This summer, as part of the 2024 Practitioner Insights event series, we welcomed three guests to share how their agencies are trying innovative solutions to address poverty in their community and to reflect on their own professional journey. During these events, interns learned about these organizations’ strategies for amplifying stories about housing insecurity, providing assistance to victims of intimate partner violence, and bringing the community together to support individuals battling substance addictions.
Although each speaker represented a different field of work, two major themes emerged from these events – how respecting each individual’s autonomy is a necessary element for respecting their dignity, and the power of storytelling for creating change.
“Make them feel valued just for who they are, right? That moment walking through the door, [have] no expectations. They may just take a nap in an office for an hour and say no, ‘I'm not going to treatment today’ or ‘You know, I don't want to do that.’ But then they come back because they were valued, and we were compassionate and there were no hard expectations. And we watched that happen time and time again.” - Christine Wright, Bradley Free Clinic
“One of the things that we train our staff to [do is to] recognize and understand is how our client’s impoverished state can really affect the choices that they make, their ability to escape the violence, and to be involved in the legal system... [Another thing we do] is to make sure that we let our clients know that they can always come back in the future, that we will always be there, and we're not judging them for the choices they make.” - Deena Hausner, House of Ruth
Christine also pointed out that this respect and understanding must extend to our community partners if we are going to build strong relationships and the trust needed for this type of programming:
“So often [community partners] thought we were going to go into a meeting and be like, ‘You need to this and that, and we have all the answers.’ But it wasn’t. It was go into a meeting a sit back and be like, “Tell me what you need. How can we help lighten your load?... And so it's very much just show up and be compassionate-- as compassionate to them as we are the people we serve.”
Chris Lassiter's project, This is Home, aims "to tell the story of local housing insecurity in a way that most honors the human dignity of those being impacted."
“We want to tell stories, but we are always going to use human dignity as the North Star…Any time that we feel like there's the potential of our project to make a vulnerable person more vulnerable, we're figuring out a way to do that without showing identifying features. It's their stories to own. No amount of storytelling is gonna ever make me feel good about making a vulnerable person more vulnerable in life, I'd rather just find a different way to tell this story.”
Christine discussed how her own story with addiction has made her a powerful advocate for change, and how she was able to use that story to encourage community partners to try a new approach to addressing substance abuse:
“The feedback I've gotten from them was hearing from me. When I did this training in Salem, there were guys who recognized me, and when I would drop my address in the training. [The first responders] were like, ‘I've been there!’ ‘I've revived.’ I'm like, ‘Right? And look at me, you know!’ I go into a presentation, and I'm this seemingly professional business woman, although I do have a bit of tattoos, and then mid-presentation, I would be like, ‘I'm the girl that you were reviving on [XX] Blvd for all those years.’... Recovery is possible. I shared my lived experience, and I shared with them what it’s not... I could watch their expressions change.”
At the end of each event, speakers were invited to reflect on their career path, how they have found ways to maintain hope in the face of potential burnout and provide advice to the current interns who are just beginning their own professional journeys.
"My path was anything but a straight line. My undergraduate degree is in music. I never thought about being a lawyer…it was because of the experience I had when I was at a domestic violence job prior to law school. I was out of college for four years before I started law school…Then, I didn’t imagine that I was going to have a career as a family lawyer for domestic violence victims. It was, in part, because of the internship experiences I had while I was in law school." – Deena Hausner, House of Ruth
June 25, 2024 – Deena Hausner, Director of the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic at the House of Ruth Maryland, joined us to talk about her work at one of the nation's most comprehensive domestic violence centers. The Legal Clinic helps victims of intimate partner violence with a range of legal issues including protective orders and family services such as divorce decrees, custody of their children, and child support for free.
July 2, 2024 – Chris Lassiter, the Director of Community Engagement at the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge, discussed his work in the Staunton, VA area. The Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge is an organization that seeks to enrich quality of life by responding to community needs and inspiring philanthropic efforts. On major focus of Lassiter’s work is to amplify stories about housing insecurity through an interactive photojournalism project, This is Home, which he shared with interns during this session.
July 16, 2024 – Christine Wright, Behavioral Health Program Manager at the Bradley Free Clinic in Roanoke, VA, joined us to discuss Bradley’s HOPE Initiative - a program that takes an innovative approach to fighting substance abuse disorders. In her role, Wright spends much of her time uniting community partners around the goal of addressing the gaps in prevention, treatment, recovery, crisis intervention, and family support.
From the Bradley Free Clinic website: “The HOPE Initiative is designed to assist individuals battling Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in any form, seeking addiction treatment and recovery resources…The HOPE Initiative is a collaborative effort between law enforcement, healthcare systems, treatment, recovery agencies, and safety net organizations throughout the community.”
The full recordings of each session are available for SHECP Member Schools. For more information, email us at info@shepherdconsortium.org.
Comments