Rising Practices & Policies in our Workforce: Interrupting Bullying & Fostering Belonging | |
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How might we—as the mental health and school mental health workforce—evolve our own practices and policies to meet the evolving needs of the people and systems we serve?
The Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network team is continuing our programming on emerging practices and policies that impact mental health and school mental health services and systems, and this October (in honor of National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month), we are zooming in on the topic of bullying and belonging.
On October 24th, 25th, & 26th, we’re offering a series of learning sessions to augment mental health providers and systems leaders’ knowledge, skills and approaches for effectively responding to and preventing bullying while also fostering belonging.
Whether we serve clients (adults, young people, or children) or support the supporters, there is a critical need to strengthen the mental health and school mental health workforce in this area. We start by understanding what is working now and what no longer serves us. Through these conversations, we can identify new ways of providing services that better meet current and future workforce needs.
Each Session Will:
- Explore the most current issues and choices related to bullying prevention and belonging.
- Highlight practices and policies related to bullying and belonging that are creative, innovative, and responsive.
All Session Times are:
Main session: 3:00 - 4:15 p.m. PT
Optional Discussion: 4:15 - 4:45 p.m. PT
Note:
Each session will be followed by a 30 minute optional participant debrief to process, peer resource, and discuss the rising practices and policies explored in the session’s panel.
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SESSION 1
Interrupting Bullying & Fostering Belonging for the General Mental Health Workforce
Tuesday, October 24
Main session: 3:00 - 4:15 p.m. PT
Optional Discussion: 4:15 - 4:45 p.m. PT
(view your time zone)
Bullying is a form of mistreatment that occurs in all settings, and affects all ages and populations. Bullying is defined as persistent, harmful actions that take place in the workforce, in public spaces, and beyond. It can include behaviors such as verbal criticism, personal attacks, humiliation, belittling, and exclusion. Anyone can be a bully or be bullied, regardless of their role, age or profile. In recognition of October’s National Bullying Prevention Month, the Pacific Southwest MHTTC is hosting a series that explores the ways bullying manifests in social spheres, the impacts it has across roles and sectors, and the costs and consequences of not addressing it. In dialogue with a set of regional leaders and specialists, we’ll explore new phenomena related to bullying (e.g., anti-immigrant harassment, elder abuse, workplace bullying) and strategies for fostering belonging.
This panel event will bring to light the challenges we foresee at the workforce level, and identify training, resources, and other support to help resolve them. Our Pacific Southwest Team will center conversations around rising practices, policies, and successful strategies for bullying prevention and response.
Audience: psychologists, community mental health workers, community health center professionals, social workers, marriage and family therapists, pre-service graduate students, and anyone else who is interested!
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Meet the Panelists
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Jennifer Pardini (she/hers)
Jennifer Pardini is the Community Education Coordinator at Legal Assistance for Seniors. LAS is contracted to run the Medicare counseling program known as HICAP in Alameda County. She holds a BA in French from San Francisco State University, with a background in education and is a certified HICAP counselor. She works with all the teams in her agency to bring essential Medicare and legal information to older adults, caregivers, and senior service providers in Alameda County.
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Nellie Tran, Ph.D (she/they)
Nellie Tran is Professor of Counseling and School Psychology at San Diego State University and the Executive Director of the SDSU Center for Community Counseling & Engagement. Dr. Tran the daughter of Vietnamese refugee “boat people” and a community psychologist interested in the day-to-day lived experiences of people of color within the educational system. Her work centers on the concept of subtle biases (i.e., microaggressions) within the educational experience for contexts (e.g., schools, classrooms) and teachers, administrators, students, and their families.
Dr. Tran received her doctorate in community and prevention psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was also on the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and held elected executive committee positions in the Society for Community Research and Action (APA Division 27) and the Asian American Psychological Association.
