SWREN 212RSocial Work Storytelling and Critical Trauma-Informed Practice

In this course, you will consider social work, story, and critical trauma-informed engagement. This trauma-informed approach to storytelling will frame a critique of current practices to individualized recovery narratives based on principles that pathologize people and their experiences of trauma. In this course, you will critically analyze the various contexts in which people experience trauma, accepting that people's recovery from trauma cannot happen until the contexts in which they live stop oppressing them and reproducing trauma. You will learn social work practice skills, invite storytelling and storylistening into your practice; support service users in their processes of "being heard" and creating "counter narratives"; and facilitate an empowering critical consciousness that can create opportunities for change, both at the personal and community level.