Below is a selection of trainings that our team can offer while in Poland. We are flexible with what we offer and when. We would welcome the opportunity to co-facilitate sessions with your leaders, educators, students, families, and volunteers.   

In addition to the trainings, we are happy to co-facilitate activities with students to foster student integration and well-being. Activities from STRONG (described below) may be used for this purpose. 

 

1.     Multi-tiered School Support (MTSS) for Ukrainian Refugee Youth

Trainers will provide training and consultation with school leaders on building multi-tiered school support for refugee youth. School leaders and administrators will discuss strategies at each tier of support, including universal (Tier 1) welcoming and well-being supports for all students, preventive (Tier 2) strategies to promote resilience and coping, and targeted interventions (Tier 3) to address distress and difficulties related to the newcomer experience. (See MTSS Figure below).

 

Audience: School leaders/administrators

Training time: 1-2 hours

PFA-S is an evidence-informed intervention model to assist students, staff, and families in the immediate aftermath of an emergency and can be used by any trained staff member or community partner. Trauma-related distress can have a long-term impact. PFA-S uses brief interventions to produce positive results that last. PFA-S is designed to reduce the initial distress caused by emergencies, allows for the expression of difficult feelings, and assists students in developing coping strategies and constructive actions to deal with fear and anxiety.  

               PFA-S assists students, staff, and families by

▪  Establishing a positive connection in a non-intrusive, compassionate manner;

▪  Enhancing immediate and ongoing safety and providing physical and emotional comfort;

▪  Calming and orienting those who are emotionally overwhelmed or distraught;

▪  Helping to identify their immediate needs and concerns and offering practical assistance and information to help address these needs and concerns;

▪  Empowering individuals to take an active role in their recovery, by acknowledging their coping efforts and strengths, and supporting adaptive coping; and,

▪  When appropriate, linking those in need to other relevant school or community resources such as school counseling services, peer support programs, afterschool activities, tutoring, primary care physicians, local recovery systems, mental health services, employee assistance programs, public-sector services, and other relief organizations.

 

Audience: School personnel, students and families

Training time: 2 hours

 

3.     Health Support Team (HST) Training 2 options)

Health Support Team is a disaster focused behavioral health training that is appropriate for anyone who would like to become better informed and trained on how to help their families, friends, neighbors and communities.   

The training covers the following:

 

• Common responses of children and teens to the impact of disasters
• Factors important for recovery from disasters
• Ways to increase resilience
• Communication skills
• How the impact of trauma may show up in the classroom
• Understanding emergencies for mental health and substance abuse
• When to refer for professional help
• Tools to help manage the stress responses to disasters
• Self-care, and avoiding compassion fatigue

 

Option 1: Training opportunity for anyone who is a parent, caregiver, or other adult helping a child or teen. This training is focused on the impact of disasters on children and teens and ways to assist them.  This is a half-day training and will include access to the HST PARTICIPANT manual.

 

Option 2: Training of Trainers. Training opportunity for educators, mental health providers, and school-based staff who are involved in helping a child or teen. This training is for those who have some basic understanding or training in behavioral health and is focused on how to train out this material to others.  The training covers how to become a trainer for this curriculum and how to deliver the training materials and lessons.  This is a half day training and includes access to the HST TRAINER Manual.   

 

Training  time: 4 hours

 

4.     Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups (STRONG) 

STRONG is an evidence-informed, school-based intervention for newcomer (refugee/immigrant) youth (K-12th grades) to support their transition to a new school and community. STRONG is intended for students experiencing psychological distress or difficulties functioning at home, school or in their community, often related to the adversities and trauma experienced during the transitions of migration and settlement. STRONG is delivered by school mental health clinicians and is comprised of 10 group sessions, one individual student session, and teacher and parent education sessions. Elementary (K-5th grade) and Secondary (6th-12th grade) versions are available.

 

Core components of STRONG:

• Resilience-Building Skills
• Understanding and Normalizing Distress
• Cognitive Behavioral Intervention Skills o Relaxation o Cognitive Coping o Exposure o Goal Setting o Problem Solving
• Journey Narrative
• Peer, Parent, and Educator Support

 

To learn more about STRONG, see the US STRONG website and the Canadian STRONG website . 

