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📆 Friday, March 27th
🕰️ 7 pm - 9 pm (2 CEs) - Cindy Bautista-Thomas, PhD, LCSW, RYT & Ancy Lewis, LCSW
Nurturing Resilience: Healing-Centered Practices for Social Workers
Social work is sacred work that calls for courage, compassion, and deep connection. Yet the very heart of this calling can leave us feeling stretched and drained without intentional care.
Nurturing Resilience is a powerful two hour workshop that invites social workers and helping professionals to pause, replenish, and awaken their inner strength.
Guided by the transformative practices of healing centered engagement and the signature Velocity Visions approach of mindfulness, storytelling, and cultural awareness, this experience blends reflection with action. Participants will explore the power of healing centered practice, engage in a guided journaling experience to spark self awareness and emotional renewal, and learn practical strategies to inspire growth and resilience in themselves and the communities they serve.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to
Articulate the importance of healing-centered practices in social work, identifying at least two benefits for both clients and practitioners.
Learn and apply a specific journaling technique to enhance self-awareness and emotional regulation, demonstrating an understanding of its potential impact on their practice.
Describe the concept of post-traumatic growth and identify at least one strategy to integrate it into their work with clients, promoting resilience and empowerment.
📆 Saturday, March 28th
🕰️ 10 - 12 am (2 CEs) Emily George, LCSW, MS.Ed.
Collective Healing Across Cultures: Building Bridges for Resilient Communities
Workshop Description:
When schools and communities face systemic stress, loss, and change, healing together becomes essential. This experiential workshop explores collective healing practices from diverse cultural traditions—talking circles, rhythm-making, storytelling, ritual—and examines how they foster resilience and connection.
Participants will experience healing activities firsthand, reflect on their own cultural and professional contexts, and learn strategies for respectfully adapting these practices for youth, school, and community settings. Together, we will cultivate tools for renewal, resist burnout through collective care, and leave with a concrete action step to integrate community-centered healing into daily practice.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will:
Identify and describe collective healing practices from a range of cultural traditions, recognizing their core elements and purposes.
Experience and reflect on at least two collective healing activities to deepen personal and professional understanding of their impact.
Develop strategies to adapt culturally rooted healing practices for school or community settings in a way that is trauma-informed and culturally respectful.
Commit to one action step for integrating collective, community-centered healing into their work with youth and colleagues.
🕰️ 3 - 5 pm ( 2 CEs) Paula McMillan-Perez, LCSW
Facing Professional Fears: A Multi-Systemic Approach to Countertransference in Youth Mental Health Work
Are you carrying the weight of your clients' pain? Feeling overwhelmed by systemic pressures while trying to show up fully for the young people in your care?
This workshop offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding and managing countertransference in youth mental health work. Moving beyond traditional individual-focused models, this training explores how personal reactions intersect with systemic pressures, unprocessed grief, and the current political climate to create professional fears that can impact our effectiveness.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Define countertransference within a multi-systemic framework
Identify personal triggers and patterns in their client work
Recognize how systemic pressures contribute to professional fears and reactions
Develop concrete strategies for managing countertransference in real-time
Create a personal action plan for ongoing self-awareness and professional growth
🕰️ 7 - 8 pm (1 CE) Cindy Bautista-Thomas, PhD, LCSW, RYT & Ancy Lewis, LCSW
Co-Creating Rituals of Renewal: Building Collective Healing in Social Work Practice ( 1 CEU)
This one-hour experiential workshop invites social workers and mental health professionals to explore the power of ritual as a tool for healing, connection, and social justice.
Through reflection, storytelling, and collaborative creation, participants will co-design a simple collective ritual that fosters renewal and belonging within helping communities.
Drawing from healing-centered engagement, emotional intelligence, and culturally responsive practice, this session highlights how intentional rituals can strengthen practitioner well-being, enhance cultural humility, and promote anti-oppressive approaches to care.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Identify the role of ritual and collective practice in supporting emotional well-being and resilience among social workers.
Demonstrate understanding of how co-created rituals can promote cultural humility, belonging, and anti-oppressive social work practice.
Apply at least one ritual or reflective practice to enhance self-care, emotional intelligence, and professional sustainability in clinical or community-based settings.
📆 Sunday, March 29th
🕰️ 10 - 12 pm (2 CEs) Crystal L. Gauen, LCAT
No Silver Linings and Honoring the Good Enough:
Supporting Grief Across the Continuum Grief is a natural, though painful response to loss. It is not something that needs fixing or curing. It requires space, energy and attention. At times, our own insecurities or big feelings about death and grief can impact our ability to support youth experiencing grief. Worries about not saying the right thing, not understanding the impact of a loss on a child, cultural implications, the impact of non-death losses, stigma, countertransference and much more can get in the way of our ability to support grieving youth. In this session, we will examine grief from a developmental, cultural and humanistic perspective in order to distinguish the differences in child, adolescent and adult grief. Common grief theories will be discussed in order to better understand the trajectory of typical grief. Different types of loss that impact youth and families will be discussed including their influence on the grieving process of youth. Participants will be given an introduction to skills, tools and interventions useful in working with grieving children, adolescents and their families. Self- care for clinicians working with grievers is vital. Strategies for maintaining self-care will be discussed.
Learning Objectives
Identify core concepts of grief from developmental, cultural and theoretical perspectives.
Recognize the impact of specific factors on the trajectory of grief
Develop and practice strategies to support grieving youth
🕰️ 1 - 2 (1 CE) - Cindy Bautista-Thomas, PhD, LCSW, RYT
Mindful Moments: Using Mindfulness to Support the Healing and Growth of Young People
This one-hour continuing education workshop invites social workers to explore how mindfulness can strengthen their work with children, adolescents, and young adults. Participants will discover accessible, culturally responsive practices that promote emotional regulation, resilience, and self-awareness in young people navigating stress, trauma, or everyday challenges. Through brief guided experiences and practical tools, social workers will learn how to integrate mindfulness into clinical, school, and community settings to foster empowerment and well-being.
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Define mindfulness and describe its relevance to social work practice with young clients.
Identify at least two evidence-based benefits of mindfulness for youth mental health, including improvements in self-regulation and stress reduction.
Demonstrate at least one brief mindfulness activity appropriate for use with children or adolescents.
Develop a plan to integrate a mindfulness strategy into their own practice setting while maintaining ethical and culturally responsive care
What You’ll Gain
By the end of this retreat, you’ll walk away with:
10 Continuing Education Units (NYS LMSW/LCSW)
Practical tools for navigating loss, grief, and systemic challenges in your work.
Healing-centered practices to sustain your mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Strategies for cultivating resilience and renewal through rest, mindfulness, and community care.
A supportive network of peers committed to equity, compassion, and thriving in social work.
The Experience You’ll Get
Our retreat is designed to be interactive, restorative, and community-focused. You can expect:
Expert-led teaching and guided healing practices.
Real conversations about the challenges facing social workers today.
Restorative activities, including mindfulness, reflection, and group connection.
Space to pause, reset, and reimagine how you approach your work.
Who Should Attend
This retreat is open to youth-serving social workers and mental health professionals seeking renewal, connection, and healing-centered strategies. It’s especially valuable for those navigating burnout, systemic barriers, or the emotional toll of caregiving roles.
How It Works
Register online and receive an instant confirmation email.
Receive retreat information and materials before your arrival.
Join us in Stony Point ready to reflect, restore, and reimagine alongside peers.
Leave with practices, strategies, and community support you can carry forward.