Social Justice Advocacy With Children, Youth, and Families.
Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN) has developed a model of Social Justice Counseling that is Strengths-Based, Trauma-Informed, Client-Directed, and guided by acute attention to the social locations of clients and their advocates. Connecting victims'/survivors' mental health to a broader context of violence helps transform social structures by recognizing the impact that unequal power, unearned privileges, and oppression has on one's well-being. SPAN has broadened this approach and applied it specifically to work with children, youth, and families by considering the ways human development is impacted by domestic violence, oppression, and trauma in the community. This workshop is for advocates interested in moving beyond the notion of achieving "cultural competency" by examining instead how their own experiences of superiority and oppression play out in counseling relationships with adults, families, and young people. Our time together will be largely about skill building by applying hands-on tools to real life case examples. The goal is for participants to gain confidence in implementing Strengths-Based, Trauma-Informed, Client-Directed advocacy by focusing these perspectives through the lens of human development and social location.