Ep. 18: Trauma-sensitive yoga effective with LGBTQ+ youth
Justice In Action
Sexual assault, bullying and harassment are traumatic for all survivors of any age. Transgender and non-binary youth are at high risk for encountering these experiences, which can lead to the development of complex trauma that may include a lack of trust in other people and even estrangement from their own bodies. About half of all transgender or non-binary youth have experienced sexual assault. As a result, many experience anxiety and depression, including suicidal thoughts, and are more likely than their cis-gender peers to live with a sense of...
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Ep. 17: Substance Use Recovery
Justice In Action
Guiding our clients toward recovery from substance use disorder The opioid epidemic has increased the demand for effective recovery services, and Justice Resource Institute’s Mary Chao is leading the organization’s training program for clinicians and other staff members to aid them in helping clients recover. Chao has been with JRI for nine years and works with the agency’s health, training and community-based services divisions, developing and coordinating substance use programming throughout the agency. She works closely with clients ages 12 to 24 and the JRI clinicians who help them...
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Ep. 16: Mental Heath Treatment for Clients with Developmental Differences
Justice In Action
Mental health clinicians are often reluctant to treat people who have intellectual and developmental differences (IDDs) for fear of doing something that could worsen rather than improve the client’s condition. In this episode of Justice in Action, two JRI clinicians, Dr. Jacquelyn Kraps, Metrowest Area Director and Clinical Director of Outpatient Services, and Bailey McCombs, Licensed Metal Health Counselor and Expressive Arts Therapist, talk about the rewards and challenges of working with children with a range of differences, from autism spectrum disorder to chromosomal differences,...
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Ep. 15: Data and research improve treatment of complex trauma
Justice In Action
Few social service agencies are as committed as JRI to improving treatment through research and data. In today’s episode of Justice in Action, we talk to Hilary Hodgdon, Research Director at Justice Resource Institute, and Lia Martin, Senior Associate Director of Quality Management. Together, they are part of a data and research division that is unusual among social service agencies for its size and scope. JRI clients suffer from complex trauma. On average, a child or adolescent seeing a JRI therapist has experienced three different types of trauma, such as neglect, physical abuse or...
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Ep. 14: Courageous Conversations
Justice In Action
Staff of Justice Resource Institute don’t shy away from talking about tough issues like racial justice, immigration policy or vaccine hesitancy.
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Ep. 13: Covid-19 pandemic boosts need for foster homes
Justice In Action
More than 8,400 Massachusetts children are in foster care, and the need is growing as the financial and emotional strain of the Covid-19 pandemic and the state’s opioid crisis continue to take a toll on children and families.
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Ep. 12: Permanent Connections are Vital for a Child’s Success
Justice In Action
We all need the people in our lives who know us and care about us, who celebrate our successes and comfort us in hard times. These are the people we call when we get a new job, lock our keys in the car or are facing a big decision.
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Ep. 11: Children's Advocacy Center
Justice In Action
CAC mental health clinicians Brittannie Moroz and Jillian Allen shared CDC data stating one in four girls and one in 13 boys under age 18 suffer trauma as a result of child sexual abuse. Those children are some of the approximately 75,000 Bristol County children age 16 and younger be-lieved to have suffered trauma from abuse, violence, addiction in their homes or other causes of childhood trauma.
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Ep. 10: Trauma-sensitive yoga w/ Jennifer Turner
Justice In Action
Trauma-sensitive yoga helps sufferers use their bodies to heal their spirits
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Ep. 9: The Wounded Healer
Justice In Action
Helping the healer when their work unearths old symptoms of trauma
info_outlineHelping the healer when their work unearths old symptoms of trauma
Adam Edwards cares about the caregivers.
As Justice Resource Institute’s Training and Instructional Design Specialist, he supports JRI staff as they care for some of the over 10,000 children and adults who are clients of the more than 120 programs JRI operates in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Edwards notes that about 85 percent of all people in helping professions — including health and human service workers, first responders, health care workers and educators — report experiencing symptoms of vicarious trauma. That means they are impacted by the work and often times also share some of the physical, mental and emotional symptoms experienced by the clients with whom they work.
It’s a type of burnout that can occur when our physiological systems become overwhelmed. It might take the form of sleeplessness, depression, anger or melancholy in a helping professional’s career, the result of years of caring for clients and communities who have been impacted by trauma.
But what about those helping professionals who not only hear about the trauma of other people but who themselves suffered sexual abuse, domestic violence or neglect, or who experienced the effects of homelessness or drug or alcohol addiction in their own lives or within their families?
Those are the people who Edwards, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, says have had a “first-person encounter with trauma and carry that experience into their work helping other people.”
Edwards’s goal is to help create a space where they can recognize, prepare for and manage the associated physical, mental and emotional impact of their own trauma that might be unearthed while helping others.
There is a perceived risk for some of these staffers in stepping forward that they may experience stigma, personal and professional scrutiny, uncertainty and fear. Edwards describes what he does as helping those “wounded healers” when they need support and assistance to be able to continue their work with JRI’s clients, while taking care of themselves and building their own resilience.
Listen to the conversation with Adam Edwards about his work with these “wounded healers” in our Justice In Action podcast here.
To learn more about JRI’s work or to explore employment opportunities, visit them at jri.org.