Understanding Neurodiversity: An Overview and Supporting Youth in Care

This training will provide a basic understanding of neurodiversity and creative support strategies.  Participants will explore challenges of neurodivergent youth in care, including social interaction, communication, sensory processing, and behavior. Through didactic, collaborative, and interactive learning, they will become familiar with evidence-based creative strategies for supporting neurodivergent children and youth in care. 

Participants will:

• Review the fundamental challenges of neurodivergency to support your work with families and youth in care.
• Learn strategies for incorporating strengths-based creative activities for neurodivergent children and families in care.
• Apply the appropriate strategies to improve emotional regulation and co-regulation.

About the trainer:

Stacey Billups, MSW, is licensed as an LMSW in New York State. She earned her Master of Social Work (MSW) at Howard University. Stacey knows firsthand the social-emotional experiences of being a child in the foster care system. Therefore, she made a personal commitment to working with children and youth who have experienced trauma. Her experience includes working in foster care and hospital settings and over twenty-five years as a school-based social worker.

Stacey specializes in the strengths-based approach to working with youth and families, social skills training for neurodiverse children and adolescents, self-regulation strategies, behavior intervention planning, and creative arts-based tools to engage youth in academic settings.

Stacey is a mother of two and a professional artist with a ten-year art studio practice. Stacey believes that marrying the creative arts with counseling has many benefits, including post-traumatic growth, heightening self-awareness, improved social skills, and building healthy connections.

To be eligible for this training:

Participant must be staff, caregiver or volunteer working directly with foster, adoptive or probation involved children, youth and their families in Alameda, Solano, Mendocino, Lake, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Tuolumne and Calaveras only. ALL participants unless a caregiver/resource family must register with a work email address that can be verified; unless the participant is a caregiver. Participants outside of these areas aren't eligible.