The impacts of COVID-19 disproportionately affect vulnerable individuals and communities such as newcomers. A pandemic can be considered a collective trauma and some literature shows that living through a pandemic can increase rates of depressions, anxiety, domestic violence, and PTSD.
For newcomers who may have come from a background that included war, fear, uncertainty, and food instability, this can be an especially re-traumatizing time. There is a need to discuss how to support clients in a trauma-informed way while resisting burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma – all in the time of a pandemic and with a focus on community-building and community collective care. In the face of a pandemic, there is a need to go deeper than the “self-care” we are normally prescribed and look at Community Collective Care and how we can support ourselves and our communities – and resisting burnout through our work.
This webinar is suitable for all newcomer serving staff and will look beyond everyday mental health resources and basic self-care and will explore the mental and emotional impacts of a pandemic (on individuals and communities) and how we can care for one another throughout.
• Webinar: Mental Wellness & Community Collective Care
• Date: Thursday, June 11, 2020
• Time: 9:30 am to 11:30 am (PDT)
• Location: Online | You will receive the web link via email after registering
(Please note that this webinar will not be recorded or available for later viewing)
Vikki Reynolds PhD RCC is an activist/therapist from Vancouver, Canada, who works to bridge the worlds of social justice activism and therapy. Vikki is a white settler of Irish, Newfoundland and English folks, and a heterosexual woman with cisgender privilege. Her experience includes supervision and therapy with peers, activists, and other workers responding to the opioid epidemic/poisonings, torture and political violence, sexualized violence, mental health and substance misuse, homelessness and legislated poverty and working alongside gender and sexually diverse communities. Vikki is an Adjunct Professor and has written, keynoted and presented internationally on the subjects of ‘Witnessing Resistance’ to oppression/trauma, ally work, resisting ‘burnout’ with justice-doing, a supervision of solidarity, ethics, and innovative group work. Vikki’s articles and keynotes are available free on her website: www.vikkireynolds.ca
Questions? Send an email to [email protected]