People who work with children and adolescents in social services, child protective agencies, schools, and other critical services are often at risk of burnout, vicarious traumatization, and compassion fatigue. Clinicians and other providers frequently engage in empathic engagement with vulnerable and traumatized children and adolescents, which has been shown to have a deleterious effect on the providers’ mental health. Often, this can be paired with challenging behavior from young clients and in the context of working in settings where providers have too high caseloads with too few supports. This training seeks to help providers better understand signs of burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue and what can be done to prevent and mitigate the effects.

Upon completion of this training, participants will be able to:

• Understand the signs of burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue.
• Identify challenging behaviors of children and adolescents resulting from trauma, neglect, and other adverse childhood events.
• Reflect on practices that mitigate the effects of burnout and vicarious trauma such as enhancing self-care practices, promoting self-regulation, and working on healthy separation between the provider, their emotions and the people they serve.