Ho’oikaika Annual Conference

This track seeks to increase participants’ capacity to work with Native Hawaiian clients by providing culturally relevant tools to improve service delivery and strengthen protective factors for families. Native Hawaiian’s are disproportionately represented in many systems including child welfare and juvenile justice; it is essential that health and human service professionals understand how to incorporate specific Native Hawaiian strategies when working with children and families. Presenters will address how protective factors align with Native Hawaiian cultural values and traditional healing practices. Questions to explore may include: What did our ancestors practice in building protective factors?  How can we strengthen our practice by blending the wisdom of our ancestors with the protective factor framework?  What are the best and promising practices for incorporating Native Hawaiian values into service delivery?

This track will highlight how to effectively provide trauma-informed interventions that acknowledge, respect, and integrate families’ cultural values, beliefs and practices. Interventions for diverse cultures emphasize an understanding of a person’s background, ethnicity and belief system while incorporating cultural sensitivity, respect, differences in opinions, values and attitudes of various cultures and different types of people. A trauma-informed culture includes an understanding of culture, history, race, gender, location and language with an acknowledgement of the impact of structural inequity and responsiveness to the unique needs of diverse communities.

This track will provide information and tools to support providers in advocating for policy and systems change at the organizational, community, state and national levels. Sessions also will explore lessons learned from the successes and challenges of advocates who have come before us. With the midterm elections this November, it is even more important to understand how to engage with the government, media and political system to get your voice heard. Skills such as communication, collaboration, presentation, and maintaining a professional relationship are needed by anyone who speaks up on behalf of children. But these skills don’t necessarily come naturally – it can be difficult to find your voice and get your message across effectively when interacting with elected officials and agency administrators. These sessions will help make the process more understandable, less intimidating and help build your confidence in speaking up on behalf of your program, agency and Maui ‘ohanas and keiki.

This track will provide different cultural and evidence-based practices that each of us can do as providers to care for ourselves and create a culture of resiliency in our own lives, families and organizations. Taking care of our own personal healing and mental health is extremely important especially when working with vulnerable populations. It is our kuleana as human and social service professionals to face our own biases, thoughts, feelings and experiences – “our own stuff” – in order to help participants work through their issues. Coming out of a two-year pandemic, it is especially vital for everyone to learn how to care for their mental health, manage complex emotions and heal. Fitting in self-care is essential so that we don’t experience burnout, vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue.  As we move forward in the wisdom of our ancestors and those professionals that came before us, cultural and evidence-based practices can help everyone better cope with the demands of work, family, and life and all the feelings that happen in between.