The Resilience Project

All people need relationship.  To feel safe, loved, and connected. In this conversation, Matt talks about his work over the past 30 years to promote care in caregiving. You'll hear a lot about what he learned from one of his earliest mentors, John McGee, and how McGee's "Gentle Teaching" principles are still relevant in the work of trauma informed care today. 

More on John McGee's work: https://gentleteaching.com/us/

Matt Briner has worked in the developmental disability services world since the late ‘80’s. He has worked in residential programs, day programs/vocational supports and provided direct behavioral supports. He has done this in private for profit organizations, faith based not for profit organizations and a county board. The common theme in all of his work has been trying to help people feel safe and engaged by focusing on what happened to the person rather than forcing someone to behave to try and fix the behavior. 

In the 1990s, Vincent Felitti, head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Kaiser Permanente, conducted interviews with people who had left an obesity clinic. He discovered that a majority of the 286 people he interviewed had experienced childhood sexual abuse. The research went on to find that a person’s cumulative ACEs score, or traumatic experiences in childhood, had a direct adverse health outcome in adulthood. This conversation with Lori is for people providing support - interested in how the ACE study impacts the way we interact and support people, not by looking at someone to “fix,” but as someone to understand and identify their resilience. 

Lori Watkins, LISW, is the Director Behavioral Health Services at the Clermont County Board of Developmental Disabilities