Barb Dorrington, BSW, M.Ed., CTC-S, ATR, OATR
TLC Certified Trainer
Barb Dorrington is a registered social worker, art therapist and trauma and loss consultant supervisor working in London, Ontario and area for the last 30 years. She maintains registrations with the Ontario Art Therapy Association and the American Art Therapy Credentials Board as well as the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. Barb has worked in both elementary and high schools for a local school board as a school social worker. She is also a lead member of this school system’s crisis response team and is a regular conference presenter on trauma, trauma debriefing, managing stress, and the at-risk learner. Barb completed seven trauma debriefing and art therapy trips to areas affected by Hurricane Katrina in both Louisiana and Mississippi, starting in September 2005. On one of these trips, Barb, along with Barb Desjardins, developed Safe Place workshops for children in several elementary schools in Mississippi.
Barb presents the following courses:
Children of Trauma
This is the first of three TLC core courses that will lay the foundation to help you understand the differences between grief and trauma and to see trauma as an experience rather than a diagnostic category. Learn how to become a “witness” to a child’s traumatic experience to best appreciate the intensity of the experience and the needs of the child; to see what he now sees as he looks at himself and the world around him. Video-taped interviews will demonstrate how TLC’s evidence-based, structured sensory intervention process brings children relief from the terror of their traumatic experiences. This structured process is used in schools and agencies across the country and has been proven, via research, to reduce trauma-specific reactions across all three major sub-categories. Session objectives.
Suicide Intervention
This presentation will identify warning signs and high risk factors leading to suicidal attempts. Characteristics of potentially suicidal child/youth, specific interventions strategies and skills including legal responsibilities, assessment of risk and what is necessary to help prevent contagion following an actual completion. Develop specific intervention skills with survivors of suicide including organized responses necessary in school settings and the ways grief following suicide differs from grief following non-suicidal losses.
Trauma Debriefing
This is the last of the three TLC core course. The TLC Debriefing Model fits with the uniqueness of school and agency settings. The models address the developmental issues, time and resource constraints, needs of staff as well as students/clients, administrative issues and trauma response issues. Five debriefing models are demonstrated: Debriefing for adolescents and adults, Defusing for K-5th grade, Operational Debriefing for all staff, Debriefing the Debriefers, Crisis Team members or first respondents and Classroom Presentation which is different than debriefing and usually initiated before the start of debriefing. The TLC Debriefing Model is the outcome of work with over 1,500 professionals who have participated in debriefing training.
Managing Traumatic Stress: A Creative Mind Body Approach
Description to come
Reaching the At-Risk Learner: An Approach for Educators and Parents
Description to come