Emma Roberts has 30 years experience working in harm reduction in the UK and US. She recently held the position of Principal Investigator for a national CDC harm reduction TA program in the US. In her current capacity building work Emma advocates for harm reduction integration across our care continuums.

As the harm reduction workforce grows in the US and other countries, practitioners working in technical assistance and capacity building are seeing gaps in the availability of clinical supervision and support type spaces for staff. Underfunded programs often have little capacity or resources to provide this for their teams and from ED's to frontline outreach workers we are seeing high levels of stress related illness and burnout. It’s not enough to teach staff about vicarious trauma and then expect them to address the self care they need alone. This session is informed by authors with decades of experience in both harm reduction service provision and capacity building in the US and UK, and will share experiences of addressing these needs. This will be followed by a facilitated conversation with the audience to explore challenges and solutions for their organizations. Attendees will leave with both a call to action and new ideas of how to build intentional support spaces for their teams.