The EQ2 Handbook

While a number of programs focus on building the social and emotional skills of youth, EQ2 has been uniquely designed to address the social and emotional needs of direct care staff as well as helping build the skills and competencies needed to create reparative relationships with youth and each other.

EQ2 evolved out of the belief that direct care work with trauma-impacted youth is one of the most important and often one of the most challenging jobs there is. Few people will ever have the potential to positively impact a youths’ life course trajectory as direct care workers.

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Components of the EQ2 Handbook

  • Designed to support direct care staff working with high-risk, trauma-impacted youth
  • Promotes emotion coaching by increasing awareness of youths’ trauma-related behavior, building relationship-focused competencies, and expanding crisis intervention knowledge
  • Focuses on building staff’s own social and emotional skills
  • Supplemental resources include Mental Health Worksheets, guided visualizations, and extra Effective Emotion Coaching Checklists to reinforce effective coaching skills
  • Additional resources to provide “booster sessions” following the 6-session program

EQ2 is structured into six sessions

(1) Becoming an Emotion Coach

(2) Understanding Trauma

(3) Building Relationships

(4) Where We Come From

(5) Preventing Crisis

(6) Repairing Relationships

Topics addressed in EQ2

  • Definition and behavioral characteristics of an Effective Emotion Coach
  • How trauma impacts youth behavior and the stress-response system
  • Approaches to building positive and reparative relationships with youth
  • Promoting and supporting positive behaviors through praise
  • Listening skills and under-responding techniques to de-escalate crisis
  • Understanding our own triggers and avoiding “Brain Hijackings”
  • Interactive exercises examining healthy boundaries in the workplace
  • Approaches to repair relationships with youth
  • Strategies to provide feedback to and resolve conflict with co-workers
  • High-impact skills to increase staff’s self regulation
  • Understanding youth identity development in the wake of trauma

Sample Worksheet

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