This training is designed to build skills, best practices, and strategies to better support young people or adults in moments of escalation. It is vital for human service providers across fields to understand how trauma impacts the brain and often lies at the root of escalated incidents with clients or participants in programs. Utilizing a trauma-informed approach to de-escalation diminishes the chances of re-traumatizing people and builds up better coping mechanisms, encourages positive life-decisions, and allows for cohesive information sharing.  

In this engaging and practical training module, we will focus on concrete ways we can better support our participants through escalated feelings.  We will also discuss how to build a program that is trauma-informed in order to reduce the likelihood of escalations happening and to ease the process of de-escalation when they do.  

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

1. Describe de-escalation techniques  

2. Review strategies for dealing with challenging situations  

3. Practice dealing with challenging situations  

4. Identify strategies for trauma-informed care 

Health Resources in Action’s Behavioral Health and Racial Equity Initiative, or BeHERE, is proud to announce the launch of Improving Overdose Safety at Work: A Public Health Learning Cohort focused on overdose prevention, response, and postvention.

Applications are now live and will close on Friday, December 1st at 5pm.

APPLY NOW

For questions, please contact:

• Michael Leonard (Senior Project Manager) – [email protected]
• Anna Thordarson (Administrative Coordinator) – [email protected]

Who are we?

At BeHERE, we build capacity in opioid overdose prevention, recognition, and response among service providers and support staff in community corrections centers, homeless shelters, family shelters, public libraries, public housing, and other venues. Our BeHERE trainings and technical assistance services are funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response grants, administered through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services. Learn more at behereinitiative.org. 

What is this cohort about? 

Improving Overdose Safety at Work will serve as a learning community and network that connects public health workers, front lines workers, and other service providers dealing with different public health topics. This cohort is an opportunity to learn in a peer setting about what different organizational policies can look like and how to implement them.  The cohort will also offer guidance around advocacy and work planning to give you the skills to bring organizational leaders on board and take real steps toward a comprehensive overdose safety policy. 

Why did we develop this cohort?

As the American overdose crisis accelerates, many organizations are grappling with how to address overdose within their agencies in a practical way.  You may be working in a setting with people who are at risk for overdose, even if your primary job is not specific to overdose prevention. This could be a community corrections center, homeless shelter, family shelter, public library, public housing development, transitional assistance program, disability service, or other venue.  Ensuring our organizations have policies and practices for overdose safety is vital and helps ensure safety for all.  You may be committed to enhancing your overdose safety protocols, even if your organization is not fully on board yet. 

Who should apply? 

If you are interested and committed to bolstering your organization’s overdose prevention efforts, then this cohort is for you!  All levels of experience and leadership within an organization are welcome in this cohort.  Applications will be reviewed by our internal team at Health Resources in Action.  We will be accepting no more than 3 applicants from any one organization. 

If I am accepted into the cohort, what can I anticipate?  

In this cohort, participants will: 

• Gain new perspectives to address stigma, including changes to language, behaviors, policies, and environment 
• Develop skills to incorporate trauma-informed practices and healing centered approaches into program activities to better serve staff and clients   
• Think critically and practically about implementing promising policies and practices around overdose<

What is the time commitment? 

The cohort will consist of 4 sessions, from the beginning of March through the end of May, 2024.  Two of the sessions will be in person and two will be held virtually.  To be accepted into the cohort, you must be able to commit to all four sessions. The session times and dates are listed below: 

• Session 1: March 5th, 2024 – HRiA Office: 2 Boylston St, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02116
• Session 2: March 21st, 2024 – VIRTUAL
• Session 3: April 9th, 2024 – VIRTUAL 
• Session 4: May 2nd, 2024 – HRiA Office: 2 Boylston St, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02116

Is there a cost? 

This cohort is FREE to all service providers in Massachusetts thanks to generous funding from the Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).  We are accepting a limited number of applicants so be sure to submit your application by December 1st!   Applications will open on October 23rd.   

When will I find out if I am accepted into the cohort? 

We will send out final decisions for all applicants at the end of January 2024.

