Our Values

While trauma is an incredibly expansive subject, being trauma-informed can be parsed into three main concepts:

• Approach all engagements from a person-centered, strengths-based perspective. What are the characteristics which have allowed a person or community to survive every moment up until now?

• Assume trauma is in the room, and work to collaboratively construct a safe(r), braver space in which to respond, heal, and grow from it.

• Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma by maintaining working knowledge of how harm and its effects can present itself differently in various communities, bodies, and communications.

Social justice is both a socio-political framework and an orientation to providing care; in this regard, it is simultaneously a process and a goal.

As a political framework, SJ asserts a definition of fairness that takes into account—in both qualitative & quantitative terms—the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In connection with social work, holding this orientation looks like taking into account the impact oppressive systems have on our mental wellbeing, physical health, occupational environments, and workplace productivity.

We ask both ourselves and our partners:

What does justice look like when we aim for equity rather than equality?

To align with this value, we aim to increase access, equity, participation, and maintain a tangible commitment to upholding human rights by providing the following:

• reduced-fee services for individuals with marginalized identities

• reduced-cost options for local events that benefit the community

Harm Reduction is a framework and a set of strategies aimed at reducing undesired consequences that typically result from a given behavior. Historically, the ideas and practices associated with harm reduction arose as a counter-response to overly-stringent medical models and legal attacks against those engaging in illicit substance use; however, the orientation has also been used to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, as well as to address non-substance related addictions such as sex and gambling.

At Welcome Wellbeing, we celebrate all “wins” on your scale—not on harsh and unrealistic societal scales made up of “shoulds” and “woulds” and “coulds.” We do not conform to hierarchical notions about “small victories.” Victory is victory! Success is success!

From our perspective, success can ultimately be distilled down to simple progress. If you are progressing—at any pace—we support you, we celebrate you, and we send our love—especially if no one else has.

Recognizing, accepting and appreciating the diversity of social identities that exist within all of us, our practice is grounded in challenging power structures that limit our potential to become the fullest versions of ourselves. Encouraging the deconstruction of binaries, and celebrating the power of somatic knowledge arising from each unique embodied experience, we stand in power with liberationist perspectives that couple community activism + collective engagement as paramount to individual healing and resiliency.

To align with this value, we:

• share social location during introductions

• incorporate an anti-oppressive lens in our work

• practice and prescribe movement work in mental wellness sessions

• encourage somatic awareness*

A symbol for intersectionality is part of our logo, read more about it here.

*Please note that we acknowledge that connecting with the body is not always a safe experience for everyone, in particular for those with trauma histories who may be disconnected from their physical experience as protection. We would love the opportunity to work with you to reconnect to your body in a safe way, at your pace.

At Welcome Wellbeing, we acknowledge the depth of harm that has occurred—in particular to BIPOC communities—due to a reliance on state systems that all too often respond to violence with more violence. Remembering the historical and present-day collusion of Social Work with carceral systems such as ICE, foster care, state psychiatric hospitals (prisons), the criminal legal system, and more, we identify as abolitionist social workers. This means we seek to:

1. Rely on community rather than on state systems to respond to harms;

2. End cycles of violence by rejecting all forms of anti-human bigotry and discrimination including racism, sexism, imperialism, colonialism, ableism, ageism, fatphobia, heterosexism (homophobia, transphobia, biphobia), classism; and

3. Engage with + encourage accountability processes in all spaces that we find ourselves.

To read more about transformative justice, click here.

To read more about building an accountability process, click here.