Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression for White Providers Working with Youth

Kelsey Pacha

Training Description

This training will assist white providers in reflecting on their own power and privilege within their personal identities, while also considering the intersectional context of their youth clients in out-of-home care. Through personal assessment, group discussion, and multimedia, participants will define microaggressions, bias, stereotypes, and prejudice and learn to recognize them in action. Finally, through group activity and roleplay, participants will develop personal strategies to intervene when witnessing the perpetration of damaging messages, whether through institutional or internalized oppression. Participants will learn four frameworks and associated strategies to address bias on an individual level, roleplay intervening when clients express internalized oppression, and three methods to interrupt oppression in systems. Participants will learn to recognize internalized oppression in clients and explore the use of decolonization, harm reduction, and non-violent communication to interrupt internalized oppression in clients. 

Learning Objectives

• Reflect on their unique combination of identities (age, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family status, education, immigration status, race, religion, gender, and/or sexual orientation) and develop empathy for people who do not share the same combination of identities. 
• Define intersectionality and recognize how their identities interact to create relative privilege or marginalization, with a focus on white privilege.
• Become familiar with the concept of microaggressions and learn to recognize microaggressions in their context. 
• Define implicit bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. 
• Define power, privilege, institutional oppression, and internalized oppression. 
• Learn how these elements interact to create the cycle of oppression. 
• Learn how to recognize their own privilege, question stereotypes, and interrupt discrimination in their work and in larger society. 
• Learn strategies to support youth clients in recognizing and resisting internalized oppression, including practicing non-violent communication, supporting critical consciousness, and using harm reduction strategies.

Agenda

9-9:10 Introductions, community agreements.

9:10-9:20 Activity: Identity map individual activity. 

9:20-9:30 Discuss: Breakout group ID map discussion.

9:30-9:40 Discuss: Analyze two example identity maps for relative privilege and marginalization. Discuss protected classes.

9:40-9:55 Define: Intersectionality.

9:55-10:10 Activity: Privilege checklist.

10:10-10:20 Discuss: Breakout group discussion about privilege checklist.

10:20-10:30 Define: Power and privilege.

10:30-10:45 Break (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

10:45-11:05 Define: Implicit bias/prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. 

11:05-11:10 Video re: privilege, perceived privilege, and collaborators. 

11:10-11:30 Discuss video. 

11L30-11:50 Define: Microaggressions (microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation.) Video: What is a microaggression? 

11:50-12:10 Activity: (Breakout group) Microaggressions roleplay, pair share.

12:10-12:40 Lunch (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

12:40-1:05 Define: institutional oppression, harm reduction and constellation of choices re: supporting clients experiencing institutional oppression.

1:05-1:35 Activity: Ally/bystander activity with discussion.

1:35-1:45 Best practices: Providers with privilege, providers with marginalized identities.

1:45-2 Activity: Complete personal anti-bias assessment. 

2-2:20 Define: internalized oppression, and stereotype threat as a specific manifestation of internalized oppression. Discuss internalization mechanisms (like the Minority Stress Model.) Demonstrate how these dynamics form the cycle of oppression. 

2:20-2:40 Video(s): Doll test.video & discussion.

2:40-3 Best practices: Recognizing internalized oppression & best practices to intervene. Discuss: (Large group) What is a “healthy” version to a marginalized identity?

3-3:30 Activity: Roleplay non-violent communication with someone expressing negative self-concept/internalized oppression and discuss.

3:30-3:50 Best practices: Four frameworks for addressing power and privilege with clients: client-centered, critical race theory, person-in-environment, and trauma-informed.

3:45-4:20 Interrupting the Cycle: Discuss critical consciousness, roleplay non-violent communication, and watch video/discuss Theater of the Oppressed.

4:20-4:30 Q&A, resources.

Meet Our Trainer

Kelsey Pacha, MA, M.Div. is a trans man who has worked with marginalized communities for 15+ years in a variety of settings. He holds a Master of Religion and Psychology, Master of Divinity, and Certificate of Sexuality and Religion from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Psychological Services from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He is the owner of Kelsey Pacha Consulting, which supports the work of institutions and individuals in increasing their capacity for cultural humility and social justice-informed institutional change. Kelsey offers educational trainings and LGBTQ workplace policy expertise with an emphasis on practical skills, identity awareness, and personal empowerment. He regularly works with corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion officers and LGBTQ affinity groups, as well as legal, clinical, medical, and direct service (including child welfare and faith leader) personnel. For more information, visit kelseypachaconsulting.com or email info@kelseypachaconsulting.com.

This course meets the qualifications for (6.25) BBS CEUs for LCSWs and MFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.