Racial Equity Intelligence Series
Online Course
"Racial Equity Intelligence Series" is a live, online intensive workshop to move recovery support service providers working in a variety of settings beyond a superficial understanding to speaking actionably and concretely about racial equity issues. The series has three parts—the seed, the sprout, and the bloom—because all are essential.
Many community-based and clinical recovery support services providers have attended trainings recently where they received a lot of seed knowledge, learning new terms, and getting new ideas. However, these trainings may not have nurtured ideas enough to sprout, or feel rooted. This series will prioritize an arc of learning to ensure folks feel more comfortable talking about racial equity, fulfill the "what's next question," and encourage ongoing learning.
The Seed
The Seed session will provide an overview of critical racial equity terms, clearly define equity, address layers of racism, and define the history and roots of race and racism leading to white-dominant culture social constructs. To help participants counter the dehumanization of marginalized groups, during this session we will work to disrupt many external and subconscious oppressive norms rooted in:
- Societal levels: personal, institutional, systematic, cultural
- Visibility and invisibility: overt, covert
- Temporal influences: historical, periodic/occasional, every day/ongoing
- Intrapersonal/interpersonal: me, us, them
- Internalized superiority/inferiority
- Dynamics of invalidation/forms of denial
The Sprout
The Sprout session will review strategies to de-escalate and productively talk about race, racism, and racial equity. It will be beneficial for people attempting to communicate and develop strategies to address anti-oppressive practices within an organization. The session will cover racial anxiety and how to cope with it, tackling a significant barrier to talking about race and racism. We will cover strategies for communicating effectively and strategically about racial trauma, race, and racism and benefits of racial equity including:
- Honoring and addressing racial trauma, race-based traumatic stress, insidious trauma, and historical trauma
- Creating more opportunities for people with diverse lived experiences to access services
- Increasing authenticity in the workplace, encouraging retention, and improving recruitment
- Improving service provision and opportunities for people to engage with reduced fear of oppression
The Bloom
The Bloom session will cover integration of racial-equity initiatives into recovery organizations, behavioral health organizations and the necessary policy changes. Participants will be asked to bring data from their organizations to review and be given a brief audit form to complete before the session. The facilitators will work with participants to identify next steps and a straightforward implementation strategy for racially equitable practices.
Meet the Instructors
Ashley Stewart, PhD, MSW, LSW is an Adjunct Expert and Trainer & Curriculum Development Specialist at C4 Innovations. She received her PhD from The Ohio State University, College of Social Work and her Master’s degree at Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor at Temple University, College of Public Health, School of Social Work where she trains interdisciplinary students about social justice theories and frameworks and translational skills for anti-oppressive practice. Ashley provides racial equity training, consultation, and support and understands and respects the intricacies inherent in equity-centered work. Her research includes assessing intersections of identity, structural oppression, health and mental health, and policy. In addition to advanced study of the consequences and causes of identity-based oppression, Ashley supports implementation of anti-oppressive practices at organizational, structural, programmatic, and clinical interventions.
Livia Davis, MSW, Chief Learning Officer at C4 Innovations, has more than twenty-five years of leadership and management experience and 14 years of experience as a direct service provider working within recovery communities and housing, recovery-oriented systems, behavioral and primary health care, homeless services, supportive housing, and residential treatment for people experiencing co-occurring disorders. She is responsible for development and management of learning strategies and organizational capabilities needed to align with C4’s strategic directions to advance equitable access to recovery, wellness, and housing stability. Livia provides recovery-informed training and technical assistance and facilitates large-scale systems transformation efforts with partners and clients. She serves as C4’s project lead for SAMHSA’s Opioid Response Network supporting states to address opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery. Livia also works to implement anti-racist practices in the recovery and behavioral health fields, engaging with leaders to foster critical conversations and examine structures, policies, practices, systems, and beliefs that have perpetuated racial inequities in accessing recovery support services. Previously, Livia served as Project Director for SAMHSA’s Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS), a national initiative to advance wide-scale adoption of recovery-oriented supports, services, and systems for people with substance use disorders and mental health conditions.
Training Certificates
Certificates of Completion are awarded to participants who have attended all 3 sessions, completed all required learning activities, scored higher than 80% on each weekly quiz, and completed the course evaluation form and certificate request form. 9 hours of continuing education credit will be awarded upon completion of this course through ASWB, NAADAC, and NBCC. Certificates will be emailed directly to participants roughly two weeks after the completion of the final webcast.
Group Registration
If you are registering five or more people from one organization for a course, please email us for a discounted rate.
Scholarships
Accommodations
If you need accommodations for disability, please contact C4’s Managing Director Rachel Ehly.
Grievances
If you would like to report a complaint, please email C4's Senior Trainer Ken Kraybill or Managing Director Rachel Ehly.
C4 Innovations, Provider #1457, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. C4 Innovations maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 10/17/2020 to 10/17/2023. Social workers completing this course receive 9 continuing education credits.
C4 Innovates has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6576. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. C4 Innovates is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
This course has been approved by C4 Innovates as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #100990, C4 Innovates is responsible for all aspects of their programing.
Who Should Take These Courses
Staff at all levels of health and human service agencies, behavioral health organizations, and recovery-centered organizations.
Learning Objectives
As a result of this workshop, participants will have:
- Actionably assessed their individual positionality to oppressive constructs
- Created a visual map to understand their positionality
- Gained knowledge and awareness of systems perpetuating oppression
- Reviewed internal and organizational practices and policies that may be upholding forms of oppression
- Engaged in thought exercises to see opportunities for change
- Examined data such as retention, stakeholder, leader, and participant data
- Reviewed mission and communities served
- Completed an audit that will give guidance to the next steps
Course Facts
Dates: March 31, April 7, April 14
Time: 12-3 pm ET
Practice Level: Intermediate
Cost: $550
CE Credits:
- ASWB: 9 hours
- NAADAC: 9 hours
- NBCC: 9 hours
More Information
Since 2019, C4 Innovations has expanded our racial equity work to implement anti-racist practices in recovery. Our goal is to ensure that people in recovery who are most systemically marginalized by race—especially Black, Indigenous, and Latino/a/e/x people—can equitably access culturally-informed recovery support services for their chosen recovery pathway. Without racial equity, we will never achieve lasting changes that ensure equal access to housing, services and supports, opportunity, and well-being for all.
Our commitment to working with recovery support service providers and communities to achieve equitable outcomes for persons and families affected by substance use disorders is centered around four fundamental principles:
- Centering lived experience of marginalized communities
- Prioritizing strengths-based, community-centered processes and practices
- Addressing the role of racial trauma and its relationship to substance use disorder
- Aligning racial equity and recovery principles and practices
Learn More
- To learn more about bringing racial equity to recovery support services, watch an event recording hosted by Ashley Stewart and Livia Davis.
- Advancing Racial Equity in Recovery and Behavioral Health (PDF)
- Race Equity and Recovery—podcast series
- Morning Cup of Equity—podcast series
- Power Hour: Roadmap to Racial Equity in Behavioral Health and Recovery Organizations—webinar recording (58:45 minutes)
- Equity and Recovery at C4 Innovations
- Equity and Homelessness at C4 Innovations
- Equity Initiatives at C4 Innovations
- Subscribe to receive C4's newsletter and training updates
