Conference Highlights
Leadership Institute
Taking Your Organization Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Metaphor for Resilience- Driven Leadership (6 Contact Hours) Stacey Hardy-Chandler, PhD, JD, LCSW
Description: Using “The Wizard of Oz”, Dr. Hardy-Chandler aims to transport us all to a wondrous land where we can tap into our own courage, heart and brains as leaders to effect positive change on our teams, in our agencies and for our communities! We all know the story of Dorothy, a young Kansas farm girl, her dog Toto and their valiant search for “home” after being swept up in a violent tornado. How often are we as social workers caught up in the “storms” of changing agency policies, shifting client needs, various workforce challenges, diminishing budgetary resources, and an uncertain socio-political climate just to name a few. We often find ourselves far from “home”, pulled by a multitude of forces away from the stability of our social work roots, tools and values. Taking a resilience-driven, trauma-informed approach and using the Human Services Value Curve lens allows us to “click our heels three times” and find our way back to our true professional selves.
Biography: Dr. Hardy-Chandler combines her background/training in social work (M.S.W., 1988), clinical psychology (Ph.D., 1994), and law (J.D., 2006) to promote transformative experiential learning, cultural humility, leadership and organizational development/effectiveness. Dr. Hardy-Chandler’s diverse career journey, commitment to service, and growth-oriented philosophy converge in her current role as the Director of Professional and Organizational Development for the Fairfax Department of Family Services leading agency-wide strategic initiatives and learning opportunities for a workforce of over 1900 staff. Her self-prescribed job description is simple: “to cultivate a culture of learning and to be a catalyst for systemic change”.
General Session Trauma-Informed Care across the Entire Spectrum of Behavioral Health Sciences; Be Aware, Be Informed, and Be Prepared! (3 Contact Hours) Delores Dungee-Anderson PhD, LCSW
Description: Increasingly, the current and frequent exposure to the various types of trauma in all arenas of social work practice and the expectation that trauma-informed social work interventions should be regular occurrences both suggest that all social work practitioners must take notice! In today’s social work practice marketplace - from the agency-based or independent practice social work administrator to the community-based public sector social worker, all social work practitioners are not only expected to understand the basics of trauma but are also expected to be able to understand and provide competent and trauma-informed services to individuals they serve. Becoming aware, becoming trauma-informed and becoming prepared to intervene at all levels of social work practice across the broad spectrum of our behavioral sciences practice arena is the new norm! Hear the trauma types, add to your understanding of trauma-informed care and feel prepared to increasingly intervene with principles of the new norm!
Biography: Dr. Dungee-Anderson has a current academic appointment as Professor in the Ethelyn R. Strong School of Social Work at Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA. Dr. Dungee-Anderson has practiced, trained, published and pursued continual training in the specialized field of Complex and Developmental Trauma Disorders since the mid-1990’s. She is both recognized and well-known at regional and national levels for her clinical work with trauma-based Borderline Personality Disorders and Dissociative Identity Disorders.
Lunch & Learn - Lunch and 1.5 Contact Hours for only $23.00! (Optional) Who I Really Am
Kane Smego
Kane Smego is an international touring spoken word poet and hip hop artist, cultural diplomat, National Poetry Slam finalist, and the co-founder and former Artistic Director of the award-winning youth arts nonprofit, Sacrificial Poets, based in the Triangle area of North Carolina. He has performed across the U.S. and abroad, as well as instructed a college course on Spoken Word and Oral History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In the summer of 2011, Kane helped create and lead the Poetic Portraits of a Revolution (PPR2011). Kane is currently part of Next Level, a Hip Hop cultural diplomacy and education project headed by the U.S. State Department and UNC Chapel Hill. Kane is the primary author of the YouTh ink. Curriculum that uses poetry and Hip Hop to help youth and adults tell their own stories, and challenges them to transform themselves and their communities through the use of the spoken and written word.
Friday Night Dinner & a Movie: Resilience - The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope (Optional) Pizza Dinner, Film Screening & Discussion (2 Contact Hours); Moderator: John Richardson-Lauve, LCSW
Researchers have recently discovered a dangerous biological syndrome caused by abuse and neglect during childhood. As the new documentary Resilience reveals, toxic stress can trigger hormones that wreak havoc on the brains and bodies of children, putting them at a greater risk for disease, homelessness, prison time, and early death. While the broader impacts of poverty worsen the risk, no segment of society is immune. Resilience, however, also chronicles the dawn of a movement that is determined to fight back. Trailblazers in pediatrics, education, and social welfare are using cutting-edge science and field-tested therapies to protect children from the insidious effects of toxic stress—and the dark legacy of a childhood that no child would choose.
General Session Advocating for the Forgotten Victims: Clinical Interventions for Grieving Families of Death Row Inmates and Others Behind Bars; Sandra Joy, PhD, LCSW (1 Contact Hour)
Description: Learn to identify various challenges confronting the loved ones of the incarcerated, distinguish between these challenges as manifested among families and children of the incarcerated in general and those of death row inmates in particular. You will also be able to identify the unique grieving process experienced by families/children of the incarcerated/death row inmates, while gaining familiarity with the following concepts: disenfranchised grief, nonfinite loss, ambiguous loss, traumatic grief, and loss of the assumptive world. In addition learn to assess the emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual needs of families and children of the incarcerated/death row inmates. Finally you will be able to identify clinical interventions that can be utilized in our advocacy and therapeutic treatment of families and children of the incarcerated/death row inmates.
Biography: Dr. Sandra Joy is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Rowan University, located in Glassboro, New Jersey. She has been on the faculty at Rowan since 2002, teaching courses such as Race & Crime and The Sociology of Death, Dying, & Bereavement. Dr. Joy is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a dozen years of experience as a mental health and substance abuse therapist. For more than two decades, she has maintained her work as a community activist. She has been an abolitionist in the anti-death penalty movement throughout this time and serves on the Board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP). Dr. Joy is the author of Coalition Building in the Anti-Death Penalty Movement: Privileged Morality, Race Realities (2010) and Grief, Loss, & Treatment for Death Row Families: Forgotten No More (2014).
