Foster Care Training

As we work in a field of providing therapeutic and supportive services to individuals and families who have and continue to experience individual, community, and historical trauma, we eventually become fatigued and experience traumatization from hearing the stories of others, witnessing the harm of our clients, and from feeling the weight of the sociopolitical factors that contribute to harm that reaches the communities that we are trying to heal. This traumatization is often referred to as secondary trauma and it may lead us to experience doubts about continuing in the work, we may engage in unhealthy coping skills, and we may feel that we must cope with our secondary trauma on our own. Many of us were drawn to this field because we wanted to contribute to the healing journey of communities that have experienced generations of trauma and grief and, often, we may not realize that as we do this work, our own personal stories, reactions, and identities may be impacting further our perspective and feelings about the work. Our internal process is vital to understand so that we can monitor our feelings, thoughts, reactions, and behaviors towards our clients’ stories. Having this self-awareness can assist us in monitoring, titrating, and managing our strong reactions towards the work so that we can reduce any overwhelming feelings, negative coping skills, and reduce our feelings or actual isolation that often occurs. The training also discusses the importance of building a culture of community in your workplace to support this process of managing the impact of countertransference on our service delivery as it is important to apply our own trauma healing practices to ourselves as providers!