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FACILITATOR GUIDE MULTIDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOP: MOVING TOWARD A TRAUMA-RESPONSIVE FAMILY COURT WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES: As a result of attending this session, the participant will be able to….

1. Recognize the impact of trauma and toxic stress on the developing brain, and overall health and well-being. 2. List three new trauma-responsive practices to implement. 3. Apply self-care strategies.

WHO TO INVITE: chief judge, trial court administrators, family court judges, magistrates, hearing officers, family court staff, judicial assistants, attorneys who regularly appear in family court (private attorneys, SAOs, PDs, parents’ attorneys), child welfare case managers, juvenile probation officers, service providers, parenting coordinators, domestic violence advocates, mediators, guardians ad litem, family court bailiffs, family court clerks, foster parents, school partners

LOGISTICS PREP: Beginning Three Months Prior to the Workshop

• Determine date and time according to the judges’ schedules (3-hour workshop)

• Determine possible number of participants

• Reserve large training room and four breakout rooms if there is a large group (work with OSCA liaison for best venue and set-up if necessary)

• Request large room set-up as rounds of 10

• Email “save-the-date”

• Secure commitments from a judge to serve as opening and closing facilitator

• Secure commitments from a local trauma-expert for the general ACE discussion and the self-care discussion or contact OSCA for assistance

• Determine who will bring refreshments

• Email invitations with agenda and learning objectives

• Facilitator to read Self-Care Toolkit in advance of training

• Determine who will respond and how (with what services offerings) in the event a participant is “triggered” by the presentation with his/her own trauma history

Session Supplies

• Microphone

• Jump drive with PowerPoint

• LCD

• Laptop

• Screen

• Internet connection

• Sound system for videos

• Simple refreshments

• Five flipcharts

• Flipchart markers

• Self-Care Toolkits (hard copies, one per participant)

• ACE questionnaires (hard copies, one per participant)

• Professional breakout materials (hard copies, by professional groupings)

• Sign-in sheet for participant names and emails (hard copy)

• Post-session: Follow-up training needs assessment (emailed to all participants)

• Post-session: Evaluation form (emailed to all participants)

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Judge

Welcome Explain the “why” for the session

Welcome to the first in a series of workshops aimed at promoting a trauma-responsive family court. The information presented today may be familiar to some of you. For others, this may be your first exposure to this science. We are hosting this workshop today – bringing all the court-related disciplines together – so that we can get on “one page.” After today, learning objectives for future workshops in this series

will be based on the outcomes of quick surveys we will take, where we determine what our future needs are.

Why move towards a trauma-responsive family court?

According to the Florida Supreme Court’s May 3, 2001 opinion, the court’s role regarding the families who appear before it is to "craft solutions that are appropriate for long-term stability and that minimize the need for subsequent court action."

So that the first time families are involved with the court is the last time. Further, the opinion discusses therapeutic justice as a key aspect of the family court process.

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This concept directs the court to consider the family’s interrelated legal and nonlegal problems.

The goal of therapeutic justice is to improve family functioning by providing them with skills and services "where the family can resolve problems without additional emotional trauma."

We now know that both genes and experiences impact how a child develops. Today we will think about how those childhood experiences can play out in court – with both the children and the parents. We will learn that adverse childhood experiences can lead to toxic stress and can weaken the architecture of the developing brain. And that how the brain develops influences long-term social, emotional, and physical health. The goal of the trauma-responsive family court is to use the science around brain development and trauma to change the trajectory for children and families in court and disrupt the intergenerational cycle of adversity.

Review workshop outline (learning objectives)

We will cover three items today: 1. The impact of trauma and toxic stress on the developing brain, and overall health and well-being. 2. Trauma-responsive practices to implement. 3. Self-care strategies.

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Note that the group will begin by watching a TED talk

We are going to jump right in and get started by showing a 20 minute TED talk featuring a pediatrician from California, Nadine Burke Harris. She describes how the science around adverse childhood experiences led her to change her practice. We hope it will be reformative for you as well. Some of you may have seen this before – it is truly worth watching over and over again. It does a nice job of setting the stage for this workshop.

Tech person

Show Nadine Burke Harris TED talk

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Judge

Instruct small groups to debrief

Let’s spend the next 10 minutes talking at our tables about the primary “takeaways” from the video.

