Engagement happens anytime organizations are interacting with the people they care for, and recognizing that nothing is trauma-informed if it’s not anti-racist, anti-colonial, and justice-driven, we’ll analyze ways to honor a person’s lived experiences during interactions. This interactive workshop will introduce concepts of community care and engagement best practices, as well as evidence-based approaches & strategies to help create more person-centered, trauma-informed services at your organization. Space will be made for participants to ask questions, and share the community care and engagement strategies being utilized at their respective organizations.

This workshop is often utilized as a basic primer for new staff and volunteers during onboarding to set an expectation of centering lived experiences and participant agency.

Organizations are often asked to measure their impact by collecting data from those they serve. By designing feedback strategies that are explicitly anti-oppressive, that are created in collaboration with the communities you’re serving, and that prioritize qualitative data whenever possible, we can begin to reduce survey fatigue and allow for service relationships that are less transactional. We’ll discuss existing and commonly used feedback strategies, introduce some anti-oppressive, trauma informed tools and best practices; then we’ll workshop ways to utilize those tools to create safer community and program spaces. Space will be made for participants to ask questions, and share the feedback strategies being utilized at their respective organizations.

Recognizing that resource insecurity is traumatic, it's crucial to create service spaces that are welcoming, calm, and affirming to positively impact how safe clients feel at your program. Drawing on research in trauma informed design, Shopwork's Designing for Healing Dignity & Joy, SAMHSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative, and Trauma Informed Oregon's Foundations of Trauma Informed Care, we’ll breakdown some design elements of a space, and workshop ways to incorporate trauma informed principles into each element. This workshop will center the understanding that nothing can be trauma informed if it is not explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-oppressive.

Harm reduction refers to strategies, and approaches that aim to reduce, or minimize the negative consequences associated with substance use. In this workshop we’ll discuss the importance of prioritizing quality of personal and community life over cessation or abstinence, and we’ll utilize the Reframe Health and Justice Collective’s “Principles of Healing-Centered Harm Reduction” as a framework for our discussion. Recognizing that food is a human right, and clients are the experts on their own lives, we’ll unpack what it means to create food programs that honor the needs and experiences of people who use drugs.

A 2019 study from UCLA found that transgender people are 38% more likely to experience poverty than cis straight women, and 70% more likely than cis straight men. Given the devastating effects of the pandemic these gaps have widened, leaving many transgender people to seek new resources, which often means enduring additional harms in community care and service environments. In this workshop we’ll explore gendered language, discuss what an affirming space looks and feels like, learn about existing tools, and brainstorm what changes are needed to move your program towards gender affirmation and liberation.

As organizations move away from utilizing law enforcement as first responders, new methods of community support are needed. We’ll share some common community response tools, explore insights from strategies that your organization might already be using, and workshop ways to support each other in growing our collective resources for community defense and support.