals move from confronting historical trauma to transcending it. These cultural buffers are essentially coping strategies that challenge the historical trauma response and counter microaggressions’ attempt to fuel the response forward (Michaels, Rousseau, Yang & Eubanks, 2010):POSITIVE IDENTITY ATTITUDES help protect individuals from the potential negative impact of historical trauma and microaggressions. The path toward developing positive identify attitudes looks starts with an ironic first step: internalizing and perhaps overvaluing the majority culture. This establishes the basis for the second step: becoming aware of the differences between the majority culture and one’s own minority culture. This enables the individual to consciously expunge stereotypes about one’s minority culture and replace them with accurate images. This allows the individual to integrate beliefs and practices of owns minority and majority culture. We are engaging in this process right here in this training as we examine the messages in our own cups. ENCULTURATION describes the process of recognizing and labeling beliefs and practices rooted in their minority culture rather than the majority culture. Teasing these apart is important for individual impacted by historical trauma because they may not be aware of where certain cultural beliefs and practices originated. This gives them the power to choose what they want to continue in the next generations. INCORPORATING SPIRITUAL METHODS OF COPING/TRADITIONAL HEALING PRACTICES help reduce the transmission of historical trauma response and buffer the impact of microaggressions. Many groups impacted by historical trauma have been systematically denied the opportunity to practice their culture’s traditional healing practices. Incorporating these traditions highlights the strengths within one’s culture and reconnects them to their ancestors’ strengths as well. How do we go about fostering positive identity attitudes? We want to start by engaging families around the importance of positive cultural identity and its role in supporting the development of self-identity (YMCA Project Cornerstone, n.d.). Positive self-identity can help children, youth, and families overpower the underlying toxic roots of transmitting historical and intergenerational trauma response across generations. Adolescence is a critical period for identity development. Positive self-identity is linked to increased self-assurance, a sense of belonging, an optimistic view of the future, and increased motivation and achievement in school. Whether youth develop positive self-identity is influenced by how individuals in their environment treat them regarding their ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and gender. Individuals impacted by historical trauma often face threats to developing positive self-identity as they manage conflicting messages about their own culture. As helping professionals, we can partner with families to share, embrace, and celebrate different cultural identities. This starts with us modeling recognition, understanding, and celebrating all cultures. We can incorporate these discussions into our regular visits with families. It will be helpful to start by engaging caregivers one-on-one about their cultural beliefs and practices. We want to invite authentic sharing, which requires what we establish a safe space. We must listen, honor, ally, acknowledge, and validate the full-range of experiences. Next, we can encourage and partner with our caregivers in continuing these conversations with their children and youth. These discussion topics can help families talk about their cultural identify:What is our culture background?Where are some things that you (mom and dad/caregiver) value about our culture?What are some things about our culture that you would like other people to know?Do you know anyone who’s from a different culture? In wash ways are your cultures similar and different?Do your cultural differences make it difficult to be friends? How can you share your cultural differences in a positive, nonjudgmental way?Throughout our engagement with families, we want to remain open and curious about our families’ cultural considerations. Conveying your curiosity helps you partner in a nonjudgmental way that continues to communicate that you are interested in hearing their perspective as the authority on their experiences. This also helps us ground us in engaging in culturally sensitive ways with our clients (Blanch, Filson, and Penney, 2012).INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSJOB AID: ACTIVITIES THAT SUPPORT POSITIVE CULTURAL IDENTITYHave participants review the following information and reflect on page ___ of their Participant’s Guide on how they can incorporate this information into their interactions with their families to be more culturally informed when engaging families around trauma.THINGS CAREGIVERS CAN DO:Make sure that your children learn the story of where they come from—including both family history and the history of their heritage—from an early age. Even very young children are aware of racial and cultural differences among people. Address the issues of stereotypes, myths, and cultural differences in a positive, age-appropriate manner. It’s normal for young people to explore different aspects of personal identity, including cultural identity. Children, whose parents promote a positive cultural identity, while allowing them the freedom to explore, tend to develop a healthy personal identity. Some elements of a child’s identity—such as sexual orientation—might not be shared with the rest of the family. Parents should make special efforts to ensure that everyone feels understood, respected, valued, safe, and loved within the family. Creating a life story – children and families work together to create a “roots scrapbook” using poems and images from birth onward that describe life experiences, including traumatic experiences, survival response, and