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Trauma-informed Training, Supervision, and Support for Frontline Helpers

The Problem: Addressing Helper Burnout and Compassion Fatigue 

Today we face a global trauma epidemic. Many front line helpers working to support vulnerable people are experiencing vicarious trauma, stress, and burnout. Too many helpers stay silent about the strain until it becomes too great.  Too many good hearted people turn away from helping, though they have never been needed more. As experienced helpers leave, organizations lose their knowledge and skills and are left with diminished capacity to serve.

Helping Better Together

To ensure that skilled helpers can sustain their work over time, we developed the Helping Better Together program to provide training, consultation, and supervision for organizations and individual helpers. This program supports the development of: 

• Trauma-informed care
• Trauma-informed organizations 
• Informed helpers and organizations able to navigate culturally complex situations
• Solidarity between helpers working in shared contexts 
• Self-care practices that sustain over time 

In practice, we partner with organizations to design and implement peer supervision and support groups, facilitating live and recorded webinars, offering professional certification pathways, and connecting helpers to valuable resources and publications. 

“I know that if I have good support (both internally and externally), I can bend but not break in stressful situations.  This is how I strive to nurture resilience…”(SS, a US social worker)

Key Program Elements 

We provide peer supervision/support groups of 6 to 12 helpers, involving:

• Face-to-face training for organizational teams 
• Groups that meet remotely for 6 to 12 months, in a regular cadence set by the group 
• In-depth training-of-trainers (with both remote and face-to-face options available) 

Is This Program Right for You?

Helping Better Together is designed to support:

• Helpers actively working with survivors of trauma, violence, disasters, and migration living in the USA
• Social workers, psychologists, counselors, case workers, health care providers, shelter workers, teachers, police, firefighters, tribal leaders, and translators
• Organizations that value diversity as an asset
• Practitioners who have at least 2 to 3 years of experience in their fields and are willing to commit to at least two more years of helping work

Program Details

The program is designed with deep, interactive, in-person trainings complemented by sustaining online support and resource materials: 

• 12 hours of face-to-face training, spread across at least three sessions. 
• 24 hours of monthly online small group consultation/supervision, spread over at least six months
• Access to an online resource site, which includes course materials, tip sheets, and practice tools
• Qualitative and quantitative evaluation throughout the program and at six months following completion

“Together with the rest of the group, our combined strength and knowledge became one of the most healing processes I have ever gone through. I don’t know how to thank [the program], the donors and all the participants for the thriving setting that was created that has truly changed my life.” (European program participant)

For More Information

We offer a free consultation for interested organizations.