Foster Care Training

In this training, we will continue our collective inquiry into relationally-informed approaches to serve and support traumatized people. We will briefly review previous concepts and contextualize the concept of “trauma” in relational frameworks. We might consider the questions: What is “trauma” or “traumatic”? Is trauma what happened (events), a state of being, or the outcome (effect) of events? Is trauma an external or internal event – is trauma what happened to a person or how a person responds? Who gets to define trauma? How can we recognize the impacts of trauma? And, how do we help youth heal and recover from trauma? We will consider theories and theorists that are particularly applicable to and useful for the work with foster youth, which may include authors Ferenzi, Winnicott, Bion, Alvarez, Bromberg, and Gurevich. We will start with a didactic approach, move to application and inquiry using a vignette, and then close with a collective conversation.