positive ways that they have coped throughout their lives. This helps families internalize a more complete and integer rated view of their family story rather than a fragmented and compartmentalized narrative (NCTSN, 2011).THINGS RESOURCE PARENTS, CHILD WELFARE PROFESSIONALS, TEACHERS, AND COACHES CAN DO:Serve as a mentor for youth from your culture. They will benefit from learning how to successfully maintain a positive cultural identity from someone outside their family. Help children and adolescents maintain a positive attitude about school, and make sure they know that you will be their advocate to resolve any problems or challenges that they encounter. Adults should be careful to strike a balance between celebrating the youth’s difference and including the youth as part of the group as a whole. Sometimes, focusing too much on a youth’s differences—no matter how good the intention—can further isolate youth from their peers. Support home languages as much as possible. Children who are bilingual in their home of origin language and English tend to maintain a positive connection with their families and cultural communities. All youth need to be valued and appreciated for their unique characteristics regularly. Be aware of the cultural diversity in your home, caseload, classroom, or program, and try to understand its dimensions.Make a personal effort to learn about the culture of the youth in your home, caseload, classroom or program. For example, students from cultures where children are not expected to ask questions of adults may have difficulty letting you know when they don’t understand what you are saying. Help youth understand your cultural background their cultures of origin.Young people can discover and share their cultural identity through discussions and activities that highlight their cultures and experiences while engaging them in active learning. For example, explore the museums all around town and talk about the gifts that different cultures have given the world, and discuss how “cultural borrowing” allows everyone to thrive.(YMCA Project Cornerstone, n.d.)INSTRUCTOR NOTESBy cultivating a series of core strengths in our children we can help to build a sense of resiliency that they can pass on to future generations. Each of the core strengths--attachment, self-regulation, affiliation, awareness, tolerance, and respect--is a building block in a child’s development. Together, they provide a strong foundation for the child’s future health, happiness, and productivity. Following is a brief description of each strength and how to look for signs of struggle. Participants are provided an activity to complete the information on page___ of their Participant Guide. A copy is provided below.ATTACHMENT: Making relationships What it is: The capacity to form and maintain healthy emotional bonds with another person. It is first acquired in infancy, as a child interacts with a loving, responsive and attentive caregiver. Why it’s important: This core strength is the cornerstone of all the others. An infant’s interactions with the primary caregiver create his or her first relationship. Healthy attachments allow a child to love, to become a good friend, and to have a positive model for future relationships. As a child grows, other consistent and nurturing adults such as teachers, family friends, and relatives will shape his or her ability for attachment. The attached child will be a better friend, student, and classmate, which promotes all kinds of learning. Signs of struggle: A child who has difficulty with this strength has a hard time making friends and trusting adults. She may show little empathy for others and may act in what seems to be remorseless ways. With few friends and disconnected from his peers, he is also at greater risk when exposed to violence. Children unable to attach lack the emotional anchors needed to buffer the violence they see. They may self-isolate, act out, reject a peer’s friendly overture because they distrust it, or socially withdraw. SELF-REGULATION: Containing impulses What it is: The ability to notice and control primary urges such as hunger and sleep, as well as feelings such as frustration, anger, and fear. Developing and maintaining this strength is a lifelong process. Its roots begin with external regulation from a caring parent, and its healthy growth depends on a child’s experience and the maturation of the brain. Why it’s important: Putting a moment between an impulse and an action is an essential skill. Acquiring this strength helps a child physiologically and emotionally. But it’s a strength that must be learned--we are not born with it. Signs of struggle: When a child doesn’t develop the capacity to self-regulate, she will have problems sustaining friendships, and in learning and controlling her behavior. He may blurt out a thoughtless and hurtful remark, express hurt or anger with a shove or by knocking down another child’s work. Just seeing a violent act may set her off or deeply upset her. Children who struggle with self-regulation are more reactive, immature, impressionable, and more easily overwhelmed by threats and violence. AFFILIATION: Being part of a group What it is: The capacity to join others and contribute to a group. This strength springs from our ability to form attachments. Affiliation is the glue for healthy human functioning: it allows us to form and maintain relationships with others to create something stronger, more adaptive, and more creative than the individual. Why it’s important: Human beings are social creatures. We are biologically designed to live, play, grow, and work in groups. A family is a child’s first and most important group, glued together by the strong emotional bonds of attachment. In other groups, such as those in school, children will have thousands of brief emotional, social, and cognitive experiences that can help shape their development. It is in these groups that children make their first friendships. Affiliation