Factions and Fractures: #Hashtag Advocacy Era

While multidisciplinary efforts are now commonplace, many organizations and systems still operate in silos, viewing each other with mistrust and defensiveness. The current climate of extreme polarization in the US augments those barriers and further erodes critical elements to effective collaboration: communication, trust, understanding, and accountability. Social movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter bring heightened awareness to an issue while promoting transparency and accountability, but they can also unintentionally exacerbate existing divisions. We know from experience that disparate community responses result in revictimization and additional trauma for survivors. In turn, child abuse continues to take a devastating toll on individuals, communities and society. In this workshop, we’ll examine the challenges of coordinated community responses to child abuse and neglect in the current climate and share how to build and maintain multidisciplinary efforts that result in concrete, victim-centered, trauma-informed change.