 

Audience: Mental health professionals

Training time: 8-12 hours

Sharon Hoover, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and Professor at the

University of Maryland School of Medicine, Division of Child and Adolescent

Psychiatry and Co-Director of the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH). She currently leads NCSMH efforts to support states, districts and schools in the adoption of national quality performance standards of comprehensive school mental health systems (www.theSHAPEsystem.com). Dr. Hoover also serves as Director of the NCTSN Center for Safe Supportive Schools (CS3), focused on building trauma-responsive, comprehensive school mental health systems that attend to social determinants and injustices and engage and support marginalized populations, including youth of color and newcomer (refugee and immigrant) youth. Dr. Hoover has led and collaborated on multiple

federal and state grants, with a commitment to the study and implementation of quality children’s mental health services. Creating safe, supportive, and trauma-responsive schools has been a major emphasis of Dr. Hoover’s research, education, and clinical work. She has trained school and community behavioral health staff and educators in districts across the United States, as well as internationally, including consultation on building safe and supportive school mental health systems in Canada, China, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Ukraine, and New Zealand. As an advisor to the World Health Organization, Dr. Hoover has provided consultation and technical assistance on comprehensive school mental health in several countries, including developing and implementing a student mental health curriculum for teachers throughout the Middle East and developing and evaluating a school-based intervention to support immigrant and refugee youth in Canada and the United States.

Jeff Bostic, EdD, MD is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, DC and Director of the Center for Well-Being in School Environments (WISE).  He is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and was Director of School Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where he remains as an adjunct faculty member and continues to supervise child psychiatry staff working with schools.  Dr. Bostic obtained his Masters and Doctoral degrees in education curriculum and development prior to medical school and he has continued to apply child psychiatry principles into educational settings.  He has worked in over 100 school districts in the Northeast, as well as provided consultation for school practices in recent years in South Korea, Chile, Ukraine, and China. The focus of his work has been on improving mental health for children in the school setting, especially in vulnerable populations.  He has created mental health curriculum for educational staff to cultivate resilience in youth impacted by adversities.  He has specifically developed mental health curriculum for teachers to improve mood regulation, conflict resolution, social integration and social skills, and executive functioning skills, which has been adapted by the World Health Organization for use in 17 Middle Eastern Countries.  Dr. Bostic has led efforts to promote educator well-being, including the development of a free online course for teachers, TeacherWISE. He has specific interest in empowering school staff to embrace children impacted by trauma or other difficulties, and to support those children and families in coping and healing amidst a new environment.

Eric Bruns, PhD is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Bruns’s research focuses on public child-serving systems, and how to maximize their positive effects on youth with behavioral health needs and their families. Toward this end, Dr. Bruns focuses primarily on two areas with high public health significance. The first is intensive care coordination models for youths with serious emotional and behavioral challenges. In this area, Dr. Bruns co-directs the National Wraparound Initiative (www.nwi.pdx.edu) and the National Wraparound Implementation Center

(www.nwic.org), and directs the UW Wraparound Evaluation and Research Team (www.wrapinfo.org). In this area, Dr. Bruns has led multiple federally-funded (NIMH, SAMHSA, CMS) research and intervention development projects aimed at defining and evaluating impact of intensive care coordination models. The second area is school mental health services. In this area, Dr. Bruns is Associate Director of the UW SMART Center, where he leads the Center’s Technical Assistance Core and directs its Institute for Education

Sciences (IES)-funded Post-doctoral Research Training Program. He has served as PI or Co-I on six Institute for Education Sciences (IES)-funded research studies, on topics such as development and efficacy testing of an assessment, engagement, triage, and brief intervention strategy for school clinicians and counselors, intensive Tier 3 intervention-models for high school students with SEBC, and methods for addressing racial disparities in school discipline.

Robin Smith, MA received a Masters degree in Applied Child and Adolescent

Psychology from the University of Washington and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate (LMHCA). Ms. Smith is trained in and provides exposure-based cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) for anxiety disorders, including obsessivecompulsive disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder at the Evidence Based Treatment Centers of Seattle. As a Washington Department of Health volunteer on the COVID-19 Behavioral Health Disaster Response Team, Ms.

Smith triages and provides trauma treatment  to youth impacted by the pandemic. Ms. Smith enjoys increasing access to and understanding the science of mental health by creating and facilitating workshops for youth both in the US and abroad. She previously worked as a recruiter for Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX)

and continues to work with American Councils and FLEX alumni to offer Health Support Team training, most recently in Moldova and Kyrgyzstan. Ms. Smith speaks conversational Spanish and Russian.