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May
29

Training and technical assistance for service providers

Public Health nurses offer staff training, health education, and consultation to shelters, day centers, transitional housing programs, and other homeless-serving programs in King County. To request any of these services, contact Health Care for the Homeless Network at 206-296-5091.

Get assistance from HCHN staff:

Poster series

Other resources

  • Provide consultations for new and existing homeless programs, including overnight shelters hosted at religious or community facilities
  • Assistance with writing health screening questions on shelter intake tools
  • Download posters and flyers
    Includes topics on flu shots, heat exhaustion, spider bites, tick-related diseases, and West Nile virus.
  • Download:
    • Sanitation & Hygiene Guide for homeless services providers
    • Sanitation & Hygiene Assessment Tool for Homeless Shelters, Day Centers, Villages, and Encampments
    • Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Guidelines for Homeless Service Agencies
    • Tuberculosis Education, Training & Screening for Agency Staff, Volunteers and Clients
    • Tuberculosis Resources and Sample Policies
  • Assistance with writing policies and procedures (TB policies, blood borne pathogens/needle stick injury/sharps, staff health policies, etc.)
  • Environmental assessments- we can give you tips and suggestions about how to make your environment safer and healthier for staff and guests/residents
  • TB and Homelessness Coalition: This group consists of staff and managers of shelters, drop-in centers, and other agencies that serve homeless people, government funders (City and County staff), and the TB Control Program. The TB and Homelessness Coalition meet 2 times a year to share information and ideas abwout the challenges and efforts being made to address tuberculosis in environments where homeless people congregate. For more information about the TB coalition, call 206-263-8422.
  • We can help you prepare for the flu season and with pandemic flu planning.
    • Download: An Influenza Pandemic Planning Guide for Homeless and Housing Service Providers

We offer tailored discussion groups for people experiencing homelessness. Topics include:

  • Health and hygiene
  • Men's health issues
  • Youth health issues
  • Women's health issues
  • Chronic diseases
  • Communicable diseases (and how to avoid them)
  • Preparing for cold and flu season
  • Health Tips for Avoiding Communicable Diseases While Living Homeless. This 17 minute video features practical tips and advice from people who are homeless, shelter staff, and health experts. This is meant to be used as a discussion starter; prepare to have a Q&A session after showing this video.

External web resources:

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person's own motivation and commitment to change. Based on the 2013 edition of Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, this five-week instructor-led course encompasses the purpose, mindset and heart-set, processes, core interviewing skills, and guiding methods of MI. Participants engage in learning through webcasts, written materials, videos, exercises, and practice opportunities.

Watch the training video series:

Implementation and intervention frameworks

Adverse childhood experiences

  • ACEs Connection Network
    ACEs Connection is a social network that … [creates] a safe place and a trusted source where members share information, explore resources and access tools that help them work together to create resilient families, systems and communities.

  • ACES Too High
    A news site that reports on research about adverse childhood experiences, including developments in epidemiology, neurobiology, and the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress.
  • Addiction and Trauma Recovery Integration Model (ATRIUM)
    A 12-session recovery model designed for groups as well as for individuals and their therapists and counselors.

  • Essence of Being Real
    The Essence of Being Real model is a peer-to-peer approach that is particularly useful for survivor groups, first responders, and frontline service providers and agency staff.

  • Risking Connection
    Risking Connection is a model aimed at mental health, public health, and substance abuse staff at various levels of education and training.

  • Sanctuary Model
    The Sanctuary Model is intended for use by programs aimed at assisting children who have experienced the damaging effects of violence, abuse, and trauma.

  • Seeking Safety
    Seeking Safety is designed to be a therapy for trauma, PTSD, and substance abuse. The model can be used in a variety of settings, such as outpatient, impatient, and residential.

  • Trauma, Addiction, Mental Health, and Recovery (TAMAR)
    A structured 10-week intervention combining psycho-educational approaches with expressive therapies. Groups are run inside detention centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and in the community.

  • Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET)
    An educational and therapeutic approach for the prevention and treatment of complex PTSD.

  • Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model (TREM and M-TREM)
    A model intended for trauma survivors, particularly those with exposure to physical or sexual violence. This model is gender-specific: TREM for women and M-TREM for men.

Books

  • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma |Bessel van der Kolk
    In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain's wiring – specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neuro feedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies.

  • In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction | Gabor Maté
    Based on Gabor Maté's two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver's skid row, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts radically re envisions this much misunderstood field by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout (and perhaps underpins) our society; not a medical "condition" distinct from the lives it affects.

  • Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs | Johann Hari
    It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is.

  • Using Trauma Theory to Design Service Systems | Maxine Harris and Roger Fallot This volume presents the essential elements necessary for any system to begin to integrate an understanding about trauma into its core service programs.

Articles

Trainings

  • National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS)
    The CLAS standards are primarily directed at health care organizations; however, individual providers are also encouraged to use the standards to make their practices more culturally and linguistically accessible. The principles and activities of culturally and linguistically appropriate services should be integrated throughout an organization and undertaken in partnership with the communities being served.

  • A Physician's Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care
    Also from the Office of Minority Heath, the cultural competency curricula offers information about a variety of cultural, language services and organizational issues using a variety of engaging case studies and real feedback from providers in health care settings. This program equips physicians with awareness, knowledge, and skills to better treat the increasingly diverse U.S. population they serve and earn CME, CNE and CEU credit.

  • Patient-Centered Guide to Implementing Language Access Services in Healthcare Organizations
    The guide is intended to help healthcare organizations implement effective language access services to meet the needs of their limited-English-proficient patients, and increase their access to health care.
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