helps children feel included, connected and valued. Signs of struggle: A child who is afraid or otherwise unable to affiliate may suffer a self-fulfilling prophecy: she is likelier to be excluded and may feel socially isolated. Healthy development of the core strengths of attachment and self-regulation make affiliation much easier. But a distant, disengaged, or impulsive child--one who is also weak in these other core strengths--won’t be easily welcomed in a group. And in fact, if he is part of a group, he may act in ways that lead others to tease or actively avoid him. The excluded, marginalized child can take this pain and turn it on herself, becoming sad or self-loathing. Or she can direct the pain outward, becoming aggressive and even violent. Later in life, without intervention, these children are more likely to seek out other marginalized children and affiliate with them. Unfortunately, the glue that holds these groups together can be beliefs and values that are self-destructive or hateful to those who have excluded them. ATTUNEMENT: Being aware of others What it is: Recognizing the needs, interests, strengths, and values of others. Infants begin life self-absorbed, and slowly develop awareness--the ability to see beyond themselves, and to sense and categorize the other people in their world. At first this process is simplistic: "I am a boy and she is a girl. Her skin is brown and mine is white." As a child grows, his awareness of differences and similarities becomes more complex.Why it’s important: The ability to be attuned, to read and respond to the needs of others, is an essential element of human communication. An aware child learns about the needs and complexities of others by watching, listening, and forming relationships with a variety of children. She becomes part of a group (which the core strength of affiliation allows her to do) and sees ways in which we are alike and different. With experience, a child can learn to reject “labels” used to categorize people such as skin color or language. The aware child will also be much less likely to exclude others from a group, less likely to tease, and less likely to act in a violent way.Signs of struggle: A child who lacks the ability to be aware of others’ needs and values is at risk for developing prejudicial attitudes. Having formed ideas about others without knowing them, she may continue to make categorical, often destructive and stereotypical judgments: "She speaks English with an accent, so she must be stupid," or "He’s fat, so he must be lazy." This immature kind of thinking feeds the hateful beliefs underlying many forms of verbal and physical violenceTOLERANCE: Accept Differences What it is: The capacity to understand and accept how others are different from you. This core strength builds upon another: awareness. Once aware, how do you respond to the differences you observe?Why it’s important: It’s natural and human to be afraid of the new and the different. To become tolerant, a child must first face the fear of difference. This can be a challenge because children tend to affiliate based on similarities--in age, interests, families, or cultures. But they also learn to reach out and be more sensitive to others by watching how the adults in their lives relate. With active modeling, you can build on your students’ tolerance. When a child learns to accept difference in others, he can value what makes each of us special and unique.Signs of struggle: An intolerant child is likelier to lash out at others, tease, bully, and if capable, will act out their intolerance in violent ways. Children who struggle with this strength help create an atmosphere of exclusion and intimidation for those people and groups they fear. This atmosphere promotes and facilitates violence.RESPECT: Finding value in differences What it is: Appreciating the worth in yourself and in others. Respect grows from the foundation of the other five strengths. An aware, tolerant child with good affiliation, attachment, and self-regulation strengths acquires respect naturally. The development of respect is a lifelong process, yet its roots are in childhood.Why it’s important: Your students will belong to many groups, meet many kinds of people, and will need to be able to listen, negotiate, compromise, and cooperate. Having respect enables a child to accept others and to see the value in diversity. She can see that every group needs many styles and many strengths to succeed. He will value each person in the group for the talents he or she brings to the group. When children respect--and even celebrate--diversity in others, they find the world to be a more interesting, complex, and safer place. Just as understanding replaces ignorance, respect replaces fear.Signs of struggle: A child who can’t respect others is incapable of self-respect. She will be quick to find fault with others but can also be her own harshest critic. Too often the trait a child ridicules in others reflects something similar he hates in himself. The core of all violence is a lack of respect, for oneself and for others. When children feel no respect, they will likely become violent--because they value nothing. These core strengths provide a child with the framework for a life rich in family, friends, and personal growth. Helping to teach children these core strengths gives them a gift they will use throughout their lifetimes. They will learn to live and prosper together with people of all kinds--all bringing different strengths to create a greater whole.”INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSACTIVITY: IDENTIFYING CORE STRENGthS & SIGNS OF STRUGGLE FOR CHILDRENFollowing is a brief description of each strengths noted on the slide. With a partner or a few colleagues, try to identify why the core strength is important and at least two signs that may indicate a child needs support in building that strength. ATTACHMENT: Making relationships. The capacity to form and maintain healthy emotional bonds with another person. It is first acquired in infancy, as a child interacts with a loving, responsive and attentive caregiver. