Trauma Training Conference Recap

05 Jun Trauma Training Conference Recap

At Foster Coalition, being advocates for foster youth is our number one priority. Every month we focus on supporting the needs of foster youth, but during the months of April and May, we turn our attention specifically to spreading awareness for Child Abuse Prevention Month and Foster Care Month.

We recently held a Trauma Informed Care Training Conference on April 20th at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church for Alabama social workers, counselors, teachers, foster parents, grandparents raising grandchildren, church ministries, and anyone who wanted to learn more about trauma in foster youth.

Training was provided by Sojourn Counseling, Alabama Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries, Pathways Professional Counseling, Lifeline’s Children’s Services, and Created Ministries. 

Here’s what was covered:

1. Intro to Trauma

The conference opened up introducing what trauma is. Beau Armistead, the founder and director at Sojourn Counseling discussed what he calls Big “T” Trauma and Little “t” Trauma. Big “T” trauma are events most commonly associated with PTSD – ones where life will never be the same after this experience. Little “t” trauma relates to events that affect people on a personal level, but don’t fall into the Big “T” trauma category. 

He compared the brain to a filing cabinet: when traumatic events happen, the brain isn’t able to process them so it files them away. “When children are living out of trauma, their ‘bad behaviors’ are often a result of those unprocessed traumatic experiences,” Armistead said. 

2. What are ACES and BCES?

Kelly Arant, a licensed professional counselor at Pathway Professional Counseling and Dr. Rod Marshall at Alabama Baptist Children’s Home followed up to talk about ACES and BCES. ACES are Adverse Childhood Experiences and refer to the traumatic events that occur during childhood. ACES can be violence, abuse and growing up in a family with mental health or substance abuse problems. 

It is important to note that ACES are based on the frequency of adverse experiences and not necessarily the intensity of any particular event. The number of ACES to which a child is exposed is the key indicator of the potential impact on the adult that child will become. 

BCES refers to Benevolent Childhood Experiences and it is based on positive childhood experiences. The BCES scale assesses positive experiences like perceived safety, security, and support. 

3. Responding to the Unique Needs of Older Children and Teens

Aren Williams and Beth Perez at Lifeline Children’s Services discussed how to approach working with older children and teens. Addressing trauma in children and teens is like playing the popular game Jenga and they showed a live demonstration. As in the game, traumatic events can be built up over time and all it takes is one wrong move for everything to start crashing down. From there, you show grace and continue to build them back up.

Because trauma and loss impacts our children’s developmental stages in so many ways, we will need to meet them where they are in each area of need to help promote healthy growth, development, and healing. This means we need to take things one step at a time. Consider how to connect and be present. See the need behind the behavior and then access resources accordingly.

4. Challenges of Independence

Finally, Mark and Dori Carpenter at Created Ministries shared several personal stories about how they focus on mentoring aged out foster youth who have experienced trauma. Trauma in foster youth leads to them “missing out”. Their unfortunate backgrounds can cause them to be missing basic life skills such as learning how to drive, cook, and live on their own. 

Created Ministries is changing the narrative and helping them become well equipped adults with God at the center of their life. Through their RISE program, Created Ministries puts together an individualized plan for each participant to learn independent living skills over an 18-24 month period. 

Foster youth’s stories shouldn’t end in trauma. With proper support from loved ones, hope and healing begins. 

At Foster Coalition, we plan to continue providing much needed resources and education to the foster care community – whether that be foster parents, grandparents, teachers, social workers, church volunteers or anyone else who works with kids in crisis. We hope to dig deeper into more specific areas of trauma in future events and provide more targeted training depending on the audience. 

We would love to see the community get involved in supporting foster families and families in crisis. That can mean doing tangible things like providing meals, cutting grass, cleaning a house, picking up children, babysitting, helping with groceries, or helping in other ways by listening, being available, and praying. 

To see a recap of our event, click here.  To attend future events like this, subscribe to our email.

*Training certificates and continuing education hours for this event were provided by Lifeline Children’s Services.