Across the nation’s child welfare system, the rate of relatives stepping up to provide kinship care for children removed from their parents is growing. Research has shown that this care minimizes trauma related to the removal and improves child well-being. But sustaining this responsibility isn’t possible without intentional support. To maintain this family connection and improve children’s health-related outcomes, kinship caregivers need connections to resources that meet their own health, housing, education, income, and social connection needs.

More and more kinship caregivers are stepping into these roles without prior foster care training and minimal financial support. The need for greater resources to help emerging foster families navigate a complex system is critical. Wellpoint Care Network has worked for several years to meet this need through their Foster and Kinship Navigation program to help relatives understand the child welfare system and access resources vital to meeting the needs of children in their care. Recently, the program has partnered with a Milwaukee resource network to provide targeted resources based on responses to a social determinant of health screen using the Unite Us platform. Using this platform allows the team to coordinate with stakeholders while tracking engagement in referred care.

This presentation will review the program’s process for assessing, developing, and tracking a care plan that addresses the social determinants of health needs of relative caregivers. The process can be replicated for care teams in a variety of settings and will demonstrate how intentional tracking of social care referrals ensures that people receive the care they need when they need it most.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Jenny Keefe
Director of Family Services
Wellpoint Care Network

Workplace health is tied to reduced turnover, increased productivity, and ultimately client outcomes. In the post-pandemic “Great Resignation” environment, the burden to build resilience and avoid burnout is placed on the already overwhelmed and overworked employee. Just as the proverbial canary cannot be responsible for fixing the toxic elements of the coal mine, employees cannot fix organizational obstacles to workplace happiness.

McKinsey reports that 52% of employees leave because they feel their supervisor does not value them. Meanwhile, supervisors, who often are overburdened by staff vacancies, are dancing as fast as they can in remote and hybrid environments, where it is increasingly difficult to assess employee needs or even their own needs. This workshop will provide tangible solutions for organizational champions who want to impact the current workforce crisis in human services and promote a culture of true wellness, resilience, and psychological safety.

Ultimately, by creating actionable data, organizations that check-in routinely can build a robust mosaic of baselines, success measures, and strategic planning initiatives to engage and retain talent. By doing this, organizational leaders will confidently be able to answer: How are my employees? How’s my team? How are certain subgroups of employees doing?

The canaries no longer need to be sent into the dangerous coal mine. Rather, the coal mine is automated with sensors and alarms to create a safe space for all.

Through an engaging and interactive format, participants will discuss:

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Gwen Koenig
Chief Growth Officer
SigBee

Our transgender youth are facing unconscionable movements to restrict their rights and present concomitant risks to their lives. They are already at greater risk of violence and other traumas, such as homelessness, human trafficking, food insecurity, educational exclusion and failure, and suicide.

Transgender youth of color are at exponential risk across these domains. According to The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Mental Health, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth. In addition, in a 2022 poll by The Trevor Project, two-thirds of LGBTQ youth reported that the recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender people impacted their mental health negatively. This impact is even more dramatic among transgender and/or non-binary youth, where more than four in five of them (85%) reported it impacted their mental health negatively.”

The anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender legislation that’s proposed in Texas, Florida, and other states that follow suit are standard echoes of pan-historical actions to exclude a group from a right, service, opportunity, and space as a means of oppressing them. This formula remains clear and discernable—and when we pare down the exclusionary blueprint of these tactics, we arrive at the certainty that we cannot combat anti-LGBTQ+ exclusion initiatives without pro-inclusion action.

On the other side of these grave facts are the tremendous realities of resilience among our LGBTQ+ youth, when provided the affordable and attainable supports that we can provide them. In this workshop, participants will learn about the barriers to belonging and strategies to transform all spaces into trans-inclusive spaces.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Jenny Sloan, LMSW CTRT CTRP-C
Clinical Supervisor
Starr Commonwealth

Michael Rosewood, LLMSW CTRP-C
Behavioral Health Clinician
Starr Commonwealth

Everyone in our sector is talking about “trauma-informed care.” But what does that really mean, and how does one become trauma-informed? In this exciting session, participants will learn what happens in the brain when someone experiences something as stressful as homelessness, and how to practically support someone through those challenging experiences.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Brandi Tuck
Executive Director
Portland Homeless Family Solutions (PHFS)