NOTE: This event is specifically for Washington State attendees who are part of the behavioral health workforce.
This session is part of the Social Justice & Inclusion track of the Mental Health Institute.
Join Akansha and Poh for this workshop on articulating the ways anti-oppressive practices accompany us or can be invited more explicitly into our moment-by-moment practices. Catching the movement from broader ideas of social justice into tangible practices and know-how invites us to slow down and come close in describing the multiplicity that surrounds and travels through the conversations and exchanges we participate in. Slowing down is political, it resists exclusion or othering practices, it asks us to creatively seek out the pockets and windows in restrictive systems and ideas to co-create counter practices to the effects and consequences of injustices in ways that invite being seen on one’s own terms and heard in one’s own words.
Contact hours will be available for participants who attend the entire session. The University of Washington is an approved provider of continuing education for DOH licensed social workers, licensed mental health counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, psychologists, chemical dependency professionals, nurses and physicians under the provisions of: WAC 246-809-610, WAC 246-809-620,WAC 246-811-200, WAC 246-840-210, WAC 246-919-460 and WAC 246-924-240.
Poh is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to the practice through multiple experiences and relationships as a narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant. Since 2004 Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018). Poh is currently on the teaching faculty of Dulwich Centre; the teaching faculty & Board of Re-authoring Teaching; honorary clinical fellow of the School of Social Work, University of Melbourne and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Latin American Journal of Clinical Social Work. Poh is a sessional facilitator for KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany; Dokomotive Collective Cologne, Germany; VCA Film and Television, Australia; Attagirl for female and non-binary filmmakers; DocX Archive Lab Duke University, North Carolina and The Flaherty, New York, USA.
Akansha Vaswani Bye, PhD, is an Acting Assistant Professor in the SPIRIT Lab (stands for Supporting Psychosis Innovation through Research, Implementation and Training) at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She grew up in Mumbai and her first learnings as a professional came from individuals and families navigating developmental disabilities. Early in her career, she was introduced to the principles of family-centered care, early intervention, and community-based advocacy. Her interest in narrative practices and systemic change has been at the forefront as she moved into spaces as a researcher, clinician, consultant, and trainer. Her doctoral work focused on drivers of institutional corruption in psychiatry and solutions for reform, particularly the practice of deprescribing and rational prescribing grounded in informed consent. Her current research and implementation work is focused on supporting communities impacted by psychosis, building the family peer workforce, and developing and disseminating culturally responsive principles and practices. She is particularly interested in non-pathologizing interventions and interventions that account for the impact of structural and social determinants of health. Currently, her clinical work is located at the Madison Clinic, a primary care clinic for people living with HIV/AIDS.
