Session 1: Zero to Six – the Recap with Edmund Sprunger, MSW, LCSW

This session will outline coping mechanisms and cultural considerations for serving communities of color impacted by trauma. More specifically, this presentation will highlight the impacts of race-based stress/trauma, historical and intergenerational trauma on communities of color. This event will build language, conceptual framework, and tools for mental health access and advocacy, with a focus on bridging educational, faith, and mental health circles. This workshop plans to introduce necessary basic information for clinicians, educators, childcare workers, including systems of oppression, improving conversations about racism and discrimination.

Session 3: the Impact of Early Childhood Trauma with Chester Smith, MEd, LPC

This course will look at how early trauma can disrupt development resulting in a wide assortment of symptoms and behaviors in children as well as in adults years, if not decades, later. These include problems with impulsivity and the regulation of emotions, difficulty in relating to peers and authority figures, and misbehavior in the classroom, among others. In adulthood, those with early histories of trauma have a disproportionately high incidence of depression, anxiety, relationship issues, chronic medical conditions, and often report “lacking a richness to life”. We will also examine how early trauma can effect the development of structures of the brain which regulate emotions and impulses as well as how treating trauma can result in the development of new neuro-pathways needed for self-regulation. Finally we will look at the critical nature of the child’s earliest relational experiences with a primary caregivers in terms of the role it plays in assisting children to develop the capacity to self-regulate.