Organizations in Social Current’s Texas Change in Mind Learning Collaborative are embedding brain science concepts into everything they do, including their daily work practices. To be well at work, we need to know about basic brain functioning. Our brain mediates our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and as Dr. Bruce Perry, an expert in brain science and trauma, notes “…a brain aware perspective helps me when I’m trying to understand people.” With this knowledge, we can prevent and mitigate the impact of toxic stress on our brains and bodies and achieve the workforce outcomes we strive for—increased trust, stronger relationships, candid conversations, more accountability.

Join this session to explore the brain science strategies critical for a healthy workforce, and how our Texas Change in Mind organizations are bringing them to their daily work.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Karen Johnson
Director of the Change in Mind Institute
Social Current

Kelly Martin
Director of Practice Excellence
Social Current

Deepening the understanding of stress, adversity and trauma is a burgeoning focus in community-based and human services organizations. As part of the understanding of equity and cultural competence within equity, diversity, and inclusion, it is important for organizations to also understand the trauma that exists for people from historically oppressed and marginalized groups. Understanding common language, and practical applications in approaches at the individual, program/organization, and system levels is important to implementing and sustaining transformation. An integrated trauma responsive and equity-focused approach can improve the experience, overall wellness, and long-term engagement, of the workforce and service recipients.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Kesha Carter
Chief Diversity Officer
CCSI

Elizabeth Meeker
Senior Director of Practice Transformation
CCSI

Innovation is both a process and an outcome. As organizations navigate the continuously changing child welfare system, innovation is more than just managing change as it happens. To ensure an organization is able to support families with the utmost quality, leaders must keep their eyes open and focus on what could be, but also not forget what is. Organizations’ missions, strategic plans, and organizational goals and objectives are all designed to help organizations move forward, improve, and stay on track. However, there are barriers and conditions outside of an organization’s control that impact the speed and direction of movement. Leaders have to reflect on whether movement forward is just movement along the same path or if it is movement to create a new path—with only the latter being innovation.

Change is inevitable and we can’t stop it, but we can decide how we interact with it and what we sculpt from it. Interacting with change innovatively takes strategy, reflection, and continuous adaptation. It also starts with the leader’s vision and framework for staff to follow.

Several organizational change models have been tested over the years, originally developed for the general business world, but they are relevant to child welfare leaders and can be adapted as such. This session will use examples to encourage discussion of how those models can be used practically to inform both strategic decisions and program direction. Leaders will leave with tools they can use to assess which path they are following—the same path or the path of innovation.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Sarah Norris, Ed.D.
Chief Program Officer 
Crossnore Communities for Children 

Addressing complex challenges of oppression and structural inequity requires that we initiate on a journey of healing and transformation. In this session you will learn five compelling shifts that are the cornerstones to approaching meaningful change. The Five Shifts for Transformation are essential in creating an organizational culture of belonging and oneness. These shifts, such as moving from your head to your heart, are the catalyst for changing our thinking and finding solutions to difficult racial and inequitable thoughts and systems. Participants will learn the shifts and how to apply them to their own personal transformation and to help their organizations transform through an equity lens.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Erin Madden Read
Wellbeing, Healing, and Resilience Educator
Starr Commonwealth
@starrcommon 

Ken Ponds
Vice President of Oneness and Special Advisor to the President
Starr Commonwealth
@starrcommon