º£½ÇÖ±²¥

Sessions in this track centers direct practice with Latine individuals, families, and communities living with identity and immigration-related trauma, fear, and hypervigilance. Sessions explore how social workers and allied helpers can offer care that is trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and honest about the systems shaping clients’ lives right now. Proposals might explore:

• Trauma-informed and healing-centered care for Latine communities
• Working with chronic fear and hypervigilance in clients facing immigration enforcement
• Culturally grounded interventions that foster belonging and resilience
• Supporting mixed-status families through uncertainty and separation
• Safety planning and crisis response when a family member is detained

This track focuses on the larger systems that shape Latine families’ well-being. Sessions explore immigration policy, pushing back against systemic racism, know-your-rights work, organizing, and advocacy, and how social workers, community leaders, and affected communities build power to protect one another. Proposals might explore:Ìý

• Know-your-rights trainings for clients, schools, and workplaces
• Organizing against immigration detention in your city or county
• Using state and local policy to protect immigrant families
• Rapid response networks: building and sustaining community protection
• Showing up and speaking out: public comment and testimony
• Sustaining advocacy through long fights and setbacks

This track honors the healing that already lives in Latine communities. Sessions explore community-based and culturally grounded practice, including promotoras, mutual aid, storytelling, art, spirituality, and tradition as sources of healing, and why these practices belong at the center of mental health care. Proposals might explore:Ìý

• Promotoras and community health workers as trusted healers
• Mutual aid as mental health care: lessons from community networks
• Testimonio and storytelling circles as collective healing
• Art, music, and movement as resistance and restoration
• Faith, spirituality, and ancestral traditions as sources of strength
  
• Using joy and cultural pride as resistance

This track looks at how providers and systems show up for Latine communities. Sessions explore the role of shared culture and lived experience in care, language barriers and interpretation, bilingual and bicultural needs, and building trust across cultural differences. Proposals might explore:Ìý

• What shared culture and lived experience offer in the helping relationship
• Working effectively with interpreters in clinical and agency settings
• Language justice in mental health systems
• Building and keeping a bilingual, bicultural workforce
• Cultural humility in practice: building trust across difference
• Beyond translation: culturally adapted outreach and services

This track is for educators, field instructors, students, and agency leaders preparing the next generation of helpers to serve Latine communities. Sessions explore how classrooms, field placements, and workplaces can build the knowledge, skills, and pipelines the moment calls for. Proposals might explore:Ìý

• Preparing students to practice with immigrant and mixed-status families
• Field instruction and supervision during heightened enforcement
• Recruiting, supporting, and retaining Latine students and social workers
• Teaching anti-oppressive practice and cultural humility
• Community-engaged learning partnerships
• Building pathways from community health work into social work

Those doing this work are carrying fear, grief, and exhaustion of their own. This track explores vicarious trauma and burnout under current administration policies and enforcement, with self-care framed as a professional responsibility and as collective care, not an individual fix. Proposals might explore:Ìý

• Vicarious trauma and moral distress when systems limit what you can offer
• Sustaining yourself while serving communities under threat
• Building a culture of care and accountability in teams and agencies
• Supporting providers who share identities and fears with the people they serve
• Boundaries, rest, and collective care for advocates
• Somatic and community-based practices for burnout

Date & Time: Friday, February 6, 2026, 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Location (Hybrid): Zoom & º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver CAVEA Theater & Jordan Student Success Building (JSSB) 4th Floor

Date: Friday, February 7, 2025
Time: 9:00AM – 2:00PM MST
Location: Zoom Webinar 2025 MBHC CONFERENCE

Welcome Address (presentation)
Dr. Dawn Matera Bassett, MSW, LCSW, PhD., Grants Director at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver

Breakout Sessions 1

Bridging the Gap: Merging Indigenous Wisdom and Contemporary Perinatal Care | Tonya Myles-Day, DSW, LMSW, University at Buffalo, School of Social Work (presentation)

Self Disclosure: A Clinical Elder’s Perspective on its Power for Healing and Power for Wounding | Judith Kay Nelson, MSW, Ph.D. (presentation)

Feature Presentation

RMTAC: Refugee & Migrant Technical Assistance Center for Behavioral Health | Luz Chapa, M.Ed, LPC & Esther Rodriguez, M.S., Clinical Consultant

MINDFULNESS MEDITATION with JaLisa Williams MSW, LCSW

Breakout Sessions 2

Navigating Oppression and Adversity: Resilience and Mental Health Among Indigenous Women During COVID-19 | Kristi Ka`apu, LCSW, DSW Candidate, Tulane University & Rory Glover, MSW, PhD Candidate, Tulane University & Catherine E. O’Connor, PhD, LMSW, Tulane University (presentation)

Decolonizing Sex: Resisting settler sexuality through a sex positive lens. | Kristin Spooner, DSW, Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, Board Certified Sex Therapist, The Radical Social Worker (Private Practice)

EMDR Therapy Approaches with BIPOC Clients and Addressing Culturally Based Trauma and Adversity | Mark Nickerson, LICSW, EMDR Institute Trainer and Clinical Consultant (presentation slides)
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Closing Address

Dawn Matera Bassett, LCSW, Ph.D. and Teiriana Ibarra Event Planning Specialist

Date: February 16, 2024
Time: 10:00am – 2:00pm MST
Location: Zoom Webinar 2024 MBHC CONFERENCE

