News and Current Activities

Kaiser Permanente Practitioner Scholars Professional Development
Project for Mental Health and School Counseling Professionals
Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
“Healing Trauma, Fostering Equity, and Building Resiliency”

Kaiser Permanente and Trinity Washington University are announcing the continuation of the Kaiser Permanente Practitioner Scholars Professional Development Program for clinical mental health and school counselors serving Wards 7 and 8 of the District of Columbia and other underserved areas.

Kaiser Permanente is providing funding for a third year. The professional development program will provide current best practices and evidence-based research instruction for a cohort of practitioners, who will receive mentoring and professional development to improve cultural competency, to become aware of the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), trauma and its manifestations such as racialized trauma and generational trauma. Practitioners will also gain advanced counseling techniques in the Expressive Arts and other Indigenous healing techniques. After completion of the course requirement, practitioners will earn graduate-level credits that can be used to maintain their professional certifications and licensure.

Need and Purpose

COVID-19 created, what has been called “a tsunami” of mental health challenges for African Americans and other marginalized and underserved populations, who were already dealing with the effects of systemic and structural racism, racial and ethnic inequality, and a growing wealth gap. The pandemic compounded the impact of trauma on children and youth, who were already facing many challenges that impacted their overall mental health, specifically their emotional and social development and their ability to learn. School Counseling and mental health professionals need to be better prepared for the additional challenges that children, and their parents, guardians, and caregivers, as they encounter “a new normal”.  Kaiser Permanente recognizes this need and has provided critical funding to support the initiative developed by Trinity Washington University to provide professional development for mental health and school counseling practitioners. The cost of tuition, books, and supplies for each scholar will be provided through the grant.

There is a significant need in the District of Columbia for a greater number of practitioners who are culturally competent as defined by the communities they serve, and who are trauma-informed, and trauma-responsive clinical mental health counselors and school counselors.  Because of the complexities of issues due to the two pandemics, practitioners must enlarge their “toolkit” of strategies, techniques, and interventions to support children and youth, and their parents, guardians, and caregivers.  Through this project, Trinity and Kaiser are prioritizing the need to support current mental health practitioners/ professionals and school counselors who are working with community members who have been impacted by two pandemics.

Frameworks and Models

The professional development and continuing education will be based on the transformative theoretical framework and model of Building Community Resilience (BCR) that addresses both Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adverse Community Environments (ACEs). Additionally, Trinity and Kaiser have developed a circular and transformative model for delivering professional development/Continuing Education. This framework provides an understanding that the adversity and trauma that individuals encounter lie also within a larger community context that recognizes systemic inequities that compound the challenges encountered by individuals (Ellis & Dietz, 2017). Therefore, those practitioners who will be selected to become Kaiser Scholars, after completing their continuing education/professional development, will continue to be mentored by Trinity counseling faculty for one year. Kaiser Practitioner Scholars will also become mentors to Trinity Counseling students and will contribute a specified number of service hours to any future programming sponsored by Trinity, to provide support services and programs for children and their families from Wards 7 and 8.

Other Current Activities

  • Collaborating with community partners using the Building Community Resilience (BCR) model
  • Continuing to develop community partners in the metropolitan area, with a focus on the District of Columbia
  • Developing a speakers bureau from the research team on ACEs to make presentations on and off campus
  • Creating ACEs informed tracks and continuing education courses
  • Assisting faculty with developing ACEs/trauma learning outcomes for appropriate courses