Work with Us
Toxic stress and trauma can wreak havoc on the health and well-being of individuals and lead to team burnout, turnover, and reduced personal and organizational effectiveness. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We partner with school districts, health systems, and companies to alleviate and address the impacts of trauma and toxic stress on students, patients, and teams. We offer evidence-based trainings and tailored consulting ranging from one-time professional development to intensive multiyear partnerships.
Our team excels at:
Creating a shared understanding of the impact of trauma
Identifying and addressing barriers to employee wellness
Building trauma-informed organizational cultures
Equipping leaders with skills to supervise and manage thriving, well-being focused teams
No matter where you are on the journey to addressing trauma and toxic stress, we will meet you there and equip your team with the resources and tools to go farther. Click and fill out the interest form below and let’s work together!
Our Services
A great place to begin building knowledge and awareness on the science of trauma and its impact on teams and organizations
Deepen your team’s understanding of trauma and explore specific topics such as employee wellness, vicarious trauma, trauma-informed supervision, and community engagement.
Equip your people leaders and administrators with the support needed to implement trauma-informed practices and policies within their teams and organizations
Ensure your policies, procedures and physical environment support trauma-informed practices through our tailored assessments and recommendations
Trainings and Coaching help to increase awareness of trauma, facilitate behavior change, and develop necessary skills and tools to respond differently to trauma
Adoption of trauma-informed policies and procedures ensures that change can be sustained beyond individual leaders or teams
Why Us?
Our unique and proven approach to building trauma-informed teams and organizations. Here is what makes us different than other training and professional development organizations:
Lived and professional experience: Our team of expert facilitators and practitioners bring dozens of years of lived and professional experience in education, healthcare, and nonprofit leadership. Meet our team (link to team page with bios).
Evidence-based: All of our offerings reflect the latest science around trauma, toxic stress and resiliency
Systems-oriented: In order to disrupt persistent racial and communal disparities and cycles of trauma, we need the combination of a grassroots movement and organizational transformation. Our training focuses on helping organizations build internal muscle so they can implement long-term, sustainable cultural change.
One-time trainings
Support for School Counselors
School counselors provide guidance services and support to create school climates where all students thrive. They work diligently to promote equity and access for all students by connecting their school counseling program to the school’s academic mission. School Counselors are the conduit for change in their communities and have vital leadership role in implementing the Trauma informed message. With so much responsibility resting on their shoulders Alive & Well has designed a training to support their work in Trauma-Informed Care. Supporting them in the work of supporting their communities to becoming trauma informed.
Missouri Model Trauma Awareness Training
Our most requested training, “Building Your Trauma Awareness” focuses on how trauma impacts social, emotional and health outcomes.
We explore:
The prevalence and impact of trauma on children’s brain development
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES)
How to help children and families recover from trauma
How we can shift our perspective to understand others’ behaviors through the lens of trauma
The program is offered publicly free of charge or can be brought into your organization. Check our events page for upcoming public trainings or reach out to request a training at your organization.
Train-the-Trainer: Becoming Trauma Responsive
During this interactive training, we go beyond the science of the impact and prevalence of trauma.
Together we will:
Examine systems in which we live and work that perpetuate trauma
Assess our own environments for the impact of trauma
Discuss strategies for building resilience in people and organizations
Please email or call for group rates.
WORKSHOPS
Our team can customize any of these trainings and offerings to meet your school and or organizational objectives, tailoring one-time trainings and workshops to be 60-minutes and up to full-day sessions.
Building Trauma Awareness
Audience:
All members of a school community struggling with teacher and student absenteeism or looking for more crisis prevention methods.
Overview & Expected Outcomes:
The basic trauma awareness training package encourages a fundamental understanding of the types of trauma and how they manifest, the importance of responding vs. reacting, and the exploration of self-regulation and self-care. Educators and leadership alike will be better equipped with the transformational thinking needed to create a more resilient community of care.
What’s Included:
The Basics of Trauma Awareness
What Do I Say?
Power Plans
Educator Well-Being
Total Hours of Training: 8
Building a Community of Care
Audience:
Anyone in a school community seeking to improve student-teacher relationships, reduce rising discipline numbers, and address student absenteeism.
Overview & Expected Outcomes:
The foundation of a trauma-informed school is supportive, unwavering relationships that change the trajectory of trauma for individuals. This training package offers basic trauma awareness, an analysis of community trauma, strategies for building relationships, & tools for trauma-informed communication. This foundational yet strategic training lends itself to less punitive and more restorative communities that create connection and belonging for everyone.
