Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
In its fifth year, Lost Sparrows’ trauma conference has grown and changed a bit, but its focus remains the impact of trauma on children.
Darren Gagnon, Lost Sparrows president and co-founder, said, “First, this year, we’re calling it the Healing Childhood Trauma Conference, rather than just the trauma conference. Just to try to help clarify that trauma is a pretty broad category, so we want to make sure people kind of know why we’re (doing this). But the honest truth is that there’s a lot that will happen at the session dealing with adults and their histories.”
The conference began after the Covid pandemic at Grace College for a couple years, but is being held for the third year Sept. 5-6 at Warsaw Community Church.
“And then we’ve gone from a one-day event to a two-day event,” he said.
There will be over 20 speakers, including many locals. “It’s always nice to involve local mental health professionals, like Lyndsay Mack from Linden Tree Counseling Service and Tyler Zielasko from the Human Wellness Collective. There’s actually quite a number of them,” Gagnon stated.
One of the keynote speakers is Peter Mutabazi, an international speaker, foster/adoption dad and advocate.
Gagnon said Mutabazi runs an organization called Now I Am Known, his own charity that works with foster youth.
“His story, he grew up in Uganda as a street kid, so a survivor of a mom who died when he was born and a lot of childhood abuse. Met somebody that helped him get into school, he ended up going to the U.K. for school, then came to the United States and became a citizen and now is a foster dad, is an adoptive dad and runs an organization working with foster youth,” Gagnon said. “He’s going to be able to speak to trauma. His story is really good, and he’s a very engaging speaker.”
Another keynote speaker is Dr. Shannae Anderson, a clinical psychologist, professor and trauma and attachment expert.
“She is a forensic psychologist. She is a professor at Liberty University. She runs trauma clinics in Virginia and in California,” Gagnon said. She worked and trained with Dan Siegel, a well-known psychologist who wrote several books, for a number of years.
“So it’s going to be two different takes. Peter is going to be more story driven. He’s going to share his background. He’s going to talk a bit about foster care, foster children and that sort of thing. Then Dr. Anderson, she’s more of an academic, so she’s going to kind of come at things from a little bit more of a clinical perspective, a little more academic,” Gagnon said.
Workshops & Tracks
“We’ve been asked by lots of people - people will say, ‘I have a traumatic history from my childhood. Will the conference be valuable for me? I don’t work with others, but I have my own history.’ So over the last couple years, we’ve added workshops. So we have our keynote sessions, we have breakout sessions and our breakouts are kind of like a lecture style, you’re going to mostly be passive learning. And then our workshops are small groups and they’re designed to help people who potentially have their own trauma background to process. So they’re all run by therapists or people who work with the traumatized,” he explained.
A Warsaw woman named Gabriel Hull, who has been through a lot in her life, now works with the traumatized. Gagnon said she will be doing a workshop called “Waltzing Through Trauma.”
“Because she talks about, in her past, when she was a kid, how getting into dance saved her. It just helped her regain control of her life, so now she uses dance and tae kwon do for kids who have been traumatized or for adults who have. So it’s a really great way to help people kind of regain control over their bodies and their history,” Gagnon said.
For the most part, each of the sessions and speakers are very different from each other.
“Dr. Stephanie Grant is going to deal with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, so when a baby is exposed to alcohol before they’re born, it presents lots and lots of challenges later in life, so she’s going to talk through that,” Gagnon cited as an example. “In our education track, for teachers, we’ve got a session she’s doing on setting up the environment to help regulate kids who maybe have traumatic histories. There’s just a whole variety.”
The conference has tracks geared toward foster/adoption parents, educators, professionals and church staff.
“So if you work with kids in any of those capacities - so let’s say you’re a CASA or if you are a social worker, a youth worker, you just volunteer and teach Sunday school at your church - then there’s going to be content that’s kind of going to be applicable, no matter which way you work with kids,” he said.
Grants & Sponsorships
Grants and sponsorships help make the conference possible. Gagnon said some of the grants they’ve received came from the Kosciusko County Community Foundation, the K21 Health Foundation, the Kosciusko County Convention, Recreation and Visitors Commission, the Esther Pfleiderer Charitable Trust at 1st Source Bank, The United Way and The Dekko Foundation.
Conference sponsors include Wildman Business Group, Midwest Spring & Stamp, Weed Inc., ReMAX Realty - The Bausch Team and Warsaw Community Church.
Rich Haddad, K21 CEO, said, “This conference directly addresses the understanding and resource development of helping people working with those impacted by trauma in the lives. We support this local conference because child development is a priority for the foundation and resourcing attendees with resources to meet the needs of trauma-impacted kids is critical to their healthy future.”
Community Foundation CEO Stephanie Overbey said, “The Community Foundation recognizes that children who have experienced trauma thrive best in homes, schools, and care settings where the adults who are caring for them understand the impact of trauma and have tools to meet their unique emotional, social and behavioral needs. We have heard from the parents, teachers, and caregivers who attend the trauma conference or engage in other Lost Sparrows programming about the importance of feeling heard, understood and supported as the caregivers of children who often and understandably present challenging needs and behaviors. A key part of the Community Foundation’s mission is to strengthen communities, and I can’t think of a better way to strengthen communities than to help our most vulnerable children and families.”
Tickets & Certification
Tickets can be purchased for one day or both days at https://lsconference.org/. The website includes the complete conference schedule and details. Walk-up registration will be accepted. Scholarships are available, and Gagnon said as of Friday 25 have already been given out.
Tickets come with breakfast and lunch. Creighton’s Crazy Egg, Warsaw, and Heidi’s Farmstand and Bakery, Lowell Township, Mich., are providing breakfast. Lunch one day will be by Do Good BBQ, Warsaw. Ticketholders also will get a T-shirt and bag with a few different items in it while supplies last.
He said they want the event to be really meaningful as its an investment for people to attend. They have people come to it from Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, Ohio and all over.
Department of Child Services has approved all of the sessions for foster licensing hours, so that everyone that attends will get certificates of training for every session they may attend.
The National Association of Social Workers will have some of the conference’s sessions approved so social workers can earn some continuing education units.
“The most amazing thing that happens is when you put hundreds of people into the same building, the same room who are all struggling with similar challenging life circumstances. It’s incredible. Just the connection to other people, hearing people’s stories of heartaches and challenges and realizing that you’re not the only one that’s going through those hard things. It’s really positive. We have so many relationships that have formed among people that have come because they meet new folks, they meet other parents, they meet other teachers that are all struggling to try to figure out how to navigate the impact of trauma. And that’s been encouraging,” Gagnon said.
For more information, call 574-213-2413; email darren@lostsparrows.org; or visit the websites at www.lostsparrows.org, www.parentingchildrenwithtrauma.org or lsconference.org