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?SELF-REGULATION: Containing impulses. The ability to notice and control primary urges such as hunger and sleep, as well as feelings such as frustration, anger, and fear. Developing and maintaining this strength is a lifelong process. Its roots begin with external regulation from a caring parent, and its healthy growth depends on a child’s experience and the maturation of the brain. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?AFFILIATION: Being part of a group. The capacity to join others and contribute to a group. This strength springs from our ability to form attachments. Affiliation is the glue for healthy human functioning: it allows us to form and maintain relationships with others to create something stronger, more adaptive, and more creative than the individual. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?ATTUNEMENT: Being aware of others. Recognizing the needs, interests, strengths, and values of others. Infants begin life self-absorbed, and slowly develop awareness--the ability to see beyond themselves, and to sense and categorize the other people in their world. At first this process is simplistic: "I am a boy and she is a girl. Her skin is brown and mine is white." As a child grows, his awareness of differences and similarities becomes more complex.WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?TOLERANCE: Accept Differences. The capacity to understand and accept how others are different from you. This core strength builds upon another: awareness. Once aware, how do you respond to the differences you observe?WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?RESPECT: Finding value in differences. Appreciating the worth in yourself and in others. Respect grows from the foundation of the other five strengths. An aware, tolerant child with good affiliation, attachment, and self-regulation strengths acquires respect naturally. The development of respect is a lifelong process, yet its roots are in childhood.WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF STRUGGLE?INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESOrienting families to your role and the services offered starts with your first interaction. Always start by introducing yourself, your role, and your intended purpose in engaging them. You want to set a collaborative tone early in the relationship and demonstrate respect by asking clients how they would like to embark on this partnership. As they share their experiences, actively listen and identify agreements for how you can work effectively together.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESThroughout your work with caregivers and families, there are three central questions that should guide next steps for you and the family with regards to the impact that historical and intergenerational trauma may have on the family’s dynamics:What are we worried about? (We = Helper, Caregiver, & Family)What is working well? (Strengths)What needs to happen next?As you consider the impact of trauma, you want to remember that a trauma system involves both a child experiencing survival-in-the moment states in response to trauma triggers and a social environment that is unable to help the child regulate their emotions and behaviors. Next steps may allow for caregivers to address skills to help regulate their children. Learning about the roots that anchor the family’s trauma helps to more effectively recognize the red flags associated with trauma transmission as well as signals of resilience, strength, and healing. When assessing the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma, be mindful of the impact of one’s culture. Culture can influence how the child’s trauma was perceived by the child and family members and how the child and family reacted to the trauma. Culture also shapes the healing process in the aftermath of trauma and loss in the form of rituals and healing practices (SAMHSA, 2014). Keep the following in mind as you and the family consider next steps:Culture influences:How the family and child communicateHow the family responds to the trauma (shame, guilt, blame, denial, acceptance)Any stress or vulnerability the child and/or family is experiencing because of their culture (discrimination, stereotyping, poverty, less access to resources)How the child and family feel about interventions regarding the traumaWhen working with adults involved in the child welfare system, we want to consider:Any traumatic event that individual has experiencedIf the individual can talk about the trauma they experienced?The response to that event by both the individual and their familyAny interventions the individual has previously engaged in (as a child or as an adult) and their view of whether they were helpful or hurtful Any connections between the individual’s current behaviors and functioning and trauma he or she has experiencedAny awareness that the individual has regarding the connection between past trauma and current functioningRemember, we want to partner with families and seek agreements on “what needs to happen next”. This includes sharing with families the behaviors we see and seeking their views. If you have identified signals of any signs of distress we discussed, how would you explain it to the family? What are some of the barriers that you face? Providing psychoeducational about the impact of trauma on children, adults, and families can be helpful for caregivers to learn about trauma in a non-threatening and non-intimidating way. By talking about trauma in a depersonalized way, children and caregivers are more likely to absorb the information without being triggered. As you strengthen your relationship over time, caregivers are more likely to feel safe choosing to share and process how their own trauma histories may be