Keynote Address Presentation

With Dr. Loretta Ross, with The Institute for Democratic Education and Culture

Breakout Sessions 1

Culturally Adaptive Mental Health Practices: Centering the Counter Narrative

Sense-Making: Using Narrative Storytelling Across the Lifespan with Althea Simpson, LCSW, RPT-S

Embodiment Healing techniques with Dr. AT

Building Bridges: The utilization of a narrative humanization approach in the fight to reduce and unlearn stigmatizing belief with Dr. Kristin Spooner, DSW, LICSW,

Breakout Sessions 2

Supervision and the Healing Process

Using Storytelling as a Supervisory Technique with Dr. Omekio Riggins, DSW, LCSW, LCAS-A, CCTP-II, LPN

Authenticity in Practice with Dr. Andrea Daniels, DSW, LCSW-S

Infusing Cultural Humility into your supervision session; promoting Brave Spaces with Manasseh Begay,

Closing Address

Dawn Matera Bassett, LCSW, Ph.D. and Teiriana Ibarra Event Planning Specialist

Friday, February 17, 2023 | 10:00 AM to 2:15 PM (MST)

Auraria Campus | Denver, CO

The 4th Annual Mental & Behavioral Health Conference consisted of three (3) hours and provided knowledge regarding the emerging mental and behavioral health trends in the State of Colorado since the Pandemic. Participants acquired knowledge about workforce resilience and how to best support LGBTQ+ and BIPOC populations.

Participants were:

• Able to discuss the state of the mental and behavioral health crisis in Colorado
• Able to describe services to support mental and behavioral health needs in Colorado
• Learned about emerging Mental and Behavioral Health services to support LGBTQ+ and BIPOC populations
• Understood the importance of addressing Work Force Resilience

This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $1.9M with no funds financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

Conference Schedule

10:00 AM – Welcome Address

10:10 AM – Keynote Address:ÌýState of Mental and Behavioral Health Crisis in Colorado

10:30 AM – Keynote Panel Discussion:ÌýCrisis in Care(moderated by Dr. Tanya Greathouse)

• Speakers:
  • DJ Ida,ÌýAsian Pacific Center
  • Chris Richardson,ÌýMental Health Center of Denver
  • Leanne Rupp,ÌýNational Association of Social Workers – CO Chapter

11:35 AM – Morning Breakout Sessions:ÌýThe Macro Perspective of the Mental Health Crisis

• State Trends in Mental Health Services Needs Through a National Lens Since the PandemicÌýwith Kim Patton, PsyD
• Emerging Trends in Mental and Behavioral Health Due to the PandemicÌýwith Kate Parker, LCSW VP Clinical Care, COO, and Sara Reid, M.A., MHP Grants and Program Evaluation Manager
• Professional Development: The Ins & Outs of Licensure, Continuing Education in CO, & ASWB Exam DevelopmentsÌýwith Leanne Rupp, MSW, LCSW Executive Director

12:30 PM – Lunch and Student Tabling

1:10 PM – Afternoon Breakout Discussion:ÌýEmerging Issues in Mental and Behavioral Health

• Being Hopeful and Resilient in the WorkplaceÌýwith Susan Archuleta, Grants Community Liaison Specialist
• Emerging Issues in the LGBTQ+ Community: ‘Til Death Do Us PartÌýwith Li Brookens, LCSW, CGP, WPATH GEI SOC7 Certified Member, and Virginia Sanford, LPC
• Supporting BIPOC Communities Through Mental and Behavioral Health CrisesÌýwith Sarah Naomi Jones, Center for Trauma and Resilience

2:05 PM – Closing Address

Sponsored by the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Health and Human Sciences, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver Department of Social Work, and º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver Health Institute

Friday, January 29, 2021 |Ìý11:00 AM to 1:00 PM (MST)

Virtual Webinar | Denver, CO

The 3rd Annual Social Work Mental & Behavioral Health Conference was an opportunity for students, faculty, and community members to connect virtually with community and national experts on their response to the mental and behavioral challenges communities are experiencing due COVID-19, the exposed racialized tensions, and this country’s political divide.

Two (2) hours of CE credits pending approval by NASW-CO

Presenters

Welcoming Address:ÌýDr. Dawn Matera-Bassett, MSW, LCSW, HRSA Principle Investigator & Associate Professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver

Keynote Speaker & Moderator:ÌýDr. Julie Clockston, LCSW, National Association of Social Workers Colorado (NASWCO) Chapter President

Presenters:

• Dr. Liz Mendez-Shannon, MSW, Vice President of Program Development at Sewall Child Development Center
• Dr. Pam Begay, LCSW, Psychotherapist, Farmington, New Mexico
• Dr. Larry Curry, LCSW, CAC III, Founder and CEO, Clinical Director of The Curry Center LLC
• Enid Nieves, MSW Candidate, Director of Hotline Services at the Center for Trauma and Resilience
• Sonam Khanal, LCSW, Asian Pacific Development Center

Closing Keynote:ÌýDr. Judith Kay Nelson, MSW, LCSW, Dean Emerita at the Sanville Institute for Clinical Social Work

Closing Remarks:ÌýDr. Joni Handran, LCSW, CAC III