Rest + Restore: Provider Compassion Fatigue, Moral Injury & Burnout (4 CEs)

Overview

Spend the day nurturing your heart + mind, as we explore the heavier sides of our work and tend to one another in community (4 CEUs)

Session Focus: Provider Sustainability (4 CE hours)

Provider Resiliency in a Burning World: We will examine counselor wellness and professional sustainability, using Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) to examine current areas of vulnerability, impact and professional satisfaction within our individual roles. Participants reflect on their experiences of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, and explore how resilience is shaped not only by individual coping, but also by relational, cultural, and systemic conditions.

This session supports counselors in exploring sustainable practice (maintaining wellbeing, reducing burnout risk, and strengthening long term resilience) as part of ethical and effective professional practice. It draws from collective care, Black feminist wellness traditions, and liberation psychology to reframe resilience as relational, contextual, and grounded in meaning, connection, and agency.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the impact of trauma-exposed work on counselor wellbeing and professional functioning, including burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress

• Interpret ProQOL results to assess current professional quality of life

• Identify how resilience is shaped by relational, cultural, and systemic factors in addition to individual coping strategies

• Apply a liberatory protective factors framework (connection, boundaries, restoration, meaning, agency) to their professional context

• Develop at least one actionable strategy to support sustainable, culturally responsive counselor wellbeing

Continuing Education will be provided through NBCC. Sankofa Counseling is approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7962. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Sankofa Counseling is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs offered during this day retreat.

Sankofa Counseling, LLC is a culturally specific behavioral health organization located in Portland, Oregon. We were founded in 2017 to address persistent mental health inequities impacting Black and African American communities in Oregon. Our mission is to reduce mental health disparities by increasing access to highly skilled, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive care while strengthening and sustaining the behavioral health workforce.

Our vision is a behavioral health system in which racial justice, clinical excellence, and workforce sustainability coexist — where providers are resourced, supported, and equipped to deliver care that reflects the lived realities of the communities they serve.

We center our work in the values of liberation psychology, cultural humility, stewardship, transparency, racial equity, community care, integrity, and courage. These values guide not only our clinical services but also our leadership development, workforce training, and community facing programs. We believe that sustainable change requires both theory and operationalization — aligning policy, workflow, and decision-making structures with culturally centered and equity-driven practice. Learn more at www.SankofaCounseling.org or on Instagram @SankofaCounseling

Vanessa Washington is the Founder + Clinic Director of Sankofa Counseling, a culturally specific group practice in Portland, Oregon committed to individual and collective healing. She is licensed in Oregon (LPC) and Washington (LMHC), and a Clinical Supervisor with 15+ years providing direct mental health care to individuals, youth and families; she also provides consultation and continuing education for healthcare professionals, educators, and executive leadership across industries.

Vanessa approaches mental health through a structural lens, building community-based healing initiatives designed to address systemic stress and trauma that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. Her approach bridges nervous system regulation, systems analysis, and liberatory frameworks to ensure that individuals and teams are resourced internally while advancing equity externally.

Vanessa holds a BA in Psychology & Spanish, MA in Clinical Counseling, with post-graduate studies in Attachment Focused EMDR (AF-EMDR) and various Somatic interventions for trauma recovery (nervous system regulation, co-regulating touch, somatic resilience + regulation), Cross-cultural effectiveness, facilitating Critical Conversations around Race, and Coaching for Equity.

Michelle Gaither is a leadership facilitator, instructional designer, and equity practitioner with over 15 years of experience across public education, nonprofit leadership, and trauma-informed organizational development. She specializes in cohort-based adult learning that integrates anti-oppressive practice, nervous system awareness, systems analysis, and trauma informed frameworks to strengthen individual effectiveness and collective wellbeing

She has extensive experience designing professional development programs, leading cross-disciplinary consultation, and supporting leaders navigating high-stress, high-accountability environments. Michelle's grounded, relational facilitation style supports individuals, teams, and leaders to engage their work with clarity, courage, and collective responsibility. She creates learning environments where adults can develop trauma-informed lenses while addressing the structural and relational conditions that either support or undermine wellbeing.

Michelle holds a Master of Education in Curriculum & Instruction with dual endorsements in Teacher Leadership and Trauma & Resiliency in K-12 Schools, and is a trained Diversity, Equity and Inclusion facilitator.

Have questions? Contact us at vanessa.washington@sankofacounseling.org