**Please note: This is a Continuing Education Course ONLY for students who are enrolled and have completed the Queer Competency Certification program.**

Class Description

 
What does it mean to be a “helping professional” in the current age of social revolution and renewed movement for racial justice? How can students, teachers, and practitioners reconcile social work‘s roots in colonization and collective trauma with our mission to transform society for the better? And what do we do when our own traumas and political disagreements seem to be tearing our communities of practice apart? Join award-winning author, speaker, conflict consultant, and former clinical social worker Kai Cheng Thom for an exploration of Transformative Justice and its implications for work in the helping professions such as social work and psychotherapy. Drawing from her extensive study and practice in the area of trauma-informed community mental health and conflict resolution, Kai Cheng challenges the notion of professional ethics from an anti-oppressive perspective. She outlines the pressing ethical challenges facing helping professionals today and provides an overview of her original Loving Justice conflict resolution framework.

Speaker Bio

Kai Cheng Thom (she/her) is a trans woman of colour who completed her MSW and MSc (Applied) in Couple and Family Therapy at McGill‘s School of Social Work. After four years of practice as a public sector mental health clinician working with trans youth and families in downtown Toronto, she shifted into work as a consultant, coach, and mediator supporting helping professionals and organizations navigate pressing questions of conflict and social justice. She is the innovator of the Loving Justice Framework, a trauma-informed model of conflict resolution rooted in Transformative Justice and prison abolition, as well as the author of four award-winning books in multiple genres.