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Robin Kinkaid
Robin Kincaid is the Program Director of Nevada PEP’s Safe Allies and Education Services. Robin has twenty-four years of experience educating parents and professionals on special education law, advocacy, best practice, parent/professional collaboration and positive behavior supports. Other responsibilities include outreach activities and individual assistance to families. Robin has served on the Interagency Coordinating Council for the past 14 years, representing the parent perspective in early intervention services. As co-chair for the Families First Statewide Conference in 2009, Robin provided leadership and coordination for the conference program.
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SESSION 2
Interrupting Bullying & Fostering Belonging for the Youth and Young Adult Mental Health Workforce
Wednesday, October 25
Main session: 3:00 - 4:15 p.m. PT
Optional Discussion: 4:15 - 4:45 p.m. PT
(view your time zone)
How might we—as the youth and young adult mental health workforce—evolve our own practices and policies to meet the evolving needs of the people and systems we serve? Our Pacific Southwest Region’s national specialty area is the mental health of youth and young adults of transitional age; as such, on our second day of our three part series, we examine rising practices and policies, informed by research and the field, that expand the way we approach anti-bullying and foster belonging for youth and young adults (18-24 year olds). Panelists will highlight bullying and belonging within the context of LGBTQ+ youth populations, young adult perspectives with lived experience in the foster care system and the Navajo Nation, and a focus on cyberbullying within Latine youth communities.
Audience: Peer support professionals, young adult advocates, psychologists, counselors, community mental health workers, social workers, pre-service graduate students and whoever else is interested!
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Meet the Panelists
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Ajahrain (Ajah) Yellowhair (they/them)
Ajahrain (Ajah) Yellowhair is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and grew up in the canyons of Wolf Creek, Arizona. They are currently in their sophomore year at the University of Portland where they study Political Science in Global Affairs and Education. They work closely in community-led projects and have life experience in the foster care system, mental health institutions, and navigating Identity politics. Ajah is 18 years old, and brings valuable insight to the table and is honored to represent their Indigenous values as they relate to the conversation of fostering belonging as a mitigator to bullying.
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Arc Telos Saint Amour (they/them)
Arc Telos Saint Amour, or Tay for short, is a neurodivergent, queer and trans, gender non-conforming person of Mexican Indigenous descent (Coahuiltecan), and a childhood victim/survivor of trauma who deeply believes in listening to youth voice and the power of holistic affirmation and self-agency.
Arc Telos spent over ten years in the national for-profit industry as an upper level manager/director and business developer opening start-ups and working with established organizations to expand into new territories all over the US. Following this, Arc Telos spent another ten years active in the non-profit field, working with organizations through-out Chicago, New York, Vermont, California, and Michigan centering Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) practices and using trauma-informed and critical intersectionality based frameworks. Currently they are the Executive Director of Youth MOVE National and a national public speaker and facilitator.
Arc Telos is of course more than just their career and identities. Arc Telos is vegan and practices indigenous animalism and Unitarian Universalism. They are deeply passionate about all genres of music, documentaries, hiking and other outdoor adventures (in which they are infamous for achieving minor injuries and the loss of shoes), hanging with their partner, three kids, and their two pets (Jeffrey the Pug and Rue the Ragdoll Rescue Cat), absolutely refusing to be anyone other than Princess Peach in Mario Kart or Mario Party, and consider themselves to be within the top 100 of all time high context ramblers that have an opinion on just about anything and everything.
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Lupita Espinoza, Ph.D (she/hers)
Lupita Espinoza is a Professor in Child and Adolescent Studies at California State University, Fullerton. She received her B.A. in psychology from San Diego State University and her Ph.D. in developmental psychology at UCLA with minors in Culture, Ethnicity and Education, and Quantitative Methods.
Lupita studies adolescent peer relations and how peer dynamics shape their psychosocial well-being and school adjustment. Much of Lupita’s research focuses specifically on the school bullying and cyberbullying experiences of adolescents from Latinx backgrounds. For example, she has examined how daily cyberbullying experiences are associated with Latino adolescents’ psychosocial, physical and school adjustment and relied on daily diary methods. In the last few years, she has focused on better understanding how adolescents managed their day-to-day lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lupita’s research has been published in journals such as Child Development, Journal of Youth and Adolescence and Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma. Moreover, her service work focuses on a variety of roles and committees centered on her commitment to student support, diversity issues and the child development field.
