The Cultivating Resilience Initiative

About Our Provider Support Initiative

The Cultivating Resilience Initiative (CRI) is an initiative of The Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery (CVPR) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. CRI’s goal is to promote resiliency and healing in providers working with traumatized people by mitigating the impact of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. Our guiding motto:

"The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet.”
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

The Cultivating Resilience Initiative works intentionally in two areas with:

Community-based providers working within the interpersonal violence field (domestic, sexual and community violence, human trafficking and homicide response systems) who experience vicarious trauma through work with traumatized individuals and families in the context of systems of oppression.
Hospital-based providers impacted by work with vulnerable and traumatized patients and who experience compassion fatigue and primary and secondary trauma through their work in a health care setting.

Community-Based Services

Vicarious Trauma and Resilience Series

An 8-session professional development series for frontline staff working with victims/survivors of violence. Providers and advocates join with peers in a confidential, small group setting to explore how the work may be affecting them personally and professionally. Topics covered include:

Understanding the concepts of secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout
Resiliency strategies at multiple levels
Giving and getting support from peers around issues of vicarious trauma and resilience

Organizational Consultation

Recognizing the importance of organizational strategies to sustain staff, CRI will work with organizational leaders to offer tailor-made workshops, training and technical assistance to create awareness and developing strategies aimed at reducing the incidence of secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma in staff.

Individual Coaching

For providers working in the field of interpersonal violence who are experiencing vicarious trauma, impact and looking for support to enhance their resilience.

Hospital-Based Services

Provider Training

Educating providers on the impact of trauma and vicarious trauma through Grand Rounds, continuing education, workshops and presentations and teaching resiliency skills to staff and leaders.

Support and Consultation

Response to individual staff and work teams impacted by workplace violence and traumatic material as part of their job and coaching for managers and leaders on how to lead for resiliency.

Opportunities for Healing and Recovery

Clinical support and connection to resources for impacted staff.

Our COVID-19 Provider Support Response

The COVID-19 Pandemic brought with it an unprecedented collective trauma experienced by all hospital staff and patients. The compassion fatigue, acute stress and trauma experienced by staff has contributed to ongoing stress and a burden on the workforce. CRI responded in real time to the situation in the following ways:

Educating providers on the impact of trauma through Grand Rounds, continuing education, workshops, presentations.
Facilitating space for providers to debrief impact, get support and enhance resilience strategies.
Providing evidence-based healing modalities both individually and in groups for staff, including models from the EMDR treatment community to address COVID-19 psychological reactions and impacts via telehealth.
Promoting resilience through daily and weekly Wellness Resets and online training modules.
Connecting impacted staff with resources such as the Boston Area Trauma Recovery Network for healing and recovery.

Our Story

The creation of the Advocate Education and Support Project (AESP), now known as the Cultivating Resilience Initiative (CRI), marked an expansion of the CVPR’s scope beyond direct care to include services and consultation for professionals, staff and organizations in local and statewide communities. AESP/CRI grew out of years of work beginning in 1999, when CVPR staff convened a group of Boston area colleagues working in the field of interpersonal violence to discuss the negative effects associated with front-line trauma work.

The Project development was a collaborative process which included state, county and community partners. This grassroots effort grew into a model intervention for addressing the impact of trauma work through education, skill building and peer support. The founders, Lisa Tieszen, LICSW and Katherine Manners, LMHC emerged as leaders in the field, went on to work with colleagues to develop the federally funded Vicarious Trauma Toolkit and create ‘Resilience Works.’

Helpful Resources