holistic trauma-Informed grief support and education for multiple loss
“Repeated exposure to increasing overdoses and overdose-related loss can be stressful, demanding, and traumatic for workers responding to overdose during the drug poisoning crisis.”
Public Health Ontario, 2022
The multiple Loss crisis IN WorkPLACES & communities
Care workers in Social Services and Public Health are providing critical services to communities impacted by a polycrisis that includes the drug toxicity crisis, racial trauma, community and workplace violence, colonialism, and the housing crisis that is currently causing collective grief and community devastation. This compounded trauma and multiple loss impacts workers,organizations, and the people they serve. The effects of this immense grief and loss shows up among workers as burnout and moral injury, frequent sick leave, feeling unsafe at work, and high rates of staff turn over. The toxic drug supply is also ravaging communities where many people accessing services are using substances to cope with the grief and trauma of the polycrisis.
It is crucial that organizations develop the capacity to support their workers through their grief and burnout, and encourage them to care for each other. Building this capacity not only benefits workers - if staff are able to hold their own grief, they are better to show up for their grieving community members impacted by multiple loss.
Our approach to Supporting workers with care & Education
We are guided by anti-oppressive, holistic, trauma-responsive, strength-based, person-centred, and Harm Reduction approaches, and collaborate with people with lived experience to offer support and education to workplaces that are exposed to the polycrisis. Our work is shaped by an awareness of the ways that racism, poverty, colonialism, substance use, houselessness, grief, and trauma intersect and manifest differently for each person. We believe that people with lived experience are the experts in what they need for healing and thriving. Peer-based support is essential to ensuring resilient workplaces that fosters psychological safety and cultural responsiveness.