welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host and my guest today is peg right she is the founder president and c e o of the center for great expectations so i want to read to you their mission statement so grounded in a spirituality that treasures the dignity of all c g e seeks to form a partnership with homeless pregnant woman in creating a safe place a safe presence and a safe path so that they may complete a healthy pregnancy choose the next right step and follow through on their plan welcome thank you so much i'm delighted to be here i'm thrilled that you're here and i have to tell you you know people do these mission statements and they're quite ok that mission statement is inspiring i mean i got chills when i read it because and that word safe keeps coming up and you know all we do is long for safety and reassurance and then this population in particular yes so thank you for doing what you do and now tell me a little bit about it i know on the web site it said you do trauma informed therapy you do a lot of things but let's start with that yes well you know the mission statement was established by my mentor sister rita wilkie and she wrote that in one nine hundred ninety eight and it was trauma informed in one nine eight and it still is and we still go back to that mission statement to check ourselves to be assured that we're on the right path so trauma informed is a buzzword now you know it really is and we have learned that the women and children that we serve and then now in our outpatient program have experienced trauma on so many levels and we believe that mental health and civically substance use disorders are maladaptive responses to trauma people don't use substances because they're feeling great and good point those you know that have experienced trauma have a far greater incidence of substance use and mental health disorders so when we created that mission statement it was thinking about those components that would make a safe place a safe presence and a safe path so to begin with a safe place you know our residential facilities are built in such a way that they really honor the dignity of the women in the children that we're serving so when you visit them they're beautiful they're really lovely and you feel so respectful absolutely and each woman has her own space that she can go back to with her child or if she's pregnant and be with her feelings because the safe presence component of what we do are trained clinicians that have been trained extensively in trauma and substance years so they're meeting with these women that come into our residential facility for example in the beginning and for the very first time potentially they're not using a substance and so of course they're dysregulation how could there not be you know has a enter if they are still addicted well they they can enter right after their detox ok so they come to us right after their d taxed and they're either pregnant or parenting a very raw guys very wroth time and the very first thing like ninety percent so we do a psychiatric evaluation so we know what we're dealing with and then we create individual treatment plans for each woman and child and begin the typically out on the street having a substance abuse problem pregnant homeless yeah and with some kind of trauma or series of traumatic events in their lives all and you walk into a space where people take care of you exactly we don't ask them what they did you know we asked them what happened to them and the stories that what we hear are just extraordinary i mean that the response would be well of course you're using substances what else can you how could you manage yes so so you know one of the things i saw on the web site was one young woman story and it's said one of the lines was something to the effect of you know she is learning how to bond with her child and make that emotional connection right and that was so startling to me because for those of us who have had children and haven't had those experiences it doesn't enter our mind that we're not going to bother with our child right but if you have no experience of bonding exactly i would you know that's exactly right and i you know often you know we will have a woman in our program you know who was introduced to heroin by her by her mother at the age of or was you know abused by her mother's boyfriend as a small child so there is no safety so you know in terms of what what does a loving interaction look like or feel like and so that is that's why parent infant until help you know within our programming is so critical so we're working with that woman pre birth to talk with her about her experiences what were they and it's you know it's so beautiful to watch it's relational you know it's not didactic it's not like we're doing parenting training want to none of that it's like sitting on the floor you know and videotaping that interaction with that mother and that child and just you know making suggestions about what you're seeing and it's it's an extraordinary thing to be able to see and the thing is you know it's every life counts and we hear that all the time but not only does it count every life impact ye society yes it is a rippling effect for each of us and we all know when we have a negative interaction with somebody what that ripple effect is immediately but this is more subtle if we're not taking care of humanity then and if people are disconnecting what's the expectation what is that our society or our culture going to look like exactly so here young woman i mean to me it sounds like it must feel miraculous to them yes they often don't leave their rooms for hours when they arise because they feel safe for the first time you know in our adolescent program the adolescents that come to us come out of foster care and that is an extraordinary program of such and dedicated clinicians who are working with these young women that are often times they've been trafficked they've been part of gangs you know we've had gay experiences that was a learning experience in a you can't mass with a gang believe me you  know never forget this young woman told us that the gang was going to come and get her and she was fourteen years old in the adolescent program and i can recall saying to her no dear you're safe here she wasn't  van pulled up around the corner she believed them that they would kill her and her child and she walked from house to house b to get diapers in the volunteer area