Hire Motivational Speaker Derek Clark for an Inspiring Trauma Informed and Sensitivity Keynote or Training.
Help children and youth process their trauma and find new meaning while being a positive role model. This will help you build a relationship of trust as you connect and have compassion by compassionately listening to them. Sometimes it is about connection verses correction. By connecting to the youth and children, you create opportunities for them to heal. My formula that helped me get past the pain, anger and to help me move on was to deal, feel and heal.
Derek’s Spirit of a Child presentation will provide child welfare professionals, social workers and counselors’ insight and specific training that will assist them in connecting with troubled youth and help them reach beyond perceived and self imposed limitations. Attendees will gain understanding and knowledge about childhood responses to traumatic experiences and how they are typically diagnosed, how to ask questions that build trust and shape futures, and to offer justice, power and dignity as a response to labeling, and quick diagnosis.
Personal and professional development speaker Derek Clark was abandoned at an emergency psychiatric facility when he was five years old and had to navigate through the foster care system for the next 15 years. He works with professionals to offer training and insight into connecting with youth and children who have gone through traumatic events and now are in foster care or residential treatment facilities. Derek is the author of Disable the Label: Never Limit the Potential of a Child and the I Will Never Give Up book series as well as being a featured expert on TV. He works with professionals in training workshops worldwide.
Information for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder P.T.S.D. for Children and Youth
HOW TO BUILD TRUST WHEN THEY WON’T TRUST:
Gain an understanding that every child living under government care has a story of loss; a ruptured or severed connection to their families of origin. For those who have experienced multiple foster home placements, multiple stories of loss and or trauma exist. While loss can exist without trauma, trauma cannot occur without loss and therefore grieving. The foster care community needs to acknowledge this grief and build in the structures to emotionally support youth. Working through grief with troubled youth and foster children helps to build trust.
FROM REJECTION TO CONNECTION TO DIRECTION: Working through the pain of the past
Learn about an alternative view to “youth mental illness” in describing the defiance of oppositional behavior of kids in care as “intelligence gathering”. This is a process where youth use what is most readily available to them – their behavior – to test, push and challenge unfamiliar people and environments that have entered their lives. Discuss how youth learn to accurately assess their environment while responding to the numerous threats they perceive around them.
HOW TO PLANT SEEDS OF COURAGE and HELP OVERCOME ADVERSITY:
Practice in developing a calm and open presence with troubled youth. Helping to overcome adversity and planting seeds of courage in these children demands that caregivers understand the concept of equality. An attitude of superiority is maintained by the idea that for many, equality with youth seems ludicrous as they lack the adult knowledge and experience essential for controlling their own lives. However, as stated by renowned child psychologist Dr. Larry Brendtro and his colleagues, if respect, dignity and justice – the ingredients of equality – are dependent on birthdays, then the disempowerment of children with persist.
WHY A CHILD NEEDS YOU TO BELIEVE IN THEM AND ELIMINATE WORDS AND LABELS THAT KILL SPIRIT:
Discuss the possibilities of positive labeling and a response based approach. While youth are responding to fractured connections with their family, they are also being assessed, advised and responded to based on their “behavior”. A response based approach strives for the discovery of how youth experience, respond to and resist all the circumstances in their lives. The primary relevance of youth is to be fully taken into account, deeply listened to and viewed as vigilantly committed to protecting their wellness, integrity, dignity and spirit.
Watch Derek Clark Deliver An Inspirational TED Talk – How Foster Care Saved His Life.
APPLYING KNOWLEDGE TO PRACTICE:
Learn about Mad and Sad; Grief Understood as Behavior Disorders
1. Distractibility may be exposed as grief; this can look strikingly similar to ADHD or ADD and is frequently treated with stimulant medications
2. Aggression may be exposed as fear; fear disguised as aggression can be difficult to recognize.
3. Trusting is not prudent where survival is at stake; this is NOT detachment disorder
4. Great focus on immediate surroundings leaves minimal time for concentration at school; this does not reflect on academic ability but may speak to academic availability.
5. Managing a complex environment makes honest relationships virtually impossible; this does not mean kids are “liars”; they need help to manage the complexity of their lives.
Motivational speaker and trainer Derek Clark is an inspiring resource for:
• Child Welfare Professionals
• Case Workers
• Care Givers
• Social Workers
• Foster and Adoptive Parents
• Social Services
• Department of Children and Family Services
• Mental Health Professionals
• Teachers – Educators
• Department of Education
• Juvenile Justice
• Courts – Judges
• CASA
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Public Schools
• Behavioral Health Therapist
• Counselors
• Psychologists
• Department of Corrections
• Police Departments
• Law Enforcement
• State, Federal and County Agencies
To find out more about Derek Clark’s foster care motivational keynotes, training and seminars, please contact him here.
