Treating Parental Incarceration as Childhood Trauma
Upcoming Dates to be Announced Soon!
Revolutionizing Clinical Services Using an Anti-Racist Community Practice Model
OVERVIEW
This 6-hour course expands on the dialogue regarding children of incarcerated parents by recognizing that the phenomenon known as mass incarceration is associated with conscious and unconscious racial practices in clinical practice. Contextual factors like structural racism compound the impacts of mass incarceration on children and have the potential to create inherent biases in clinicians and the general population alike. This presentation explores and recommends solutions to “anti-blackness” in clinical practice, which refers to the unconscious racist beliefs and practices that fail to account for the historical and contextual needs and issues specific to populations affected by mass incarceration.
Children of Promise, NYC was the first to establish this community practice orientation using evidence-informed treatment modalities with the specific population of children of incarcerated parents. Trauma symptoms exhibited by children and adolescents, generally follow a similar symptomatology: depression, anger, isolating and self-harming behaviors, cognitive distortions, and escalated symptoms of physical distress. Therefore, this trauma-focused modality is applicable to the treatment of the childhood trauma of parental incarceration just as to other forms of childhood trauma. This presentation explores the psychological manifestation of trauma symptoms related to parental incarceration and lays the groundwork for the implementation of Children of Promise, NYC’s community-based treatment modality.
Through its integration of the micro-level clinical interventions, along with the mezzo and macro-level identification of the historical and present day oppression of parental incarceration, attendees will gain a holistic approach to identifying the trauma of parental incarceration and best practices in treating children of incarcerated parents.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
Understand historical oppression and mass incarceration through the lens of anti-blackness in clinical practice on micro, mezzo, and macro levels
Identify parental incarceration as a newly-recognized form of trauma and the post-traumatic symptoms exhibited by children of incarcerated parents
Speak to the efficacy of evidence-based and evidence-informed treatment models, including Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Trauma Systems Therapy, Narrative Therapy and Community Psychiatry as best practices for clinical treatment with children of incarcerated parents
Develop an increased capacity to interrupt the profound impact of mass incarceration on children, families, and communities and identify the skills necessary to target and dismantle anti-blackness in clinical practice