and walked to the van and in and left and was gone for a week you know i say to my sons you don't learn by what you get right in this life oh my god yeah so we learned a this was ten years ago how did she get back you know it's she we kept calling her because they had she had a cell phone and no answer and finally someone said well why don't you text her this was six days into her disappearance and she answered and said i don't know where i am and we said call a cab and she got in the cab and they drove her back and she ended up and down hospital for ten days and held her and raped her for that entire week in this undisclosed place in new brunswick i mean just crazy and this is right here in our area yeah so we're very clear about what we do w very often when women have children and they have addiction problems or they're homeless or whatever the state takes them away right so like you know this is  we're not taking your child that way that's right teach you to it's not you have to do this first and then you get your child and then by the time you get your child you've missed all vatican right exactly right and you know clearly you know substance use is not in and of itself you know it is not an issue which should make you not eligible to be a mother you know i mean clearly you need the support you know in a path out so that you can successfully have baron unity absolutely and i mean in you know in speaking with that you know so you know we have a continuum of care and we have a community you know that's involved so you know when that mother is at the end of her length of stay toward whatever that is because it's different for each we're thinking about the discharge when she comes in so her child is in our since child development center and we find housing for her we have right now we have twenty eight supportive housing apartments at the center and we have an outpatient program so that she can continue w her care of me residents do you have a one timer how many can you accommodate we have twenty red eventually beds we have eight for the adult women's population and we have twelve for the adolescents and we have fifty six individuals in our support of housing and we treat several hundred in our outpatient program so we're up to about five hundred annually now wow in terms of the women and men actually we treat men now in our patient program which is also trauma and want you know which also recognizes that pain and and the mental health issues that a company that pain and that inability to really grasp what treatment looks like so wow so when we talk about you and i were talking before and you were talking about how emotional trauma and being even more damaging than sexual abuse and physical trauma absolutely so say more about back and it's you know it's really it's on our website  we have partnered with the trauma center in brooklyn massachusetts and we have implemented what is called the arc model of care through our system which is an acronym for attachment emotional regulation and competency and one of the things that i learned from dr joe spent a solo was that and he stated this at our conference our inaugural trauma conference last year on december first and that is that emotional abuse is far more detrimental to an individual it's hidden it's insidious you know it's not emotional or rather physical abuse is very obvious you know you're right max across the face and you know what happened  emotional abuse not so much and you know we were it's so insidious you know and we were talking about you know traumatic experiences that occur even before we're bored and how that really impacts our brain like like you know any kind of emotional it's so let's say a pregnant woman is being abused or she has some terrible traumatic  that chemistry that is impacting no question about it so that child is already doing so to speak in there and they do it to the extent that and what that creates is  vigilance you know and this you know intensity that just goes along with those experiences so you know as a society you know we really do need to begin to look at those early childhood experiences and those stressors that these children are under which are just extraordinary you know current all expectations even i was going to ask you about that because you know one of the things that i've been recently talking to i did a presentation the other day is this idea that we now have an infinite number of things to want yes you look at one catalogue ok so and it's happened in a very short period of time so it's seemingly all accessible yet and then the message that we keep getting is if you don't have that and you don't look like this and you don't have the romance that looks like bad you don't have that this and you don't have that and then you're failing and even if you get all of that don't settle in to satisfaction because there's more that you should want yet so we're all left feeling a little short way and then the idea is instead of you know it's like the parable of the monkey that reaches his hand in the jar holder grabs a bunch of peanuts and then he can't get his hand out and he's unwilling to relinquish any of the peanuts right right so we're not trained to relinquish any of the peanuts and we just feel more like we're still there something we're doing wrong we have to work harder do more reach for more yes we haven't thought about this yes and so we're always left feeling short and then we're doing it to our children i have a client recently who called me and she has commitments they're both working and the kids and the kids and the kids that and she was what she wanted to talk to me about was she wanted to fit in another activity for the kids and i said i think looking at one thing the wrong thing was the idea because now you're training your children to grow up stressed reaching for more trying harder writing faster working harder never just as i say you know we've become human doings and not human beings yes but we pass that on to our children now imagine a child coming into the world already right and the stress of that absolutely and the you know the the stress of living in poverty oh my god this is just extraordinary and you know the the stress of you know a lack of a path and that's something that you know we're very very focused on you know a great expectations of just i have to do that you know you have to give someone the ability to move nurtured heart approach and that was one