This free workshop is brought to you by the Counselling Psychology program area in ECPS.
March 3, 2016 | 4:30 – 7:15 PM
Room 310, Neville Scarfe Building, 2125 Main Mall
REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT AND COUNSELLING:
TRAUMA–INFORMED PRACTICE: THE BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND AND WORK WITH REFUGEE CLIENTS
Mariana Martinez Vieyra, M.Ed., RCC (Provincial Refugee Mental Health Coordinator)
Matias Hacker, MA, RTC, Expressive Arts Therapist/Counsellor (Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture (VAST))
The goal of the workshop is to inform counsellors and counsellors-in-training on developing a strengths-based, anti-oppressive, and decolonizing practice while working with refugee clients. Participants have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with trauma-informed services to help refugees.
The workshop is designed to help participants understand the sociopolitical factors and trauma experiences faced by refugees and recognizing their mental health and resettlement challenges. Many refugees, unfortunately, have to deal with prejudice and discrimination in the host country/community.
This will be a great opportunity to discuss the possibilities of enhancing our cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity and explore issues such as ‘minority within minority’ (e.g., country of birth, sexual orientation, religion, social class differences among refugees), acknowledge the role of community in the healing process, and identify available resources and gaps.
The key presenter, Mariana Martinez Vieyra, is a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and the UBC Counseling Psychology Masters Program. She has 25 years of experience working with survivors of political violence and torture. Raised and educated in multicultural Buenos Aires during the times of the Argentinean dictatorship Mariana learned to recognize the impact that torture has on individuals, relationships and families, and thus became very aware of the crucial role that community- building and social justice play in the healing process. Not surprisingly, as soon as she moved to Vancouver 13 years ago, she joined The Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture (VAST).
Mariana sees her work with clients as a way to raise her voice against torture, to resist social injustice and to fight for clients’ human rights as well as their psychosocial well-being. For the last 13 years at VAST she has seen clients both individually and in groups, was the VAST Group Therapy Program Coordinator from June 2008- to January 2011 and the Clinical Supervisor from January 2011 to April 2014. In early 2014, Mariana was part of the working committee in charge of re-developing the VAST Clinical Program.
In December 2015, Mariana became the Provincial Refugee Mental Health Coordinator, a position funded by the Province of British Columbia as part of the Refugee Readiness Project launched mostly in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. In this new role Mariana provides training and consultation on trauma counselling and trauma-informed settlement work to all workers assisting refugees who arrive in BC, and develops curricula for trauma-informed support groups for refugees and designs vulnerability screening tools for early assessment of newly-arrived refugees. She is also in charge of the recently launched Provincial Toll-Free Refugee Mental Health line.