Prince George, B.C.-  A special conference has been  set for  Prince George this October,  and it’s all about  helping those  who  have  experienced trauma.

The  conference is set  for  October 19th – 21st  at the Prince George Civic Centre and is being hosted by Prince George RCMP’s Victim Services and Community Policing Sections.

“The conference is aimed at  anyone whose clients are affected by trauma” says Krista Levar,  Victim Services Coordinator.  ” I think the  audience is very broad, working in the firled  work in,  we  look at the first responders take on things a lot of the time  but overall, I think its a  good fit for any agency that deals with people.”

Levar says  there is no one kind of trauma “It is difficult to define all the different  elements of trauma,  it can take a lot of different forms.  It can be intergenerational,  such as the residential school experience,  it can be vicarious trauma  which is experienced by people who are first responders , trauma just takes so many different forms,  so the conference will look at a lot of those different  forms and look at it from a lot of different perspectives.”

The conference  will look at the impacts trauma  can have on your brain and  behaviours but will also hear from  those who have  a story to tell about how trauma  impacted their lives.  Scheduled guest speakers include retired BC Lion J.R. Larose who  witnessed the abuse of his mother. Another  guest speaker is retired NHL star Theo Fleury, who was sexually abused by his junior hockey coach,  a trauma he says led him to alcohol and drugs.

She says  with  agencies having  a better understanding of how  trauma can  impact the choices people make  they may dvelop  better ways of dealing with some clients.

Recognizing the impact of residential schools, violent crime, and other forms of intergenerational trauma, this conference provides an opportunity to plan how to best support clients experiencing these forms of trauma, says Levar “If we  can look at people from  a lens with a lot of different facets,   bringing  all of the pieces together, we can better help people,  basically commit less crime, and heal better and understand what they need to help them heal.”

More information on the conference is available here