Planning Community Work that Promotes Racial and Trauma-Informed Care

January 26, 2021

   The Greater Charlottesville Trauma-Informed Community Network came together virtually Monday, January 25, for a conversation on "Planning Community Work that Promotes Racial and Trauma-Informed Care."  The meeting featured a recorded conversation with Laura Porter, Co-Founder of ACE Interface, LLC, and a panel discussion by members of the local ARISE Committee. The Community Mental Health and Wellness Coalition (CMHWC) launched the ARISE Committee in July of 2019 to promote Anti-Racism, Racial Awareness, Intersectionality, Sensitivity, and Equity.  

Conversation with Laura Porter
   Community volunteer Alicia Lenahan moderated the meeting. The session began with a segment of her recorded conversation with Laura Porter, who ​develops and disseminates educational products and empowerment strategies that help leaders throughout the nation to dramatically improve population health. Porter emphasized that efforts to build a trauma-informed community must be a grassroots effort in order to succeed: "Ask people who have an interest to tap their social networks and then support them to go those places. People are better at talking to their own communities."  Watch the full conversation here.

ARISE Panel Discussion
   Rebecca Kendall, Coalition Director and Development Analyst at Region 10, gave an overview of the CMHWC.  Gene Cash, LCSW, LISWS, Executive Director of the Counseling Alliance of Virginia (CAVA), then led the ARISE panel discussion. He began by discussing the purpose of ARISE. The committee hopes to help organizations and individuals to become racially aware and then move beyond that to dismantling white supremacy through equitable practices.
   Gene said, "Talking about whiteness and white supremacy should be a daily way of life. Racism is not just about people walking around with hoods. We understand that people are on a different continuum of awareness and change... we appreciate everyone’s efforts to be anti-racist."
   He continued, "In order to change something, you have to see it and then name it. We have to talk about it in a very honest way. You can’t talk about race without talking about trauma, and you can’t talk about trauma without talking about race."   
   The panelists presented the ARISE Roadmap to Racial Responsibility.  ARISE asks partners to commit to completing six steps, beginning with an equity assessment, as they move through the stages to becoming a fully inclusive, anti-racist, multicultural organization. The ARISE team provides support to organizations as they progress through these stages. 
   ARISE panelists included Gene Cash; Kaki Dimock, Co-Chair of ARISE, Co-Chair of the Mental Health and Wellness Coalition, and Director of Human Services with the City of Charlottesville; Josh Kaufman-Horner, Intensive Care Coordinator for Region Ten; and Andrea Perez, MSW, Family Preservation Worker and Family Finder with Albemarle County Department of Social Services and member of the Mental Health and Wellness Coalition’s Service Systems subcommittee.  
   The meeting closed with a self-care exercise, Four Elements, led by Sara Robinson, Director, Child and Family Outpatient and Crisis Services, Region Ten.

Subscribe for Meeting Updates
   Subscribe to the CMHWC monthly newsletter here.  Subscribe to the Greater Charlottesville TICN newsletter here. Connect with us on Facebook here and Twitter here. Mark your calendar for the next network meeting from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday, March 22. 

   Summary written by Cathee Johnson Phillips. Please contact her with any corrections.