• •To define what a therapeutic community should be and teach the skill set to keep it going •

• To explore the meaning of justice and injustice as it has been and is exercised by adults with children and other adults

• •To discuss the responsibilities that administration, staff and clients have for and to each other •

• To define vicarious traumatization and methods for responding to and preventing vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout.

• •To enable staff to develop a healthier sense of  justice, fair play and social responsibility in traumatized children.

Violence is a group phenomenon. The violent person is the weak link in a complex web of interaction that culminates in violence after a cascade of previous, apparently nonviolent, events. When violence has occurred, the entire group has failed to prevent it, not just the individuals immediately involved.

The bystander is not innocent.

Social Immunity - What is it that protects us from violence when we are together?

• Best protection against violence is a shared commitment to nonviolence.

• React to every episode of violence as a breach of community norms.

• Best method for nonviolence is democracy.

• The greater the frequency of democratic decision-making, the greater the resistance to violence. 

• Identify and respond to early signs of perpetrator behavior.

• Conflict is the alarm bell of the social immune system.

•  Healthy social immune system:

• Available resources for conflict resolution

  • Willingness to deal with conflict

  • Unwillingness to allow conflict to go unresolved

  • Willingness to exert positive group influence          

• Members of the community come to believe that human behavior is understandable if we understand the full context of individual experience.

• “Hurt people, hurt people”

• Violence to self and others is a symptom of pain.

• Community goal is to minimize pain and make amends before the need to retaliate is acted upon. 

• Most aggressive members of the community are ones most likely to have been previously and severely, injured.

• But understanding is not the same as excusing or overlooking unsafe behavior.

• Unsafe behavior must be identified, confronted and given clear, consistent consequences.

• Consequences designed to instruct and correct, not punish. 

• Violence is contagious

How do we increase “social immunity”?

• Violation of any kind creates bad feelings, the need to retaliate, and ultimately, violence.

•  Need to protect against violation of:

  • Physical space

  • Psychological / emotional space

  • Social space

  • Moral space  

Physical Violence

• Physical/sexual threats

• Physical assault

• Sexual assault

• Suicide

• Homicide

• Risky behavior

• Bullying

  • A specific type of aggression in which

  • The behavior is intended to harm or disturb

  • The behavior occurs repeatedly over time

  • There is an imbalance of power with a more powerful person or group attacking a less powerful one.

  • The asymmetry of power may be physical or psychological

  • The aggressive behavior may be verbal, physical, or psychological.

Psychological Violence:
Burke’s Dirty Dozen

• Sarcasm

• Negative tone of voice

• Negative body language

• Inconsistency

• Favoritism

• Put-downs

• Outbursts

• Public reprimands

• Unfairness

• Apathy

• Inflexibility

• Lack of humor

• Lecturing

Do we practice what we preach?

	Mental Models
	Sanctuary Model of Organizational Change
	Components of the Sanctuary Model
	Social Legacy of Trauma
	Trauma Theory
	Seven Commitments of Sanctuary
	Safety
	Social Safety
	Community Meeting
	Therapeutic Community