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Judge

Request report-out on the “takeaways” from a few volunteers

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OSCA staff person OR local expert

Review ACE study

Nadine Burke Harris mentions two concepts that we will now further consider – the ACE study and toxic stress.

Had you heard of the Adverse Childhood Experience Study before today?

The initial phase of the study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997. The doctors asked over 17,000 participants about their exposure to adverse childhood experiences, using a 10 item questionnaire during the patients’ routine health exam. They

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then compared participants’ childhood stories to adult medical problems. And they found a shocking correlation.

The correlation is depicted in this pyramid – the higher the number of ACEs, without resilience and positive relationships to buffer the effects, the greater likelihood of social, emotional, and cognitive problems. Leading to adoption of health-risk behaviors, leading to disease and social problems and potentially, early death.

What are the ACEs that were considered during the landmark initial ACE study? Dr. Vincent Felitti, a physician and one of the primary players in the ACE study describes them as life experiences in childhood that are lost in time, protected by shame and secrecy, and by social taboos – that play out powerfully and proportionally later in life with the negative outcomes shown in this pyramid. The ten ACE items used in the 1990s are still used in research today.

Distribute the listing of the 10 ACEs

As mentioned in the TED talk, these are more prevalent in peoples’ lives than you may think. You can find a listing of the 10 ACEs in our family court tool kit. Spend a minute and reflect on your ACE score. (Pause to allow adequate time for reflection.)

For those of you with 2 or 3 or more: think about the resilient factors in your childhood that protected you and brought you to the success you experience today.

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How can we flip the ACE pyramid to change the trajectory for the children and families in court? And to disrupt the intergenerational cycles of adversity? As depicted in this illustration.

OSCA staff person OR local expert

Note that the group will watch 3 brief videos about the developing brain

Nadine Burke Harris also spoke about “toxic stress.” Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child has led the way in understanding the developing brain. When a baby is born, he or she is born with a fully developed heart. However, his or her brain is not developed. What happens in the next 25 years – and most critically in the first 3 years – completely impacts how the brain develops.

Let’s watch three brief videos from Harvard to understand the developing brain and the effects of toxic stress on the brain.

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Tech person

Show the three-part video series.

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Judge

Transition to break and call attention to professional group breakouts

We are now going to take a 20 minutes refreshment and networking break. I encourage you to keep the good discussions going. After our break, we will reconvene to focus on concrete practices we can use to move toward building a trauma-responsive court. If you think back to the pediatrician from the TED talk and how she changed her entire practice based on this science - how do we change our way of doing business? How do we:

1. prevent adverse experiences for the children coming into court 2. heal trauma that has already occurred 3. build resilience in families who appear in court

We will break into groups by profession. Please see the slide for your group and look for them after break.

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Break with refreshments 20

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Facilitator for each group

We will start with a review of the materials. Each professional breakout has its own list of trauma practices that could be implemented. Our job, for the next 30 minutes, is to review these practices, discuss them in a group, and determine which of the practices seem most feasible and desirable to implement. At the end of our time together, each of us will identify a few practices that we intend to make - beginning tomorrow.

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Transition back together 5

Judge

Set-up Laura van Dernoot Lipski TED talk

We are ending today’s training session with a focus on self-care. When you travel by plane, what does the flight attendant instruct the passengers to do with the oxygen mask? “Before you assist others, put your oxygen mask on first.”

For some of us, especially judges and attorneys, the idea of self-care may not be in our training. Let’s watch another TED talk - and check in with ourselves.

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Tech person

Show Laura van Dernoot Lipsky TED talk

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Judge

Debrief with the whole group for a few minutes - request “takeaways” from a few volunteers

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OSCA staff or local expert

Refer back to different times throughout the workshop that may have brought up feelings of how this work impacts us personally. Where do your stories go? Were you trained for this, with strategies to protect ourselves from burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma? Most of us got into this work because we want to help others. It is very normal for the stories we read and the traumatic stories we hear about to begin to affect us personally. It is critical to realize when your work as a helper begins to weigh on you to the point that you find yourself:

o No longer feeling empathy for the people you are helping; o Feeling increased cynicism at work and home; o Having a loss of enjoyment in helping others; o Unable to separate the trauma happening to those you are helping with your

personal life; o Experiencing depression, nightmares, insomnia, etc. to the point it is impacting

your daily life.

