Training and technical assistance for service providers
Public Health nurses offer staff training, health education, and consultation to shelters, day centers, transitional housing programs, and other homeless-serving programs in King County. To request any of these services, contact Health Care for the Homeless Network at 206-296-5091.
Get assistance from HCHN staff
Poster series
- Hepatitis A health warning for people living homeless
Hepatitis A (Hep A) is a virus that spreads easily. Many people don't know that they have Hep A so they spread it without knowing.- التهاب الكبد A: تحذيرات صحية للأشخاص الذين يعيشون في الملاجئ (Arabic)
- 甲型肝炎: 针对无家可归人群的健康警告 (Chinese, Simplified)
- A형 간염: 홈리스 생활자를 위한 건강 경고 (Korean)
- Hepatitis A: Advertencia de salud para personas que están sin hogar (Spanish)
- For encampment operators: Hep A prevention flyer
- How to clean up vomit, diarrhea and blood
- ትውከትን፣ ተቅማጥንና ደምን እንዴት ማፅዳት ይቻላል (Amharic)
- 如何清理 呕吐物、腹泻物和血液 (Chinese, Simplified)
- 토사물, 설사 및 혈액 청소 방법 (Korean)
- Paano maglinis ng suka, dumi at dugo (Tagalog)
- ተምላስ፣ ውጽኣትን ደምን ብኸመይ ከም ዝጽረ (Tigrinya)
- Wound infections: Alert for people living homeless
- Group A Strep: Health warning for homeless service providers
- How to reduce flu in shelters
- Shigella: Highly contagious diarrheal illness
Other resources
- Stop Germs! video series: These 45 minute-total video series features tips and motivation from shelter staff, clients, and local health experts on communicable disease prevention in settings that serve homeless people. You may also call us at 206-263-8422 to obtain a DVD.
- Creating a Health Conscious Culture at Your Homeless Program site
- Visit our Environmental Health resources for homeless service providers page for resources on cleaning, sanitation, air quality and environmental conditions.
- Provide consultations for new and existing homeless programs, including overnight shelters hosted at religious or community facilities
- Assistance with writing health screening questions on shelter intake tools
- Download posters and flyers
Includes topics on flu shots, heat exhaustion, spider bites, tick-related diseases, and West Nile virus. - Download:
- Assistance with writing policies and procedures (TB policies, blood borne pathogens/needle stick injury/sharps, staff health policies, etc.)
- TB and Homelessness Coalition: This group consists of staff and managers of shelters, drop-in centers, and other agencies that serve homeless people, government funders (City and County staff), and the TB Control Program. The TB and Homelessness Coalition meet 2 times a year to share information and ideas abwout the challenges and efforts being made to address tuberculosis in environments where homeless people congregate. For more information about the TB coalition, call 206-263-8422.
- We can help you prepare for the flu season and with pandemic flu planning.
We offer tailored discussion groups for people experiencing homelessness. Topics include:
- Health and hygiene
- Men's health issues
- Youth health issues
- Women's health issues
- Chronic diseases
- Communicable diseases (and how to avoid them)
- Preparing for cold and flu season
- Health Tips for Avoiding Communicable Diseases While Living Homeless. This 17 minute video features practical tips and advice from people who are homeless, shelter staff, and health experts. This is meant to be used as a discussion starter; prepare to have a Q&A session after showing this video.
External web resources
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person's own motivation and commitment to change. Based on the 2013 edition of Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, this five-week instructor-led course encompasses the purpose, mindset and heart-set, processes, core interviewing skills, and guiding methods of MI. Participants engage in learning through webcasts, written materials, videos, exercises, and practice opportunities.
Watch the training video series:
Implementation and intervention frameworks
- A Comprehensive Approach to Trauma Intervention | Carmela J. DeCandia, Psy.D., Kathleen Guarino, L.M.H.C.; and Rose Clervil, M.S.W.,American Institutes for Research
This brief addresses the need for a comprehensive approach to trauma intervention across service settings. In doing so, it defines these complementary approaches, identifies core principles and current practice for each, and discusses how both are being integrated across service sectors.
- ARC – Attachment, Regulation, and Competency: A Comprehensive Framework for Interventions with Complexly Traumatized Youth
A framework for intervention with youth and families who have experienced multiple and/or prolonged traumatic stress. Includes a link to resources for those interested in setting up an ARC training.
- CARE: Child Adult Relationship Enhancement | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network CARE is a skill-based intervention to enhance the adult-child relationship. Skills are taught by live coaching and caregivers.
Adverse childhood experiences
- ACEs Connection Network
ACEs Connection is a social network that … [creates] a safe place and a trusted source where members share information, explore resources and access tools that help them work together to create resilient families, systems and communities.
- ACES Too High
A news site that reports on research about adverse childhood experiences, including developments in epidemiology, neurobiology, and the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress.
