Trauma and the Developing Brain

Last night we gave a talk at a local University (http://www.ulasalle.edu.pe). The talk was around the influence of stress and early childhood trauma on the developing brain.

Given that the talk was scheduled for a Friday night on a holiday weekend – the Peruvian government decided that Monday and Tuesday next week are “holidays” and all those in the formal sector of employement have the days off – I did not hold-out a lot of hope that there would be more than a handful of people in attendance. I was partly right – there were  about 25 people in attendance; and, everyone of the attendees was extremely interested in the subject.

Today is our day long conference on Trauma Informed Care at La Salle University. We are expected a group of some 60 service providers from accross the homeless and abandon youth fields. Our goal is to help them “scale” trauma-informed services to their agencies and across programs in the Arequipa area. Robina Bhasin, adult education specialist from the Center for Social Innovation, has graciously donated her time and talents to help develop a model for scaling new knowledge acqusition with the group in attendance at the conference.

Stay tuned for more updates on the conference and our work in scaling a trauma-informed effort in Arequipa.

Lima Street Youth Conference - Big Success

 Photo: Small group exercises on coalition building.

Photo: Talking next steps for the meeting and the coalition with Carmen and Robina.

 

Yesterday was our first Street Youth Conference in Lima. It was a smashing success. We had over 50 participants from 17 different organizations that work with youth and vulnerable young adults. We spent 5-hours talking about opportunities for collaboration, best practices in serving youth and young adults, and ways that they (the assembled group of very different organizations) may want to build a coalition.

It may be too soon to fully define the next steps of our work, but there was a palpable enthusiasm from everyone in attendance. We asked every attendee to complete a final evaluation. From the information in the evaluations we will strategize around next steps. These next steps may include helping to set-up a collation, providing focused training and skills development around best practices in serving homeless and underserved youth, and working to form an on-going “community of practice” (e.g. learning community) for the organizations that were in attendance.

As for our next steps on this trip - We are headed to Arequipa tomorrow for a day long “phase II” conference on Saturday at La Salle University. You may remember that we organized a street youth conference in May in Arequipa with La Salle University. The participants at the first conference asked us to come back and help them build the steps necessary to grow a coalition. They also asked us to facilitate a day long training around trauma informed care. We will be doing just that on Saturday.

On Friday night we will be presenting a general discussion a La Salle University on the influence of trauma in the developing brain. The University has asked us to make this presentation open to the general public. Who knows how many people will be in attendance? Check out their website at: http://www.ulasalle.edu.pe/index.php/btn-eventos/btn-trauma

I will be writing to give you another update on Saturday. Until then, please know how much of an impact our work is making in Peru. At the end of our conference today a young psychologist came up to me and said, “this has been really great. We rarely get the opportunity to come together and talk about these types of issues. I really appreciate the fact that your organization is dedicated to doing this for us You just don’t know how much a difference it means for our work.”

Thanks for all of your support – and please know that we are making a difference . . . one organization at a time.

Collaboration

I am on my way home from spending a couple of days in beautiful sunny San Diego, California. I was speaking at the Region IX Health Care for the Homeless Conference.  The conference is an extension of the ongoing homelessness advocacy work of the National HCH Council - an absolutely fantastic organization based out of Nashville, TN.

I enjoy speaking at these conferences. There are such amazing people working in homelessness services delivery and attending the conferences is a great place to reconnect with old friends and inspiring thought leaders and change agents. The people who work in homeless health clinics, supportive housing programs and mental health and substance use treatment programs around the country are some of the most amazing people I have ever met.

I spoke at this conference with my esteemed colleague Steven Samra. Steven and I talked about our work on a new model of outreach we are calling "Housing-Focused Outreach" (HFO). Steven and I (along with the amazing intellectual Kenneth Kraybill) have been incubating the ideas of HFO for a few years. Our ideas are not unique. They are born from the work of Dr. Sam Tsemberis and the 100,000 Homes Project. Our ideas are also born from our years of experience in serving people experiencing homelessness and the work we have all been doing over the past two years in visiting supportive housing programs around the U.S.

Our talk is about shifting the paradigm of services delviery and considering the ways that a new model can be developed and operationalized to agency level activities. You could really sum up our talk into a couple of pithy statements: (1) in order to truly end chronic homelessness, we [homeless service providers and advocates] need to lead with housing and build effective bridges to supportive services; and (2) the only way to assure adequate access to housing and supportive services is to build bridges of collaboration with a number of organizations and resources. We talk about the fact that most communities around the country have the "pieces" to put together a really effective model to end chronic homelessness. The issue, however, is that these pieces are fractured and disjointed. Our main predicate for the HFO model is training service providers to be experts in building partnerships.

What is most striking to me whenever I give this talk, is the fact that people are struck by how little collaboration actually occurs in services delivery. I hear over and over again at talks like this - "oh that [collaborating with partner agencies] won't work . . . we are all fighting for the same pot of money and we can't really collaborate or we will loose our agency level effectiveness."

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the "no money, no mission" paradigm. I also know that without collaboration and resource sharing - true, lasting change is not possible. I am not sure how we can get more people invested in the idea that collaboration is one of greatest underutilized tools. I know that it will take some serious ego slaying and a strong commitment to service.

At the end of our talk today I had an opportunity to speak with a service provider. He told me about her efforts to get organizations to build a coalition in his community. He told me about the 6-months it took him to schedule the first meeting of the various homelessness services agencies in his area. He told me that he had not given up hope that the coalition will pay off with great dividends. I complimented him on his efforts and reassured him that his efforts would indeed pay-off. I told him that he may never know how much of an impact his efforts will have - but, I told him, if his efforts led to ending the experience of chronic homelessness for one person . . . his efforts were very worthwhile.