The Art of Self-Care While Caring for Others

Arts-based Workshop
About this Event

This training will focus on the importance of professional self-care for those who work in the child welfare system. Through didactic, collaborative, and interactive learning, participants will explore what self-care is and why it is an essential practice for those supporting children/youth who have been traumatized, grieving, or distressed. Participants will explore the various stages of a crisis, define compassion fatigue and the obstacles to practicing self-care, and identify the six domains of professional self-care.

Participants will learn how using creative arts-based tools can teach self-compassion, develop greater insight and connection with themselves, and improve their mental, physical, and emotional well-being.

Participants will:

Define self-care and explore the importance of professional self-care.
Recognize compassion fatigue and how to overcome obstacles to self-care.
Identify and discuss the six domains of professional self-care.
Develop strategies to overcome challenges to professional self-care.
Apply simple arts-based strategies that teach self-compassion, self-discovery, and recovery.

About the trainer:

Stacey Billups, MSW, is licensed as an LMSW in New York State. She earned her Master of Social Work (MSW) at Howard University. Stacey knows firsthand the social-emotional experiences of being a child in the foster care system, and therefore, she made a personal commitment to working with children and youth who have experienced trauma. Her experience includes working in foster care and hospital settings and over twenty-five years as a school-based social worker.

Stacey specializes in the strengths-based approach to working with students and families, social skills training for children and adolescents, self-regulation strategies, behavior intervention planning, and utilizing creative arts to engage youth in the academic setting demands.

Stacey is a mother of two and a professional artist with a ten-year art studio practice. Stacey believes that marrying the creative arts with counseling has many benefits, including healing trauma, heightening self-awareness, developing social skills, and building community connections.

To be eligible for this training:

Participant must be staff, caregiver or volunteer working directly with foster, adoptive or probation involved children, youth and their families in Alameda, Solano, Mendocino, Lake, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Tuolumne and Calaveras only. ALL participants unless a caregiver/resource family must register with a work email address that can be verified; unless the participant is a caregiver. Participants outside of these areas aren't eligible.