Joanna Beazley Richards in South Africa
Trauma and Recovery Training
In February Joanna Beazley Richards, accompanied by her husband John, visited South Africa and offered several workshops on trauma and recovery. Joanna, a specialist in this field shared with participants her own way of working with trauma and her understanding of it in TA terms.
South Africa has a history of violence and still lives with very high levels of child abuse, rape, domestic violence and robbery related violence. Not only professionals, but also lay counsellors and development workers have to deal with trauma on a daily basis. Joanna was generous, in the best tradition of TA training, and offered several workshops to NGOs as well as some for professionals.
In Johannesburg Lifeline counsellors benefitted from two sessions with her and, as a result, have substantially changed their approach to trauma counselling. Sharon Kalinko’s TA group found their time with Joanna very fruitful and Sharon herself reports that she is now offering specific trauma counselling for the first time and with good results.
In Cape Town Joanna ran a workshop on the basics of trauma for community workers. This was hosted by a wonderful band of women called Mothers Unite who are all volunteers who live and work in one of the most deprived and traumatised areas of the city. She also did a 2 day continuing education training for psychologists, social workers and therapists. This was generously hosted by the Family Association of SA who provided their training facilities, sent members of their staff and involved their network. Joanna was very well received wherever she went and said of her experiences in SA: I felt humbled and enriched by hearing about the wide range of traumatic experiences people reported in South Africa, and the creative ways that the different communities were helping themselves and others.
Joanna’s emphasis, at all times, was on working in a way that would avoid re-traumatisation of the traumatised person and reduce secondary traumatisation of the person offering help. She provided excellent information about what trauma is, how it affects us and the process of recovery. Participants also had the opportunity to practice how they could manage and resource traumatised people in ways that would create safety and set them on the road to recovery.
The South African TA Association is most grateful to Joanna and John for their contribution to building TA in South Africa and helping us to address the huge need there is in SA for the healing of trauma. We look forward to having them back in 2015.