2024 Women's Recovery Conference:
Finding Balance Amid Constant Change

Description

This is the 38th year of the Women's Recovery Conference, where gender-responsive care, focusing on the needs of women in recovery and their families, is exclusively presented. The 2024 Women's Recovery Conference offers up to 15.5 credit hours with a variety of credit options.

The entire conference is designed to provide tools that help heal and empower women in recovery, foster stress resilience in a time of unprecedented change, promote collaboration, build trust, and maintain clinical excellence. In the ever-changing environment of caregiving, this is key information all providers must know to overcome current challenges, improve client outcomes, and to promote overall women's health through sustained recovery. Fresh, gender-responsive approaches are taken on mandatory topics such as supervision, ethics, HIV, STIs, and bloodborne pathogens. The conference also offers a choice of innovative care modalities that frontline providers may implement to motivate and empower women, while optimizing balance on the inevitably precarious path of recovery. Information is offered on rewiring the female brain for recovery, medications for opioid use disorder, strategies for harm reduction, and reduction of unintentional self-sabotage. This conference emphasizes culturally-appropriate care, the fostering of strong communities, and the enhancement of physiological, perinatal, and maternal support for women in recovery.

Accommodations

Attendance Options:
One-day, two-day, and three-day options are available, with options for "Wednesday Preconference Only" registration, "Thursday Only" registration, or "Friday Only" registration. The event is designed with both In-Person and Live Webinar coverage and direct online access to presenters, allowing for the provision of mental health credits which are classified the same as "live." The live webinar format also serves to assist practitioners who are unable to get away from their practice and who need to receive vital North Carolina updates to inform care.

Please note that all session times listed below are in Eastern Standard.

• Rewiring for Recovery
  
• Ethical Obligations in a World of Change

• Empowering Women in Recovery: Peer Support Supervision Strategies
  
• "Harm Reduction 101"

• The Argument: Releasing Ambivalence and Self-Sabotage
  
• HIV/STI Updates for Substance Use Professionals

• Will I Ever Make it "Home:" Understanding the Co-Occurring Recovery Journey among Women at the Time of Reentry
  
• Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Finding the Balance Between Prevention and Support
  
• Women and Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD)
  
• The Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams Model: Improving Outcomes for Buncombe County Families

• Update from the State: Women's SUD Treatment in North Carolina
  
• Hope, Resilience, Healing, and Health: Living Empowered Amid Change

• Keys to Maintaining Balance: Staying Centered and Thriving in a Chaotic World
  
• Maintaining a Teeter-Totter Balanced Lifestyle: Anchored in Serenity and Hope

Vital information for all providers working with women who are impacted by the opioid crisis is embedded within the entire three-day event.

A NOTE ON CREDITS

The 2024 Women's Recovery Conference offers up to 15.5 credit hours. *Please note that sessions will not be recorded, and live attendance (either by In-Person or Live Webinar option) is required to obtain credit. Ethical Obligations in a World of Change at the morning Preconference on Wednesday offers 3.00 hours of Ethics training if selected. For detailed information about NCASPPB credits, please click here.

With the Support of

Target Audience

Mental health and substance abuse professionals, including substance abuse counselors, psychologists, social workers, licensed clinical mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, peer support specialists, school counselors, and other professionals interested in these topics.

Objectives

At the 2024 conference, session content supports the following overarching conference goals:

• Provide concrete information, therapeutic insights, and treatment skills which may be applied to process substance use, behavioral addictions, and dependence on other substances
• Introduce skills to provide and ensure continuous, ethical care for women in recovery, within current workforce limitations
• Prepare providers with effective, evidence-based behavioral interventions to help women enter recovery, prevent return to use, sustain optimal health in long-term recovery, in benefit of women as well as their families
• Discuss strategies for closing major gaps in the current United States (US) care delivery system regarding treatment access for pregnant and parenting women and marginalized groups
• Update providers on current North Carolina policies and laws impacting women in recovery and their families
• Detail ways in which systems can be trauma-informed and culturally-sensitive
• Inform providers of current legislation surrounding reporting on and care of pregnant women
• List at least three evidence-based modalities of care that foster social, psychological, and physiological well-being in women's recovery while reducing risk of return to use
• Present information on prevention and support relative to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
• Provide current research on women and effective medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD)
• Describe at least three effective evidence-based strategies which meet the gender-responsive needs of women with substance use disorders based on SAMHSA recommendations / research
• Describe treatment approaches which foster resilience, build trust, and increase commitment to individualized therapeutic goals of women in recovery, while optimizing health outcomes
• List at least three strategies for preventing self-sabotage in early recovery
• Introduce a "Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams Model" tested by Buncombe County, NC, that may be expanded for use in other geographical areas to improve outcomes for families
• List at least three time-tested strategies that promote healthy adaptation and maintain balance amid constant change, particularly effective for women in recovery
• Demonstrate a commitment to honor diversity, celebrate individuality, promote authenticity, and foster genuine collaboration
• Provide current information on gender-responsive ethics, infectious disease prevention, provider supervision, and optimization of spiritual, physical, and emotional health in recovery

Faculty

• Marie N. Gannon, LCAS, LCMHCS, CCS
• Jack P. Ginsberg, PhD
• Melissa L. Godwin, MSW, LCSW
• Essence N. Hairston, MSW
• Derrick Hall, MSW, LCSW, LCAS, CSI
• Linda L. Hamilton, CADC
• Amy C. Hendricks, BS
• Ron R. Hood, PhD, LP-HSP
• Hendre Jones, PhD
• Kevin Mahoney
• Desiree McKinney, CPSS
• Geri A. Miller, PhD, LP, LCAS, CCS
• Victoria L. Mobley, MD, MPH
• Susan A. Polston, CPSS
• Melinda A. Ramage, FNP-BC, CARN-AP, MSN
• Nicole F. Ross, LCAS, CCS, NCCPSS
• Erika Samoff, MPH, PhD
• Starleen Scott-Robbins, MSW, LCSW
• Erin Smead, BA, MSW
• Shannon D. South, LCMHC, ThD
• Katherine Watkins, BA
• Kimberly A. Yonkers, MD