of the very first things that we did a great expectations to really create a culture you know you could say you want to create a culture within a company and what  glasser program did was it gave us the context to do that so very basically he believes that really all children want is right where their biggest toy and they don't really want anything else so what what is the promise is is that you really celebrate too in a very authentic way the greatness in each child and in our case in each person so it's a staff to staff experience it's a stab wound to clear that's huge got to be right because we also deal just to digress a little with a lot of secondary traumatic stress in our environment yaf is flying out all over the place so we have to be really cognisant of caring for one another and celebrating one another so we do that so it's staff to staff staff to client and then we're helping the client learn that with their child so it's not giving any energy to the negative behavior it's it's clear you know showing that child what mean there are no rules not exactly there are rules there are expectations there are clear consequences for not following that but it's quick and it's over it's a matter of no energy but when that child is doing something that is positive tremendous a few  exactly that's right and so that child or that individual really starts it starts to change their brain and it starts to change their behavior and it's a beautiful thing to watch in my next lifetime to be born to parents who are that are right exactly you know when you think of it you know it's and i'm not blaming parents and you know there are just so many demands on us and then  we're not trained to you know extricate ourselves from that right and so imagine if you could just you know what we end up doing is why did you do that i told you and i you know i told you to be ready and you're not ready and and again there's just all this stuff and it builds the energy yes whereas ok these are the rules ok you don't follow the rules this is what tiniest little progress is celebrated to the tenth power you know this is wonderful and we build on that and it happens in child development center to because a lot of these you know tell me about your child dedicated resources to katie's place and it is just a beautiful place to be and mary jane where your dear a bird who is my thirty year old son's first grade teacher is the runs katie's place and with this tremendous love and care and so all of the staff are working with all of these children in this loving beautiful way and keeping in mind the nurtured har choice and also keeping in mind parent infant mental health which so when the mother comes down a clinician can sit with her and work with her and talk to her about that interaction about what that child is doing or misbehaving or doing beautifully and pointing out you know how wonderful that is and what that child might need if they're not connecting and it's and it's it's an amazing place it really is people don't want to leave and people always cry in katie's place because it's just so moving yeah great and so one of the things that really i want to go there your comment so one of the things that i wanted to go back to youth hoofing about it has to start with through if you have a mission statement you know everything starts at the top and it rolls down and if you're not conscious and intentional about that yeah you can talk to your blue in the face it it doesn't resonate it doesn't take it's now effort thing and getting your behind yourself and pushing yes as opposed to it starts at the top where you support each other where you've practiced the practices with each other yeah create the context for everybody to thrive so that then they can go to the next level without without question you know i mean what so my in my former life i was in diagnostic imaging sales and marketing and i was a bitch on wheels and then i did some work and i learned a lot about myself so when i had an opportunity to do this work at great expectations you know thank god you know i began to make that shift is that what we were talking about is it's a journey it's completely a journey so i became very good at knowing what i didn't know and that was very helpful yes and i i also became good at tremendous vision for what this treatment model that we've developed needs to be you know we were watching the oprah sixty minutes show i was saying to debbie you know i think i shared with you know we've got nine had talked about it and she's really been behind it she was ever on it yeah you've been doing this for nine years that's right the best kept secret i mean when it you got it yeah so we have to break out yes and absolutely you know we have to get the message out and we have to share yes that's really i think what needs to happen because i think people are starting to understand that trauma is at the core of these choices that we make you know and it is so we've got two minutes left what's what do you want our audience to hear what do you want them to know do you have any requests wow i have a lottery we're celebrating twenty years wow  really exciting and congratulations on october fifth we will be at the the hyatt new brunswick and we're going to be celebrating all of the people that have helped us get there and that's really key you know we say people heal people  that's the way it works and who can come to that anybody ok and everybody ok so if they go on your website they'll see that opportune absolutely and our website will be upgraded in three months i'm told it's all it's  all so it's a little rusty but you'll get the general idea and you know you can go on there and you can see dr spin is always talk from our trauma conference and you know there's quite a bit of information and for me what it sounds like i there's a lot to be learned it's rich with information like this whole idea of the nurtured heart of like i want to hear more about bad yeah yeah yes so even for those of us who are not raising young children it's still very relevant very much so yeah very much so we're at the end unfortunately i've really enjoyed talking to you and you are the best kept secret so now hopefully you won't be and i encourage people to check out the website to consider going to your event and come and visit us and come and visit that's really be the most telling i mean when people arrive and they come and they see you confess it's palpable you can