Prerecorded Supporting People Who Use Drugs and Those In Recovery CE Course
Our Supporting People Who Use Drugs and Those In Recovery Continuing Education course is a space for radical, supportive doulas and birth workers who are committed to community care.
Through the lens of harm reduction principles, we will create a container to examine bias, stigma, and what to expect when meeting people where they are — at the intersection of substance use and pregnancy/parenting.
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction is a community-based movement that centers the people most impacted by the war on drugs and is led by people with lived experience.
It is an approach to community care that trusts that people who use drugs and those in recovery know what they need and should be met where they are at.
Examples of harm reduction work include Narcan training and distribution, syringe service programs, expanding access to medication for opioid use disorder, and ensuring respectful healthcare for people who use drugs that is free from carceral interference.
This continuing education course offers an opportunity to explore what it means to utilize harm reduction principles to support people who use drugs and folks in recovery as a part of your practice.
Throughout the course, you will gain direct and accurate information about supporting folks who use drugs and people in recovery throughout the prenatal period, labor, birth, and postpartum. With this context, you’ll build a toolbox of support methods to use in direct client care.
We will go through the history of harm reduction and see how it applies to birth work, including uncovering the stigma, biases, and dehumanization faced by people who use drugs and folks in recovery by the medical industrial complex.
We will talk through important considerations about hospital mandated reporting and child welfare involvement.
As a birth worker, your primary role is to support clients in being as comfortable and safe as possible through their perinatal journey. You co-create the space for clients to self-advocate through their reproductive experiences.
You will have the opportunity to learn the evidence-based information you need about cannabis throughout the childbearing year.
You’ll also learn about the intersections of trauma informed care and harm reduction and be able to apply a trauma informed lens to your work with folks who use drugs and those in recovery.
As a full-spectrum organization, we prioritize creating courses and offerings that contribute to reproductive justice for all.
“SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
Doula work is community care work, and while trainings and training organizations like ours may be relatively new, this work is not.
We honor all of the people who have been doing harm reduction work, particularly people who use drugs themselves, who have always been the primary providers of care for this community.