Racial Justice and Community Restoration

Description

This free webinar does not offer CE credits. The same recording is available for purchase and offers 1 CE credit for behavioral health clinicians.  See "related products" below.

Every day, clients carry the invisible wounds of racism into therapy rooms—and clinicians who aren’t prepared to recognize and address racial trauma risk missing their deepest cries for help. This course confronts that reality head-on.

Silence and uncertainty are no longer options. To provide truly ethical and effective care, clinicians must learn how racial trauma shows up in the lives of their clients, how systemic inequities amplify suffering, and what concrete steps they can take to break cycles of harm. This training is a call to action—an invitation to do the work of justice and healing inside the therapy room and beyond.

Dr. Danielle R. Hairston, double board-certified psychiatrist and President of the American Psychiatric Association’s Black Caucus, joins Assistant Chief Gregory Padrick, Dr. Sonja Sutherland, and Dr. Susan Branco. Together, these leaders bring the perspectives of psychiatry, counseling, supervision, education, and community safety, creating a rare dialogue that cuts to the heart of racial trauma and community restoration.

With unflinching honesty, they outline how racial battle fatigue wears down clients’ spirits, how cultural blind spots in therapy perpetuate harm, and how clinicians can step into the role of restorer and advocate. This course blends evidence with lived experience, leaving no question about the urgency of the work.

Topics include racial trauma and battle fatigue, the cost of microaggressions across the lifespan, systemic inequities in healthcare and policing, strategies for moving beyond performative allyship, and the steps clinicians must take to build genuine cultural competence.

Key Takeaways:

• Recognize racial trauma and fatigue: Identify how racial trauma manifests in the body, mind, and daily life of your clients.

• Grow into cultural competence: Move past awareness toward concrete, ethical, and effective practices for working with marginalized clients.

• Take action that matters: Learn specific steps that separate performative allyship from genuine, anti-racist clinical work.

Why this course?

• The stakes are life and death: Racial trauma erodes mental and physical health—ignoring it puts clients at greater risk of despair, disconnection, and self-harm.

• Guided by trusted voices: These instructors have lived and led through the crises clinicians and communities are facing now.

• Not theory, but transformation: This course offers more than information—it provides the tools and courage to show up differently for your clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain and describe racial trauma and racial battle fatigue and how it can show itself in its victims.

• List the steps to becoming culturally aware and explain the process of cultural competence awareness.

• Describe the steps that counselors must take if they are serious about wanting to meet the needs of racially minoritized clients.

Clients are looking to their clinicians not only for relief, but for recognition, validation, and advocacy. This is the work that can no longer wait.

Enroll now to equip yourself with the knowledge and conviction to meet this moment—and to be the kind of healer your clients and community urgently need.

Format and Access

This is a non-interactive self-study course. Instruction consists of 1 hour of video instruction and a course evaluation.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructors

We are pleased to have brought together experts in the fields of racial trauma and law enforcement to discuss the crisis in our nation and to restore community.

About Danielle R. Hairston, M.D. 

Danielle Hairston is a double board certified, Adult/Consultation-Liaison psychiatrist, medical educator, author, speaker, and promoter of mental wellness. 

Dr. Danielle Hairston was raised in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.  She attended Rutgers University for her undergraduate education, and earned a degree in Biological Sciences. She earned her medical degree at Howard University College of Medicine. Dr. Hairston was Chief Resident for the Department of Psychiatry at Howard University Hospital, where she completed her general psychiatry residency. She completed her Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship at and  went on to become faculty at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, in Baltimore, MD. In 2018, Dr. Hairston returned to Howard University College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor and was recently appointed as the Psychiatry Residency Program Director. 

Dr. Hairston currently serves as the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s Black Caucus’ President. She has served as the Black Psychiatrists of America (BPA) Scientific Program Chair since 2016. Dr. Hairston has spoken nationally and internationally about the impact of race and culture on mental health. She is a contributing author to the recently published book, Racism and Psychiatry: Contemporary Issues and Interventions. 

Her interests include consultation-liaison psychiatry, resident education, underrepresented minorities in medicine, faith & mental health, and health & racism.