Schedule a Workshop

Recent studies show a dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths among American teenagers as fentanyl contamination becomes more prevalent in drugs used by young people. Young people are very receptive to harm reduction, and do not respond well to “just say no” or abstinence only approaches to substance use prevention. Despite this, youth programming does not tend to embrace harm reduction or discuss harm reduction strategies with young people. In Boston, there are stories of a lack of access to treatment, harm reduction, and recovery. This 3-hour training aims to equip service providers, youth workers, and other serving youth and working in substance use and/or harm reduction with practical skills related to positive youth development, motivational interviewing, and thinking about how they can incorporate more harm reduction messaging and approaches into their work with young people.

Participants will be able to:   

1. Define and link the concepts of adultism, youth development, and harm reduction 

2. Understand the impact of the War on Drugs on youth and current drug policy  

3. Practice 1-2 strategies of motivational interviewing for talking to young people about substance use 

4. Gain skills to rewrite policies to be more inclusive of harm reduction when working with youth 

The fight for reproductive justice shares profound similarities with the movement for harm reduction. These decades-old, grassroots struggles advocate for the protection of individual bodily autonomy from violation, surveillance, and punishment. In this three-hour training, participants will explore the linkages between reproductive justice and harm reduction, while building the knowledge and skills to support any and all people who find themselves at the intersection of substance use, pregnancy, parenting, and reproductive health.

Participants will be able to: 

1. Understand the profound connection between reproductive justice, harm reduction, and other struggles for justice and equity. 

2. Understand the particular drug-related stigma that impacts pregnant/parenting people. 

3. Learn strategies to navigate systemic dangers targeting pregnant/parenting people who use drugs. 

4. Learn how to support a client in understand risks and developing a plan for safer or managed use before, during, and after pregnancy. 

5. Gain motivational interviewing skills to communicate with pregnant and parenting people who use substances. 

6. Gain supports for frontlines staff supporting this population considering it can be particularly difficult/emotionally sensitive work. 

This three-hour training will offer participants an opportunity to explore reasons why people may use drugs, how we can assess risk using the “drug, set, setting” model, and how we can design our physical program spaces to support engagement among our participants and clients who use drugs.

Schedule a Workshop

This three-hour training will explore the definition and impacts of alcohol use, recognizing the spectrum of use from abstinence to addiction. Specifically, we will examine the social determinants of alcohol use and seek to understand and challenge inequities (e.g.racial, gender-based, etc.) in treatment and recovery.

This training for employers will describe how workplace conditions may lead to injury, pain, and opioid use, explore strategies to create a work environment that will help prevent opioid use and addiction, and identify workplace strategies that support treatment and recovery.

This training can be tailored for Employers, Employees, and Trainers.

Schedule a Training of Trainers

This three-hour, non-clinical training module is designed to educate and build skills around understanding secondary trauma and cumulative stress with a specific focus on improving the wellness and safety of service providers working in direct care with people who use drugs. Training topics include supporting resilience and preventing secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout.

This three-hour, non-clinical training is intended to provide supervisors with the best practices and tools for nurturing and supporting staff who work in substance use, harm reduction, homeless services, and other social service fields, with a particular emphasis on supervisory support following workplace incidents

As drug use evolves in Massachusetts and beyond, we need to be prepared to support clients no matter what substances they use. In this three-hour training, learn the basics of what stimulants are, what they do in the body, and how we can support people who use stimulants.

When we recognize that recovery looks different for every person, we can better advise our clients. This three-hour training will introduce various forms of recovery, from medication to 12-step programs to cognitive based therapies. Participants will also explore stigma around recovery and how to best support our clients.

This three-hour training will explore the historical sources of criminalization and punitive attitudes surrounding drug use in the United States, including an in-depth examination of the racialized drug policies of the War on Drugs.

Drug-related stigma presents barriers to effectively supporting clients who use drugs. Our biases are learned from a culture that stigmatizes drug use and ostracizes those with substance use disorders. This three-hour training will focus on identifying our biases and societal stigma surrounding people who use drugs and actions we can take to address them.

Contact us for trainings.

Contact us for trainings.