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How Does it All Fit? Exploring the Dynamic Integration of Trauma-informed and Evidence-based Practices
SESSION INFO
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
3:45 PM - 5:15 PM
Session Type: Workshop
Now deemed an essential approach, trauma-informed care is transforming how we think about our work in community corrections. But where does it fit in relation to other evidence-based models, many of which we are required to implement in our agencies? This workshop explores the cutting-edge trauma-informed communication model, Creating Regulation and Resilience (CR/2), and how it is being used to support the successful application of evidence-based motivational enhancement and structured case work models. Participants will explore the dynamic integration of trauma-informed and evidence-based practices and explore one agency’s innovative work in this area, including perspectives from directly impacted individuals, staff, and administrators.
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SESSION PRESENTERS
Alyssa Benedict
Executive Director, CORE Associates, LLC
Alyssa is a psychologist and public health practitioner with a subspecialty in the neurophysiology and ecology of trauma and resilience. The Executive Director of CORE Associates, she has 20+ years supporting system and agency level healing, growth, and transformation by promoting evidence-based and innovative approaches, amplifying lived experience, and promoting inclusive and intersectional frameworks. Benedict has worked across the U.S. to promote gender responsive, culturally attuned and trauma-informed care. She encourages international learning and engagement and has explored human service systems and individual and social trauma and resilience in the US, Canada, Germany, South Africa and Thailand. Alyssa has served as an architect and core faculty for various national initiatives, and has authored and co-authored impactful publications, models, and staff training curricula, including NIC’s Supervision Agency Gender-Responsive Evaluation (SAGE), and the widely implemented trauma-informed staff communication model Creating Regulation and Resilience (CR/2™).
Sandra Brown
Writer in Residence & Senior Advisor, Economic Security & Empowerment, The Women's Justice Institute (WJI)
Sandra Brown is the Director of Training at the Women’s Justice Institute, a national trainer and consultant with CORE Associates, a Guest Theater Director at Millikin University, a doctoral student, and a poet and activist. She also served 22 years as an incarcerated survivor in the Illinois Department of Corrections. Despite challenges to accessing higher education in prison, Brown became the first incarcerated woman in Illinois to earn an academic master’s degree and the first to be accepted into an academic doctoral program. Brown’s experience underscores her work as a student, educator, researcher, activist, and creative writer. Brown's publications include a collection of works featured in “Critical Storytelling from Behind Invisible Bars: Undergraduates and Inmates Write Their Way Out.” Her self-published poetry memoir, “Odyssey in Progress,” was published in 2022. In December of 2022, Brown’s empowerment journey was featured in The Chicago Tribune. Illinois Humanities also features some of Brown’s work in its workbook, “Envisioning Justice RE: ACTION.” She is a two-time recipient of the Davis-Putter Scholarship, which provides grants to students actively working for peace and justice, and the Marilyn Buck Award.
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