Cultural Humility

Understanding the Experience of Justice-Involved and Indirectly-Impacted Individuals

Live Online Webinar
Monday, October 18, 2021
5:00–9:00pm ET

NYSED and ASWB/ACE approved for 4 CE contact hours

This workshop will be a 4-hour, interactive training session on “Cultural Humility: Understanding the Experience of Justice-Involved and Indirectly-Impacted Individuals.” The audience for this session is mental health providers working with individuals with direct histories of justice-involvement and those who are indirectly impacted (parents, friends, etc.). Mental Health Professionals are often called upon to engage with justice-involved and indirectly-impacted individuals in different therapy settings. In some instances, the impact of justice-involvement may be at the center of the therapeutic work, while for many the impact of justice-involvement may seem more removed from the work. In either case it is important for the Mental Health Professional to be aware of the possible impacts of justice-involvement, including emotional impact but also the collateral consequences that might impact the individual.

Understanding and applying a Human-Centered, Strengths-Based approach is particularly important when working with this population. Mental health and substance use issues that Mental Health Professionals are trained to work with are of course present in this population, but it also important to recognize the role of trauma when a person has a history of justice-involvement. Traumatic experiences often play a role in a person being exposed to the criminal legal system initially, and additional trauma can result as the person goes through the system and beyond. Conditions like PTSD may be present as a result of justice-involvement, but Mental Health Professionals should recognize that trauma may be ongoing (for example, as a result of post-release supervision that the person may still be subject to, and due to the many other collateral consequences that the person may experience).

The Human-Centered, Strengths-Based approach to working with justice-involved individuals in a mental health setting includes:

• Recognizing the inherent worth and dignity in all people, regardless of any history of justice-involvement
• Striving to engage the person in an egalitarian therapeutic relationship
• Centering the individual’s story in a narrative-based approach
• Helping the individual understand different sources of power and identifying their own source(s) of power
• Not pathologizing a criminal record
• Not stigmatizing an individual regardless of the particular nature of their justice-involvement
• Understanding the potential sources of trauma for an individual, and helping identify past from current traumas in order to more effectively address them

Structure of Training Session

The goal of this session is that everyone leaves with a better understanding of how justice-involvement impacts the individual and the community, and with concrete, practical ideas of how they, as Mental Health Professionals, can work with this population to improve individual and societal outcomes.

The topics that we cover in these interactive sessions include:

• The concepts of criminalization and mass incarceration
• The scope of criminalization and mass incarceration
• The impact – including direct and collateral consequences, and emotional impact – of justice-involvement on an individual
• The scope and impact of stigmatizing, dehumanizing language
• The role of the criminal justice system in racism and racial oppression
• The concept of a “Human-Centered, Strengths-Based” approach
• The role of Mental Health Professionals with respect to their work with clients and in social justice

As a result of attending this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Understand the basic concepts and terminology of the criminal justice system
• Understand the scope, including the racial impact, of the criminal justice system
• Understand the impact, including direct impact, emotional impact, and collateral consequences of exposure to the criminal justice system
• Understand their professional role in working with these populations, including social justice implications of working with individuals within the populations

Christie A. Cunningham, JD, LMSW

Christie A. Cunningham is a human rights advocate, writing and providing training on reform of the criminal justice system. Christie earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from North Carolina State University, a Juris Doctor degree from New York Law School, and a Master of Social Work degree from New York University. Christie was a co-organizer of the “Mass Incarceration Conversation Series” at the NYU Silver School of Social Work, a Beyond the Bars Fellow with the Columbia University Justice Center and a member of the New York Re-entry Education Network (NYREN).

To register for this seminar, please log in to our Online Registration Portal and select this event from the "All Events & Programs" tab, under the "Conferences and Events" section.

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General Admission: $80.00

If after registering, you determine that you can no longer attend this event, The Office of Global and Lifelong Learning will issue refunds on the following basis:

• Refund requests made on or before October 11 (by midnight): full refund
• Refund requests made on or before October 13 (by midnight): 50% refund
• Refund requests made on or after October 15: no refund

If this event is cancelled, all registrants will be fully reimbursed. To withdraw from and be reimbursed for this event, please complete the event withdrawal form.

NYSED and ASWB/ACE approved for 4 Continuing Education Contact Hours.

55 jurisdictions accept ACE-approved provider CE contact hours. ACE is not an approved Continuing Education provider in the states of New York (though NYU Silver is NYSED CE approved in NYS) and West Virginia, unless the event is outside of West VA. ACE only approves individual courses in New Jersey, though NYU Silver is CSWE-accredited and therefore accepted for licensed NJ professionals. Here is a full list of statutes related to social work CE.

Special Accommodations:
Students requiring accommodations have the opportunity to make these known upon registering or by writing to silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu.

Addressing Grievances:
For information on our grievance and complaint procedures, contact 212.998.9099 or silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu.

NYU Silver School of Social Work
Office of Global and Lifelong Learning
1 Washington Square North, G08
New York, NY 10003

Email: silver.continuingeducation@nyu.edu
Phone: 212.998.5973
Fax: 212.995.4497