1A) Caring for Children Who Have Experienced Traumatic Events
Presenter: Philinda Mindler, LCSW, Children and Families First

Children who have experienced trauma often struggle with trust, emotional regulation, and behavioral challenges—making it essential for caregivers, educators, and professionals to understand their unique needs. This session will discuss trauma-informed strategies to create safe, supportive environments for healing. The session will also highlight the importance of self-care, providing tools to manage stress and prevent burnout. Join us to deepen your understanding and make a lasting difference in the lives of the children you support!

1B)Cultura and Compassion: Supporting Latino Survivors
Presenters: Francisca Moreno, DVS and Erin Muñoz, Domestic Violence Coordinating Council

This training aims to highlight the best practices and create awareness about how domestic violence specifically affects the Latino community. The Latino community is one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States, yet it is often misunderstood. Instead of solely focusing on the challenges they face, this training takes a strengths-based approach, celebrating the norms and practices that make up the Latino community. The presenters will provide real-life examples and recommendations to help attendees improve the experiences of Latino survivors.

1C) Healing through Storytelling
Presenter: Tamara Thomas, LCPC, Transpire Wellness

“Healing through Storytelling” creates a safe, intimate space for individuals to share personal narratives, confront trauma, and embrace the strength of self-determination. This unique event includes panel discussions, open dialogue, and guided journaling exercises, allowing participants to reflect on their own journeys and explore new pathways to healing.

2A) Making Friends & Breaking Down Silos: Practical tools for community collaboration
Presenter: Sonya Reaves, Dr. Carol B. Berz Family Justice Center

Too often, agencies get focused on solving community problems in isolation, leading to burnout and resource wastefulness from reinventing the wheel. This highly interactive session is designed for non-profit managers, government agency leaders, and community organizers looking to build meaningful cross-sector partnerships. Utilizing proven community building resources and tried and true methods, we will move beyond discussion and engage in facilitated networking and hands-on strategic planning. Participants will leave with a concrete, individualized outline for their next community event series, forge new professional friendships, and create a stronger, more efficient community-wide impact.

2B) Understanding Delaware's Fatal Incident Review Team
Presenter: Lauren Cuevas, Domestic Violence Coordinating Council

This session introduces participants to Delaware’s Fatal Incident Review Team (FIRT) and its critical role in addressing domestic violence fatalities. Participants will explore why fatality reviews matter, how Delaware’s team works, what can be learned from Delaware's fatality & near-fatality data, and how it compares to national trends. The session will highlight key findings and patterns, equipping participants with a deeper understanding of how systemic review processes with a multidisciplinary approach can inform policy, improve services, and ultimately save lives.

2C) Culturally-Informed Care: Best Practices for Serving Survivors
Presenter: Leah M. Forney, Unculture Your Workplace

Survivors of color often face unique cultural, historical, and systemic barriers when seeking support for domestic and sexual violence. This workshop explores culturally informed care as a critical framework for improving engagement, safety, and outcomes for survivors of color across domestic violence, sexual violence, dating violence, and stalking services. Participants will examine how standard intervention models can unintentionally exclude or harm marginalized survivors and learn practical strategies for adapting advocacy, safety planning, and collaboration to better reflect cultural context. This session emphasizes relationship-centered practice, cross-system collaboration, and actionable shifts that advocates and service providers can implement immediately to strengthen culturally responsive survivor support.

3A) Cultural Humility in Advocacy: Navigating Systems Without Losing Survivors
Presenters: Tamara Wilson, JD and Bailey Coco, Family Court of the State of Delaware

Too often, agencies get focused on solving community problems in isolation, leading to burnout and resource wastefulness from reinventing the wheel. This highly interactive session is designed for non-profit managers, government agency leaders, and community organizers looking to build meaningful cross-sector partnerships. Utilizing proven community building resources and tried and true methods, we will move beyond discussion and engage in facilitated networking and hands-on strategic planning. Participants will leave with a concrete, individualized outline for their next community event series, forge new professional friendships, and create a stronger, more efficient community-wide impact.

3B) Fair Housing for Domestic Violence Advocates
Presenters: David Zisser, Esq. and Nick Beard, Esq., Community Legal Aid Society, Inc.

Domestic violence survivors often report how difficult it can be to find housing, particularly with so many of the effects of experiencing DV. CLASI attorneys explain a bit more about fair housing, and discuss what rights tenants and prospective tenants have under the Fair Housing Act to help them both access and remain in housing, and how DV advocates can ensure landlords provide protections.

