Promoting Racial Resilience and Recovery in Children, Young People and Families with Experiences of Refugee Trauma and Racism, 27 June 2025

Racism has a profound and lasting impact on children and young people. It affects their physical and mental well-being, academic performance, social interactions, and overall development. Children with experiences of complex trauma and refugee experience are especially vulnerable to experiences of racism. Racism affects mental and emotional health, academic performance, identity formation, behavioural responses, aspirations and goals and interpersonal relationships. Racism can also result in social isolation, health disparities, long term trauma and on future opportunities.

This Anti-racism training is designed to raise awareness of, challenge biases, and promote actions to dismantle racism and promote racial equity and racial resilience for children and young people with refugee experience. We begin by acknowledging and recognizing our place in a system that has significant harmful effects on vulnerable communities. Participants will explore how shame can influence our reactions to this realization, using Nathanson’s compass of shame as a guide. Throughout the workshop, participants will learn to be effective allies and support those who experience racism. We’ll delve into the attributes and characteristics of being an ally, and explore strategies for promoting racial resilience in service delivery. Specifically, we’ll focus on fostering resilience and recovery among children and young people with refugee trauma histories.

The training will also address the impact of racism on children and young people who have refugee experiences. We’ll explore the effects of racial traumatic stress within the context of Australian racism, examining examples of racism across various layers of social interaction, including structural, systemic, interpersonal, and personal levels.

Already traumatised people can be further traumatised when engaging with services and needing to answer lots of questions. This workshop equips workers with practical strategies in conducting interviews in a culturally safe and trauma-informed way, and responding to the person’s distress.

To build a strong foundation for understanding and combating racism, participants will be introduced to essential racial literacy. We’ll provide tools and techniques to help unpack individual positionality and navigate potential experiences of shame that may arise during discussions about racism.

Content includes:

• Identifying positionality and shame in the context of racism.
• Ethics of care: for self, for others.
• Foundational racial literacy
• Examples of the four levels of racism in the Australian historical and cultural context
• The impact of the refugee experience on attachment, development, and identity.
• Racial traumatic stress and its impacts on children and young people from refugee backgrounds
• Impacts of generational trauma on people with refugee experience
• Listening to racialized people with heart and mind
• Promoting racial resilience and recovery

Who should attend?
Relevant to anyone who needs to get information through asking questions, via a formal interview or more informal means, from people who are suffering from some type of trauma, in order to provide appropriate assistance and support services.

Our Trainer - Rafik Tanious
Counsellor/Trainer, STARTTS

Rafik Tanious has worked across the social ecologies of education, mental health and social services with children and young people for the past 30 years both locally and internationally. He has extensive field work experience working with children and adolescents with refugee backgrounds in case work, education and counselling. Rafik has a continuing interest in trauma recovery, anti-racism, and youth identity formation and has developed racial literacy, and racial resilience programs for young people with refugee experiences and produced anti-racism films on Cabramatta for the NSW Premiers department.

Rafik has also been employed as a consultant and trainer with universities in supporting the mental health of international students, developing orientation programs and inter-cultural learning frameworks and facilitating cross cultural parenting programs. He has worked as an adult educator at TAFE NSW in the community services and health faculties and holds post graduate qualifications in counselling, education and film production with an interest in promoting children and young people’s rights, recovery, and facilitating opportunities for young people and children to tell their own stories of survival and healing. Rafik currently works at STARTTS as a counsellor and trainer.

Workshop delivery
STARTTS workshops are delivered by trainers experienced in the trauma field. They are interactive and normally include small group discussions via breakout rooms, case studies, self-reflections, videos and other types of activities. This workshop is delivered via Zoom. The Zoom link will be included in the registration confirmation email and the reminder emails.

Certificates and handouts
A PDF of the slides will be emailed to you a day before the event. A certificate of completion will be emailed to you the day after the event.

CPD points – 6 CPD hours
This workshop adheres to the continuing professional development standards of most professional bodies. Please check the CPD policy of your professional body.

Note that there are 5 Early Bird Tickets available for purchase 2 months and earlier before the workshop date.

Terms and conditions
Payment of the registration fee is online by credit card and a receipt/confirmation will be automatically emailed to you. An administration fee of $30 applies to all cancellations made more than 14 days the day before the start of the event. Registration once paid cannot be cancelled 14 days or less the day before the start of the event, regardless of personal circumstances. Registration can be transferred to another delegate only if STARTTS is informed of the name change. Registration cannot be transferred to another workshop. The concession price is for full-time students, seniors and the unemployed. A photocopy or pdf of a valid concession card must be forwarded to the STARTTS training team upon registration. Registrations will not be confirmed until full payment is received. The deadlines for the early bird and standard prices cannot be extended. Sometimes STARTTS will need to change the trainer of a particular workshop. The STARTTS Training Team can be contacted at stts-training@health.nsw.gov.au or (02) 9646 6700.