The UBC Learning Circle invites you to participate in a special presentation by Natalie Clark, MSW on approaches to trauma-informed practice with Indigenous children and youth. Trauma-informed practice is an emerging area of training for health practitioners in social work, nursing, and other allied health professions. However, Western approaches to trauma and evidence-based approaches have limited application in Indigenous communities, and some would even argue these approaches continue the legacy of colonization.
In her practice and writing about trauma, Natalie has developed a model that widens the lens for situating and responding to the experience of trauma. She believes that trauma-informed practice must not further label and pathologize the children and youth she works with. Even the definitions of “trauma” and “PTSD” are medicalized terms and are culturally bound and limited. A focus on trauma as an individual health problem can risk failing to identify the larger structural issues and daily experiences of oppression and triggers that create trauma and traumatic reactions for many of the children and youth she works with.
Date: Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Time: 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Where: Participate live via videoconference OR computer webinar. Want to know the difference between videoconference and computer webinar? Click here to find out.
Session Objectives
- Describe how trauma-informed practice can avoid further labelling and pathologizing Indigenous children and youth
- Explain how the individualized and medicalized approach to trauma in Indigenous children and youth undermines community and individual resilience and resistance
- Outline the historic and current impacts of the creation of a “trauma industry”
- Develop the beginnings of a trauma practice framework that is Indigenous, intersectional and holistic and that considers how experiences of trauma and of healing are shaped by the interlocking impacts of Indigeneity, age, gender, sexuality, and (dis) ability, among others
- Discuss the development of Indigenous intersectional, trauma-informed and culturally safe practice approaches with children and youth
- Describe how to assist children and youth in understanding and improving their coping and responses to daily triggers including the impact of experiences of racism, poverty, sexism, and colonialism
About the Presenter
Natalie Clark, M.S.W. PhD (candidate) is currently on faculty with the School of Social Work at UBC and is completing her PhD in Public Policy through SFU. Natalie’s work is informed and mobilized through her interconnected identities including her English, Welsh and metis ancestry; as a solo parent of three Secwepmec children and part of the Secwepemc community; an academic; and a community-based researcher and counsellor. Natalie’s practice, teaching and research over the last 15 years has focused on trauma with children, youth and their families and communities and the coping responses to trauma and violence, including experiences with issues of sexual exploitation, eating disorders, addictions, youth justice and health. Natalie’s doctoral research focuses on the engagement of Indigenous girls in resistance to violence and trauma, including the impact of policy and intersecting policies on Indigenous girls. Natalie continues to practice and provide training on trauma-informed girls groups, including the model she co-developed and facilitated for over 12 years in both rural and urban space. Her recent work is in the development and delivery of Indigenous girls groups for youth in partnership with the Interior Indian Friendship Society and School District 73 Aboriginal Programs.
Resources
Tilly: a Story of Hope and Resilience
Healing the Soul Wound: Counseling with American Indians and Other Native Peoples
Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing
Wicihitowin: Aboriginal Social Work in Canada
Honoring Differences: Cultural Issues in the Treatment of Trauma and Loss
Young Children and Trauma: Intervention and Treatment
Trauma-Informed Practices With Children and Adolescents
Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma: To Have Our Hearts Broken
Survivance: Narratives of Native Prescence
The Wellness Wheel: An Aboriginal Contribution to Social Work
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