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SESSION 3
Interrupting Bullying & Fostering Belonging for the School Mental Health Workforce
Thursday, October 26
Main session: 3:00 - 4:15 p.m. PT
Optional Discussion: 4:15 - 4:45 p.m. PT
(view your time zone)
How might we—as the school mental health workforce—evolve our own practices and policies to meet the evolving needs of the people and systems we serve? Together, we’ll explore how we can respond to and interrupt xenophobia and anti-immigrant hate in our classrooms. We’ll also learn about the power of bias reduction curricula in elementary schools, and the ways in which school district and county systems can shift internal cultures to be welcoming drivers of equitable compassion.
This session's guiding questions are:
- What might the school mental health workforce need to know about the difference and similarities between abuse, harassment, and bullying in k-12 contexts?
- What might be new or pressing phenomena related to bullying (e.g., anti-LGBTQIA+ bullying or the intersection of bullying and suicidality) for which we need to raise awareness?
- What challenges do we foresee at the workforce level, and what training, resources, or other support would help resolve these challenges?
- What might be some rising practices, policies and successful strategies for anti-bullying policies and practices?
Join us on our third day of a three part series to examine rising practices and policies informed by research and the field that expand the way we approach anti-bullying and foster belonging in our k-12 school climates.
Audience: This session is suited for school administration, site and systems leaders, school social workers, school counselors, school psychologists, educators, instructional coaches, school climate personnel, after school program providers, child advocates, and whoever else is interested!
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Meet the Panelists
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Carrie A. Langer, Ph.D. (she/her)
Carrie A. Langner, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology & Child Development department at Cal Poly. Dr. Langner teaches classes on multicultural psychology, social psychology, and health psychology and supervises undergraduate research. She earned her PhD in social and personality psychology at UC Berkeley and her current research is focused on the development and assessment of bias reduction curriculum for elementary schools. She is a member of the Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts diversity committee and co-chair of the Psychology & Child Development diversity committee. mitigator to bullying.
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Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj (she/her)
Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She uses multiple research methods to examine barriers to educational access and equity for immigrant-origin youth and other historically underserved student populations. Her work includes qualitative studies of immigrant families’ school choice behaviors; experimental research to improve access to school choice information; case studies of school leaders’ responses to racism and xenophobia in schools and society; quantitative analyses of the impacts of immigration enforcement on students’ academic performance, school attendance, and social-emotional wellbeing; and research on the ways that teacher education programs prepare pre-service teachers to educate children in immigrant families. She earned her Ph.D. in education from New York University.
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Linda Lee, Ph.D. (she/her)
Linda Lee, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist with expertise in children’s peer relationships in culturally and ethnically diverse schools. She is a Professor in Psychology and Child Development at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, M.A. in Risk and Prevention from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in Human Development from UCLA Graduate School of Education.
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Valerie White, LCSW, M.Ed (she/her)
Valerie White is a licensed clinical social worker who has a passion for providing personalized and compassionate mental health care to individuals and families in Los Angeles. With over a decade of experience in community mental health and school settings, Valerie has developed an approach that is rooted in the belief that every human being has intrinsic value and the ability to overcome challenges with resilience.
Valerie's academic background is extensive, having earned two Master's Degrees in Social Work and Education. This training has equipped her to provide a wide range of services, including therapy for children and their families, experiential trainings and professional development, public speaking, and informing school community practices to positively shift their climate and culture. Valerie has a particular area of expertise in working with high-risk children and teens, using evidence-based treatments and culturally responsive practices.
Valerie's approach is collaborative and empowering, and she works with her clients to identify their strengths, build resilience, and develop skills to help them navigate life's challenges. She believes that her clients are the experts on their own lives and strives to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone she serves. Her dedication to providing high-quality mental health services has made a positive impact on numerous individuals and families in the Los Angeles community. Valerie is intentional about providing culturally responsive and compassionate care, ensuring that every person she engages feels seen and valued.
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Contact the Pacific Southwest MHTTC
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