impacting their current functioning, parenting abilities, and child’s functioning. We do not need to rush or push this disclosure early on working with caregivers because doing so sets up yet another disconnected, insensitive, threatening, coercive relationship. We can partialize how we share information with families so as prevent flooding. For example, think about how a caregiver might react if you were to say: “I believe that being physically abused by your mother has caused you to reenact this experience with your child playing out the role of the victim and you playing the role of the perpetrator.” How could you engage a caregiver around your concerns about reenactment that you have observed without flooding? You can ask parents if they want to talk about the information with you or if they would prefer to read it on their own. Again, asking permission helps caregivers feel that they have a greater sense of control.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSACTIVITY: engaging families AS A HELPing professionalUse the space provided to write down the ways in which you can incorporate information shared regarding engagement with children and families into your interactions to be more culturally informed and trauma responsive. Once you have listed three to five strategies, see if you can list what some of the barriers might be in your efforts to use the identified strategies.Now choose a colleague close to you to discuss and share your strategies and barriers to implementation. During the discussion, identify if there are ways to incorporate the strategies discussed, using some guidance and feedback from your colleague.INSTRUCTOR NOTESOn page___ of their Participant Guide, have participants consider and write a list of at least three to five critical community partners and/or allied professionals. If a participant is struggling to identify someone, have that individual identify roles of individuals necessary for a well-rounded trauma-informed caregiving team in the community and write down three to five steps to take in order to activate the team. Give participants about 10 to 15 minutes to work on this small group activity, then come back together as a large group and have participants volunteer to share responses.INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSreflections INSTRUCTOR NOTESFamilies set the foundation from which children can build their own unique experiences. Unfortunately, many of our families have been targeted and under attack for generations and need support. As a helper, we are in a unique position to help families establish new, healthier patterns of behavior that can serve as the foundation upon which healthy roots may thrive. How might the protection of the children’s welfare of this country affect our collective consciousness if in our culture we practiced greeting each other with this question? What might the difference by in how we treat each other, our homeless, those who most vulnerable if we heard this question and passed it down from one generation to the next and heard it multiple times per day? What might it look like to one day be able to truly answer the question, without pause, “The children are well, yes, all the children are well” (Degruy, iii)?INSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSINSTRUCTOR NOTESRemember, “every interaction is an intervention”. To enhance parent’s abilities to read and respond sensitively to their child’s needs, we need to model this interaction with them. We want to provide a supportive and positive relationship with our caregivers, enhance their access to resources and services, inform them about the importance of sensitive and stimulating parenting behaviors, provide positive reinforcement when we see them demonstrate these behaviors, model and coach them on how to be nurturing and synchronous in their interactions with their children, and strengthen parents’ social support networks. Healing can happen through the power of positive relationships; relationships that require vulnerability and an empathetic response. You want the positive relationship you build with families to demonstrate:Empathy, warmth, and kindness: You want to model how to the perspective of others and validate their experience of life events in a nonjudgmental manner. Mindfulness: You want to model how to be observant, open, available, interested, curious about the experience of the other.Attunement and reflective capacity: You want to model how to work through conflict stemming from misunderstandings and repair any ruptures in the relationships through communication and problem-solving skills. Remember for families experiencing historical and intergenerational trauma, the helper will want to consider the following:UNDERLYING QUESTION = WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? SIGNS OF STRESS = WHAT ARE YOUR ADAPTATIONS TO TRAUMATIC EVENTS THAT MAY BE ROOTED IN INTERGENERATIONAL PATTERNS OF TRAUMA TRANSMISSION HEALING = HAPPENS IN RELATIONSHIPSINSTRUCTOR REFLECTIONSrefeRENCESAmaya-Jackson, L. & Johnson, S. (2014). 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Advantages of stress process approaches for measuring historical trauma. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 38(5), 416-420.Wilkins, E. J., Whiting, J.B., Watson, M.F., Russon, J.M., Moncrief, A.M. (2013). Residual effects of slavery: What clinicians need to know. Journal of Contemporary Family Therapy, 35, 14-28.Yellow Horse Brave Heart, M. (n.d.) Historical trauma and healing the hurts [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved frominbre.montana.edu/file/Brave_Heart_slides.pdfYMCA Project Cornerstone (n.d.). November asset of the month: Positive cultural identity. Retrieved from to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. (2014). Safe babies, strong families, healthycommunities: The safe babies court teams project. Retrieved from ................
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