This in-person event will be held at Olmsted County Community Services 2117 Campus Drive SE Rochester, MN 55904

If capacity limit is reached, please email edu@fosteradoptmn.org to join the waitlist.

This workshop will provide ways to support caregivers in increasing awareness of body indicators of attachment and trauma wounds as they show up in foster and adoptive youth. Through experiential exercises and some lecture, the participant will walk away with:

1) Increased ability to interpret and respond in ways that build connectivity/felt sense of safety
2) Increased understanding of somatic attunement
3) Increased interventions to navigate distressed states
4) Ability to recognize and manage one’s own distressed state

Lisa Johnson Taylor (she, her, hers) is a Licensed Psychologist who has practiced in the mental health field for over 30 years. She has worked with children, adolescents, adults, and families in a variety of capacities (including school-based day treatment, in home family therapy, intensive outpatient programs, and mental health clinics). Lisa is passionate about integrating Sensorimotor Psychotherapy into group settings. She co-facilitates experiences to collectively access the wisdom of the body when leading her Trauma Skills groups as well as offering Restorative workshops for Caregivers. Although Sensorimotor Psychotherapy primarily informs her work, she synthesizes aspects of IFS, ART, AIR Network, spirituality, nature based healing, and other somatic based inquiry. Lisa is committed to an ongoing mindful study of how her cisgendered white body privilege impacts all those with whom she intersects.

Wendy L. Baker, MSW, LICSW, is the co-founder of Family Circle Counseling, PLLC, in St. Paul, MN, a family focused group practice, with particular dedication to adoptive and foster care families and their unique and potentially complex, intensive therapeutic needs. Before founding Family Circle Counseling, Wendy worked at Wilder Foundation Residential Treatment, providing individual and family therapy and supervised direct care staff. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Developmental Psychology program and received her MSW from the University of Minnesota.

Wendy has over 40 years of clinical experience with children, families and individuals of all ages. She specializes in clinical work with survivors of complex trauma healing from developmental and relational wounds such as childhood neglect, physical & sexual abuse, and attachment traumas/disruptions. She has advanced professional training in the areas of attachment, complex trauma, child development, play therapy, infant-early child therapy, expressive therapy, and family. Wendy uses several methods, including EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Theraplay, Play Therapy, Art Therapy, Sandtray  and Emotion Focused therapy.

Wendy is also a seasoned educator. She has been the lead trainer for the post-graduate certification course at the University of Minnesota on Permanency and Adoption Competency Certification (PACC) for the past 13 years and provides clinical supervision and consultation around adoption, attachment and complex trauma work.  She conducts parent and professional trainings through NACAC and MACMH, schooling participants on attachment, trauma, attachment assessments, and approaches for working with attachment challenged adolescents.