"Can trauma help meet the future needs of children and youth?"

Lou’s Summary:

 

Our keynote speaker said, “We have to reach out to our kids if we want it [recovery] to be sustainable.  I would argue that healthy youth are the only guarantee of sustainability.  Our youth are not our future, but our present.  Yet, they have little or no voice in decisions that will impact them.

 

Our youth need venues where they can tell their stories and begin to heal; not just from natural, but historic and structural trauma.  In some ways, Katrina and Rita were a blessing in that trauma became a household word and healing of trauma became a priority.  However, the trauma caused by the natural disasters only served to exacerbate the old wounds or historic and structural that our youth carry.

 

The logical venue for reaching our youth and allowing them opportunities to heal are the schools.  Yet, most educational institutions in Louisiana are in denial.  They believe we need only to move the children into a learning mode so they can put the trauma behind them.  However, youth traumatized are not learners.  They are distracted easily, cannot focus, and exhibit acting in and acting out behaviors.

 

Turning Point Partners in collaboration with Eastern Mennonite University’s STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) program and Communities In Schools is facilitating trainings for educators so that they may become aware of the impact of trauma on their students.

 

Finally, to the question posed by this presentation: “Can trauma help meet the future needs of children and youth?”  The answer is yes.  When we begin the work of healing and are confident that we can accept the devastation that changed our lives, we build resilience and emerge stronger than prior to the event.  The term used for this phenomenon is Post Traumatic Growth, PTG.

 

 

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Lou Furman
Turning Point Partners
7715 Birch Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
504-866-3046
www.turningpointpartners.com