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Maintaining your personal health and well-being helps make it possible for you to continue to be present in your work as a helper. You have to take care of yourself while doing this important work so that you can continue to help others. Next we will talk about some important self-care strategies. Most of us have a built-in warning system for general stress (tight in the shoulders when overloaded, etc.), but do you know what your warning signs are that indicate your work is impacting you to an unhealthy degree? Helping to recognize your own symptoms can serve as an important “check-in” process as it allows you to develop a warning system.

Visualize your own warning signs continuum – How do you know when you are in the green, yellow, or red zone?

An example taken from a Self-Care Expert: I know I am in the green zone when I am eager to talk to my neighbor when I see her standing outside. I’m in the yellow zone when I see her outside and I purposely avoid eye contact with her so that I don’t have to talk to her. I also tend to turn down social invitations and “water cooler” chats at work. The red zone results in me running in the opposite direction when I see my neighbor. Other examples include not returning phone calls/emails at work, avoiding calls from close friends and family, and calling in sick to work, and completely distancing myself from everyone.

Refer to the Laura video – what were big warning signs for her? How can we tell that she reached her red zone? Pause for participant input.

Ex. Her clients told her it was time to take a break.

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Ex. The family trip and the cliff – While her family was admiring the beauty of the view, Laura found herself wondering how many people committed suicide by jumping off the cliff (and where the helicopter would land).

It is all about recognizing your own warning signs well before they get to the red zone so that you can take the steps necessary to care for yourself.

What should you do if you are already in the red zone? There are many avenues in which to reach out for help, including your physician, counselor, spiritual mentor and employee assistance programs.

It is important to be able to vent and debrief with others when you have experienced a difficult situation or realize you are heading toward the red zone. However, it is also important to understand that we all have our own experiences and the information you need to talk about may not be healthy for the person you want to share it with. Take responsibility for what you

are about to say and how it may impact the listener. You don’t want to re-traumatize your listener.

o Take care of both you and the listener when debriefing o Make sure the listener is willing/able/comfortable to hear what you have to say.

Is this something that may end up being a trigger for the listener? Let them know you have to vent and ask if they can listen to you for a few minutes. This gives the listener the control over how much (if any) details you present.

o You have control over how much information you provide when venting. Do you really need to provide ALL details (gory, sad, traumatic, etc.) – also known as sliming (remember tool kit covers sliming).

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Group Discussion: Identify your self-care activities (ask for examples – yoga, massages, reading, etc.).

ACTIVITY: Mindfulness Meditation Activity (stress reduction) (1-2 minutes) Facilitator: Have group close their eyes, or soften their gaze, and lead with these steps:

“Sit with your back against the chair, both feet on the floor and hands relaxed. Take a deep breath in…..and out… Feel the chair against your back, how your clothes feel on your body, how your hands feel - where they are Notice your breath – don’t change your breath, don’t judge your breath - just notice it, coming in and out – notice the way it feels Your mind will start to allow other things to come in, but just gently push those away, and go back to your breath Feel your body relaxing Notice your breath Now take a deep breath, open your eyes, and look up… What did you notice?”

Refer participants to the toolkit for additional self-care strategies (too long to complete during workshop):

o “What’s on Your Plate” o “Self-Care Inventory” o “Commitment to Change”- What can you identify TODAY that you can do to

assure you are taking care of yourself? Can you commit to this?

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• Being impacted by our work is something we should all expect. As long as we take good care of ourselves, we will be able to continue taking care of others.

• Note a local “who to see following this presentation” in the event participants recognize this has triggered their own trauma history

Close the workshop by summarizing content:

• Any final questions or comments?

• We have learned what ACEs – or adverse childhood experiences – are and how they can impact long-term health and wellness outcomes. We also learned the impact of ACEs and toxic stress on the developing brain.

• We discussed ways we can change our day-to-day practice to become more trauma-responsive.

• And, finally, and most importantly, we learned the importance of self-care and specific things we can do to maintain health and wellness.

• We encourage you to keep learning about trauma. We will email all of you a brief electronic survey in a week to ask you what additional or more in-depth trauma topics you would like to focus on for continued learning.

• Please complete the workshop evaluation – it will help us modify and plan this workshop in other circuits.

• Thank you for participating!