Workshops on Dealing with Trauma Cases
RESTORE Belize is hosting an online capacity-building workshop on trauma-informed care. The virtual sessions, which will run through until July ninth, seek to empower service care providers for youth, families and vulnerable groups with the skills and strategies needed to recognize the impact of trauma on their clients and how to be sensitive and responsive to their needs. The focus of this workshop is on how the COVID-19 pandemic has added on to the other trauma that children, young people and families are facing.
Alex Vega
Alex Vega, Trauma Informed Care Facilitator, Restore Belize
“In the past few years we have been building capacity in the area of trauma informed practice in schools with five different schools. The idea is for teachers to understand what is going on with the student. The student is not only a student but a human being who is exposed to adversity in their environment. So, now we are applying the same framework to reach out to social partners and direct service providers so that they can understand why a client or a consumer or patient brings into the encounter when they seek services. They are also exposed to adversities in their environment. They are exposed right now, for example, to the layers of stress that that the pandemic has brought on them. So, we are building capacity for providers to understand the stressors and the potential trauma that they are bringing into the direct experience and how we can make that encounter, that service more sensitive, more responsive to what the client is bringing in. So, the idea is for them to understand the concept of psychological trauma. What is trauma? How is it different from a traumatic event and for them to understand the implications of the ACIS study which tells us that what happens in early childhood, all of these traumatic events, really affect people’s development; their health outcomes; how healthy they are when they grow up as adults. It affects the way they succeed in education and their even their acquisition of jobs and so there are a lot of long term outcomes that come from these traumatic events.”
Participating organizations include C.S.O. Hub Belize; B.F.L.A.; Belmopan Active Youth; and Belize Youth Counseling and Wellness Services.
