Mothers On The Frontline

This workshop introduces the Children’s Mental Health Justice (CMHJ) Framework. This liberatory framework identifies the structures, ideologies, and practices that constrain our ability to care for our children and underpins the mental harms and injuries that our children and families experience in our schools, clinics, and larger communities. This framework treats mental health as a right and reimagines systems that care for, rather than punish and exacerbate, mental health conditions. Participants will become familiar with CMHJ principles and begin to think about ways to apply them in their homes, communities, practices, activism, and advocacy.

Format Options:

• 60 minutes or 90 minutes
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, or hybrid
• Stand alone or part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Those working with or on behalf of children
• Caregivers
• Activist & Advocates
• Mental Health Professionals

This workshop introduces the concept of the School-to-Prison Nexus.  These are policies and practices that schools share with confinement and punishment systems, which condition people to see youth as criminal or inherently dangerous and in need of constant surveillance, both in and beyond the school setting.  We will explore how these policies and practices disproportionately harm youth with disabilities, Black, Indigenous and other youth of color, LGBTQIA and gender expansive youth, youth living in foster care, and youth living in poverty. We discuss the need for intersectional coalition building to create caring school communities in which all youth thrive. In the extended format, we engage in activities to help participants identify and resist punitive and carceral logics in favor of caring logics.

 Format Options:

• 60 minutes or 90 minutes or 120 minutes
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, hybrid
• Stand alone, part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Administrators & Policy Makers
• Caregivers
• Educators
• Activists & Advocates

This workshop introduces Wisdom Collective Methodology and harm reduction strategies for engaging stigmatized communities in qualitative research (such as interviews, surveys, oral histories, ethnographies, case studies, etc.)  Wisdom Collective Methodology is an approach to working with stories as rich sources of both knowledge and healing, disrupting practices that strip storytellers of their agency and treat knowledge as a commodity. Participants will learn practices that build mutual trust and respect, refrain from harm, and gather wisdom inaccessible by traditional research practices. 

Format Options:

• 2 hour – Introduce basic methodology and strategies
• 4 hour – Introduce basics, practice strategies and opportunity for feedback
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, hybrid
• Stand alone, part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Researchers
• Focus Group Leaders
• Lawyers

Many organizations use storytelling in their campaigns and programming. Gathering stories of people’s lived experience, when done properly, is an engaging, healing process for all concerned and leads to new insights for organizations. However, when stories are extracted or altered to meet the needs and purposes of an organization, the storyteller can lose their agency and experience trauma.  This workshop offers training in Wisdom Collective Methodology and harm-reduction strategies for story gathering and storytelling.

Format Options:

• 2 hour – Introduce basic methodology and strategies
• 4 hour – Introduce basics, practice strategies, and opportunity for feedback
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, hybrid
• Stand alone or part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Advocacy groups
• Non-profit organizations
• Movement organizers

Caring for a child with a disability or chronic health condition is stressful. We can get lost in the enormity of caring for others and overwhelmed by grief, frustration, hopelessness, uncertainty and guilt. In this workshop, we engage in storywork practices to reawaken our power, beauty and passion. The goal of this workshop is to feel seen, heard and respected and to reconnect to the surprise, love, joy, and the pleasure of parenting our extraordinary children.

Format Options:

• 60 minutes or 90 minutes
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, or hybrid
• Stand alone or part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Primary caregivers of children with disabilities

Mothers of children with mental health conditions often feel simultaneously invisible and the focus of societal blame. Navigating educational, health care, and recreational systems that were never designed to meet our children’s needs is lonely, painful, and invalidating.  This Wisdom Collective Gathering disrupts that isolation by offering an intimate, safe and healing community-building experience.  

Wisdom Collective Methodology is an approach to working with our stories of lived experience as rich sources of knowledge and healing. It centers the agency and wellbeing of the storyteller, and cares for harms resulting from stigmatization.  

Participants in this gathering engage in Wisdom Collective activities to name, share and tend to harms done to mothers. Together we develop and share strategies to resist policies that harm our families, create solidarity with other caregivers and freedom dream liberated mothering in a world that cares for our children and supports our caregiving.

Format Options:

• 8 hours (2 four-hour sessions or 4 two-hour sessions)
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, or hybrid
• Stand alone

Intended Audiences:

• Mothers of children with mental health conditions

This workshop introduces the Caregiver Justice (CJ) Framework. This liberatory framework identifies ways both unpaid family caregivers and the direct care workforce are harmed by current economies, institutions, policies and practices.  This framework resists the commodification of care, the exploitation of caregiver labor, and the policing of families. It reimagines systems that treat health care as a human right; care labor as an important, visible, and fairly compensated part of the economy; and care, relationality, and reciprocity as foundational organizing principles of human society.  Participants will become familiar with CJ principles and begin to think about ways to apply them in their homes, communities, practices, activism, and advocacy.

Format Options:

• 60 minutes or 90 minutes
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, or hybrid
• Stand alone or part of larger event

Intended Audiences:

• Paid Caregivers
• Kith and Kin Caregivers (unpaid caregivers for family and friends)

The pandemic has shined a light on our mutual interdependence; the essential role of caregivers for our institutions, economies, and communities; and conflicts that arise for caregivers between their public and private caregiving needs.  In preparation for this workshop, participants will read the Care Manifesto, which reimagines a world that values and shares care, “no longer tolerated as an exploited form of labor, shouldered mainly by women and the poor.”  We will engage in Wisdom Collective Methods to identify current policies and practices within organizations, states, or localities that prevent caregivers from thriving, and together re-imagine and co-create practices and policies that support caregiving and caregivers in our communities, institutions, and families.

 Format Options:

• 8 hours (2 four-hour sessions or 4 two-hour sessions)
• Customizable
• In-person, virtual, or hybrid
• Stand alone

Intended Audiences:

• Administrators and Policy Makers
• Kith and Kin Caregivers (unpaid caregiving for family and friends)
• Paid Caregivers
• Activists and Advocates