3C) Centering Survivorship and Fostering Wellness Practices for Healing and Resilience
Presenter: Pamela Jacobs, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence

Each of us experiences harm in this life and has inherited the harm of those who came before us. This harm shapes the way we see and move through our world and brings great strengths and lessons to inform our way forward. We speak of resilience as a human capacity to navigate this harm, but rarely as an opportunity to create wellness as a pathway to healing. This session invites participants to reflect on what they carry from their experiences and how these stories shape their work. Participants will identify strengths rooted in survivorship, practice wellness tools that foster resilience, and build capacity to challenge harmful norms in ways that support healing and resilience for themselves, their organizations, and their communities.

4A) Strength-Based Engagement: Practical, Trauma-Aware Tools for Advocates
Presenter: Rona Harris, LoveEtcetera: Wellness, Wisdom and Wealth, LLC

Strength-Based Engagement equips advocates and helping professionals with practical, trauma-aware tools to build trust, reduce conflict, and strengthen communication with individuals navigating stress, trauma, or instability. This interactive workshop introduces simple, effective strategies for engaging clients, youth, parents, and community members using emotional regulation techniques, reflective communication, and accessible activities—including the Build-A-Burger Emotional Expression Tool. Designed using adult learning best practices, this workshop uses a teach-back model that encourages participants to actively practice and demonstrate key concepts rather than passively receive information. Through guided discussion, small-group activities, and peer learning, participants will apply strength-based engagement strategies in real-world scenarios. Attendees will explore how to adapt these approaches across diverse cultural backgrounds, developmental stages, and service settings while learning practical strategies to de-escalate challenging moments and foster safer, more supportive interactions. Participants will leave confident, empowered, and prepared to immediately apply these tools in their direct service work.

4B) Collective Advocacy for Criminalized Survivors
Presenter: Cindene Pezzell, Esq., Battered Women's Justice Project (BWJP)

Victims who have been arrested in the context of surviving abuse need advocacy that aligns with their legal rights and options. This session will explore the importance of partnering with the criminal defense community in service of criminalized survivors. Participants will discuss some of the widely-held misconceptions that advocates and defense attorneys hold about one another, and learn strategies for identifying and dismantling the barriers that jeopardize impactful work on behalf of criminalized survivors.

4C) The Advocate’s SHIFT: From Survival to Sustainable Strength
Presenter: Tara Gush

Building on the keynote, this interactive workshop invites advocates to explore the deeper impact of trauma on the nervous system — not only for survivors, but within themselves. Participants will learn to recognize the signs of hypervigilance and hypovigilance that often accompany high-stress advocacy work and discover how these states influence perception, communication, and decision-making. Through guided breathwork and practical nervous system education, attendees will experience simple regulation tools that restore clarity and resilience in real time. Using the SHIFT Framework and a guided SOULSCAPE reflection process, participants will examine five key areas of their lives to identify where stress, depletion, or misalignment may be affecting their capacity. This session creates space for critical thinking, embodied awareness, and meaningful conversation about what it takes to sustain strength — individually and collectively — while continuing to build safer, more inclusive communities across Delaware.

5A) Finding Yourself Within the Red Flag
Presenter: Dr. Nina Morales-Perez, ContactLifeline

Red flags are known as a warning, and in friend groups, calling someone a red flag is not a nice phrase. Learning how to find yourself within the red flag is empowering for you and for the people we serve. This workshop will allow you to notice the red flags we ignore, as well as recognize ourselves within the red flags.

5B) How Gun Safety Policy Prevents Domestic Violence
Presenter: Traci Murphy, Coalition for a Safer Delaware

How does Permit to Purchase impact domestic violence? How can Lethal Violence Protective Orders prevent domestic violence? Firearms regulations play a critical and lifesaving role in DV. The presenter will offer data and evidence that outlines how Permit to Purchase and LVPO - two broadly different policies - work together in Delaware's violence prevention landscape and how they couple with other integral policies to shape safety outcomes.

5C) Trauma in Childhood: The Brain Architecture Gam
Presenter: Dr. Ava Carcirieri, Delaware Alliance Against Sexual Violence

In this 90-minute tabletop game created by developmental psychologists in 2009, participants will have hands-on experience learning about the early brain as it develops. The game will enhance audience's understanding of how trauma can derail brain development and the facilitator will discuss how these experiences can shape our adulthood as well as childhood. The Brain Architecture Game is a powerful tool for understanding the importance of relationships in brain development, and a great opportunity for interaction, group work, and creativity.