About Assistant Chief Gregory Padrick 

Gregory Padrick is the Uniform Division Commander for the DeKalb County Police Department.  He has been serving DeKalb County for 23 years in a variety of positions from Uniform Division to Criminal Investigations Division, Internal Affairs and the Office of the Chief of Police.  Assistant Chief Padrick has served in the Uniform Division as a patrol officer, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, and assistant chief.  He has also served as a detective and supervisor in the Homicide Unit, Auto Theft Unit, Narcotics Unit, HIDTA, Intelligence Unit and Internal Affairs.  Assistant Chief Padrick graduated from the FBI National Academy (247th Session) in 2011.  He has also completed the Southern Police Institutes Chief Executive Leadership Course and the International Association of Chiefs of Police Leadership in Police Organizations (LPO) Course.  Assistant Chief Padrick has earned his basic, intermediate, advanced, supervisory, managerial and general instructor certifications through the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council

About Dr. Sonja Sutherland

Dr. Sonja, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Sutherland is the founder and CEO of Legacy Changers Worldwide, an organization dedicated to providing family education and mental and emotional wellness resources. The Legacy Changers Worldwide umbrella has provided support through the Legacy Changers Counseling Center, The Family Healing Room, VASAYO, and previously as host of a local Atlanta talk-radio show focusing on family relationships and mental wellness. In addition, Dr. Sutherland provides intermediate and advanced continuing education workshops for licensed clinicians, and post-masters supervision for associate licensed clinicians through Legacy Professional Development & Training. Services and programs offered by Dr. Sutherland.

In the mental health field since 1998, and licensed since 2001, Dr. Sutherland has provided therapeutic services in the private practice, psychiatric residential, in-home, and outpatient mental health settings, for adolescents and adults, through individual, group, couples, and family therapy. She has specialized in working with adolescents, couples and families for the last 22 years. One of Dr. Sutherland’s historical research interests has been evidence-based treatment within residential settings for commercially sexually exploited youth, which was a primary focus of her dissertation and clinical expertise during her years as a clinician in the psychiatric residential setting. Her ongoing research interests include clinician-in-training cultural competence development and clinical supervision.  Within the last 5 years, Dr. Sutherland has provided training, researched, and published in the areas of racial trauma, cultural competence development and training, the provision of culturally-informed clinical intervention and supervision, and social justice advocacy. Dr. Sutherland's CV.

About Dr. Susan Branco 

Dr. Susan is a licensed professional counselor in Virginia and Maryland. She is an approved supervisor in Maryland, a nationally certified counselor, and an approved clinical supervisor. Branco earned her BA in human services and MA in rehabilitation counseling from the George Washington University. She earned a doctorate in counselor education and supervision from Virginia Tech. For 14 years, she maintained an independent clinical practice specializing in working with adults, children, and families connected to adoption and foster care. In addition, she has professional experience working in community mental health and prenatal care clinics as well as with immigrant populations. She utilizes attachment theory, family systems, and trauma-informed approaches in her clinical practice.

Branco served in brick-and-mortar institutions as a clinical assistant professor overseeing a mental health counseling training clinic, a director of clinical training, and a department chair prior to her role as core faculty/clinical training director at Counseling@Northwestern.

Her research interests examine how school and clinical mental health counselors work with persons adopted transracially and clinical supervision practices with counselors of color. She has several peer-reviewed publications related to her research. She is a 2014 National Board for Certified Counselors Minority Fellowship Program Fellow and is a member of the Minority Fellowship Program Advisory Council. She was awarded the 2019 Bridging the Gap Award for Excellence in Counselor Education and Supervision by the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation.

Finally, Branco is a member of the American Counseling Association and serves as co-chair for the Bylaws Committee. She is a division member of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development, the International Association for Marriage and Family Counselor, and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision. Branco also belongs to the District of Columbia and Maryland Counseling Associations and serves as treasurer to the Maryland Association of Marriage, Couples, and Family Counselors.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

This Free Training does not offer CE credits, just great content.

This course does not offer a certificate.  For other courses that do offer a certificate, participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement