Foster Care Training

Microaggressions are brief, commonplace, and frequently unconscious, verbal, behavioral, or environmental acts of discrimination. During this interactive workshop, participants will examine the cumulative impacts of a lifetime microaggressions, which may seem harmless as individual incidents, on youth in care. We will also work to devise tools to combat microaggressions on institutional, individual, and cultural levels.

OBJECTIVES: Through lecture, large and small group dialogue, and experiential activities participants will examine the power and reach of unintentional microaggressions. Participants will consider the impacts of our unintentional microaggressions on the wellbeing of the communities within which we work and the youth whom we serve. We will explore:

• How microaggressions are learned and how to begin unearthing the socialization that leads to microaggressions
• The effects of microaggressions on co-workers as well as youth in care
• Our own experiences of being targets or perpetuators of microaggressions
• Ideas to support a more inclusive community through combatting microaggressions