What’s Included:
The Basics of Trauma Awareness
Building Relationships
Tree Facilitation
Giving & Receiving Feedback
Total Hours of Training: 8
Families & Caregivers
Audience:
Families, caregivers, community members
Overview & Expected Outcomes:
Building a trauma-informed school community also involves helping to create trauma-informed families, caregivers, and community members equipping them with tools to advocate for one another.
What’s Included:
The Basics of Trauma Awareness
Understanding Grief & Loss
Self-Care
Power Plans
Total Hours of Training: 8 hours
(Two 1-hour sessions of each; scalable to meet the specific needs of individual districts)
Trauma-Informed Strategy for Leadership
Audience:
Board members, cabinet members, administrators, and other district leaders
Overview & Expected Outcomes:
Supporting a trauma-informed environment requires a shared language around the basics of trauma, an understanding of the role policies & procedures in a community of care, and the ability to lead as your authentic self. It also requires the support of other leaders.
What’s Included:
The Basics of Trauma Awareness
Building Relationships
The Core Principles
Leadership Round Table
Total Hours of Training: 12
(Two hours each of the first three trainings plus four 90-minute round table sessions in collaboration with other districts)
Professional Development Series
We offer multiple professional development series designed to build the knowledge base of your workforce. Each series goes deeper on specific topics and helps your team members progress in their understanding of and skills to employ trauma-informed care at work and in life. To see our full menu of options, please click below.
Trauma 101
This three-part series is ideal for teams looking to build foundational understanding of trauma-awareness and care.
Part 1: What Are Trauma & Toxic Stress?
Trauma and stress impact the way each of us move through the world, including how we show up at work. This training builds a common understanding of trauma and its impact on our brains, bodies, and engagement with the world around us.
Part 2: Self-Care is the Best Care
Interfacing with customers and community members is critical and can take a toll on your own mental health and well-being. To support others, individuals must first be healthy and well themselves. This training imparts the importance of prioritizing your own self-care, strategies for making self-care a daily activity, and ways to increase community care amongst staff to build an organizational culture of care.
Part 3: Mapping & Addressing Stress in Our Workplace
To effectively address the trauma and toxic stress impacting an organization, we must first unpack the historical and community traumas as well as day-to-day trauma and stressors your clients and staff are facing. Together we map and analyze the unique context of your organization and identify areas to address.
Supervisor Series
Leaders and supervisors have a unique role to play in building and sustaining trauma-informed teams and organizations. The following professional development are designed to build those unique skills and address challenges faced by supervisors and people leaders.
Building Skills for Difficult Conversations
When engaging with customers or colleagues navigating trauma and toxic stress, finding the right words can feel impossible. This interactive session explores brain functioning and communication in moments of stress. Participants then practice navigating difficult conversations with colleagues and customers.
Giving and Receiving Meaningful Feedback
There will always be moments of concern, conflict, and disagreement in relationship. Developing tools and strategies to give and receive feedback effectively is critical. We will unpack what barriers prevent individuals from giving and/or receiving feedback in a trauma-informed way and practice giving and receiving feedback surrounding difficult, hypothetical workplace situations.
Leadership Coaching
Looking for additional support for your team outside of a group setting? We offer 1:1 coaching for people leaders to help them:
Connect the dots of what they learned in training to their daily work, leadership, and life
Troubleshoot challenges occurred when implementing their action plans
Answer questions that arise in daily implementation of building a trauma-informed team
Workplace assessments and policy reviews
Looking to go beyond trainings to assess your policies and workplaces? We have a team for that. These services are ideal for workplace leaders, particularly in Human Resources, Operations, and/or Facilities.
Is Your Physical Environment Trauma-Informed?
The physical environment can promote or prohibit a sense of safety, calm, and de-escalation for staff and clients. Our team will:
Share best practices in creating trauma-informed spaces
Understand how your space is used by your team, customers, and/or stakeholders
Assess your workplace(s) through the lens of trauma-informed spaces
Identify what is working well and provide recommendations for changes you can make to be more trauma-informed
Are Your Policies Trauma-Informed?
Trauma-informed policies maximize employee safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. Out team will:
Share best practices in creating trauma-informed policies
Review all your organizational policies through the lens of trauma-informed policies and systems
Identify what is working well and provide recommendations for changes you can make to be more trauma-informed