- Addiction and Trauma Recovery Integration Model (ATRIUM)
A 12-session recovery model designed for groups as well as for individuals and their therapists and counselors.
- Essence of Being Real
The Essence of Being Real model is a peer-to-peer approach that is particularly useful for survivor groups, first responders, and frontline service providers and agency staff.
- Risking Connection
Risking Connection is a model aimed at mental health, public health, and substance abuse staff at various levels of education and training.
- Sanctuary Model
The Sanctuary Model is intended for use by programs aimed at assisting children who have experienced the damaging effects of violence, abuse, and trauma.
- Seeking Safety
Seeking Safety is designed to be a therapy for trauma, PTSD, and substance abuse. The model can be used in a variety of settings, such as outpatient, impatient, and residential.
- Trauma, Addiction, Mental Health, and Recovery (TAMAR)
A structured 10-week intervention combining psycho-educational approaches with expressive therapies. Groups are run inside detention centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and in the community.
- Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET)
An educational and therapeutic approach for the prevention and treatment of complex PTSD.
- Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model (TREM and M-TREM)
A model intended for trauma survivors, particularly those with exposure to physical or sexual violence. This model is gender-specific: TREM for women and M-TREM for men.
Books
- The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma |Bessel van der Kolk
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain's wiring – specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neuro feedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies.
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction | Gabor Maté
Based on Gabor Maté's two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver's skid row, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts radically re envisions this much misunderstood field by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout (and perhaps underpins) our society; not a medical "condition" distinct from the lives it affects.
- Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs | Johann Hari
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is.
- Using Trauma Theory to Design Service Systems | Maxine Harris and Roger Fallot This volume presents the essential elements necessary for any system to begin to integrate an understanding about trauma into its core service programs.
Articles
- Shelter from the Storm: Trauma-Informed Care in Homelessness Services Settings| Elizabeth Hopper, Ellen Bassuk, and Jeffery Olivet
The authors clarify the definition of TIC, discuss what is known about TIC based on an extensive literature review, review case examples of programs implementing TIC, and discuss implications for practice, programming, policy, and research.
- The Many Layers of Post-Traumatic Growth: Research and insight into the concept of growth as a potential consequence of grappling with trauma| Richard Tedeschi PhD
Dr. Tedeschi, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, talks about post-traumatic growth, why some people seem to experience it while others don't, and how it can help transform a person's life into something far better than ever imagined.
Trainings
- Ken Kraybill | Director of training for t3, the Center for Social Innovation's training institute dedicated to improving care to marginalized and vulnerable people
Ken Kraybill develops curricula and provides training nationally and abroad on topics including motivational interviewing, supervision, outreach and engagement, tenancy support, trauma-informed care, and renewal for care providers.
- Laura van Dernoot Lipsky | The Trauma Stewardship Institute
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, founder and director of The Trauma Stewardship Institute and author of Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others, has worked directly with trauma survivors for over 28 years.
- Rebekah Demirel L.Ac. | Founder of Trauma Integration Programs, serves on the planning council for Seattle King County Healthcare for the Homeless
Trauma Integration Programs offers a selection of training workshops, including secondary trauma integration, de-escalation and emergency response procedures.
- The Trauma Center | Developing Trauma-Informed Services for Families Experiencing Homelessness: An Interactive DVD and Guide
This interactive training DVD and manual focuses on the relationship between homelessness and traumatic stress and how to apply trauma concepts to providers' daily work.
- National Health Care for the Homeless Council & Clinician's Network
HCH 101, and many resources for adapting your practice for individuals living homeless.
- National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS)
The CLAS standards are primarily directed at health care organizations; however, individual providers are also encouraged to use the standards to make their practices more culturally and linguistically accessible. The principles and activities of culturally and linguistically appropriate services should be integrated throughout an organization and undertaken in partnership with the communities being served.
- A Physician's Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care
Also from the Office of Minority Heath, the cultural competency curricula offers information about a variety of cultural, language services and organizational issues using a variety of engaging case studies and real feedback from providers in health care settings. This program equips physicians with awareness, knowledge, and skills to better treat the increasingly diverse U.S. population they serve and earn CME, CNE and CEU credit.
- Patient-Centered Guide to Implementing Language Access Services in Healthcare Organizations
The guide is intended to help healthcare organizations implement effective language access services to meet the needs of their limited-English-proficient patients, and increase their access to health care.
- Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness
Local information and statistics about homelessness. Information about the one night count, advocacy information and encouragement, and much more.
- National Alliance to End Homelessness
A nationwide federation of public, private, and nonprofit organizations devoted to ending homelessness. Includes discussion forum.
- National Center for Homeless Education
Best practices in addressing the educational needs of homeless youth and children.