>> HOST: 
A reminder we create learner guides for our webinars as a resource for you to extend your learning on the topic.

This is something we create with steps to take action and it's something you can customize if you have specific questions, perhaps, that you would like to explore with colleagues, you can make this a resource that will work for you.

And we're just super excited to be able to share this learning and know that this resource will help you take next steps as well.

I'm so excited to welcome our presenters today, Beth Wahler is a social work consultant with public libraries and the founder and principal consultant of Beth Wahler consulting.

Also the coauthor of the book that Sarah Johnson has written as well.

Sarah is the adjunct lecturer at the University of Illinois and has also created a number of resources and community around social work, students and public libraries.

Welcome to you both pipet's so great to have you here and I'm going to pass it on over to Beth.

>> BETH: Thank you so much.

We're excited to have this tub to talk with people from all over the country and also throughout the world.

I see people from other countries as well that are registered for today.

We're going to be talking about creating a  person-centered library, supporting high-needs patrons while avoiding burnout.

Just a brief introduction to myself.

I am a researcher and consultant who has been  working with libraries of all kinds for nine years.

I specifically work with libraries around strategies for addressing the needs of their high-needs  patrons and also strategies for reducing staff trauma.

>> SARAH: Mine is going to be very short as well.

Basically I started out in social work a number of years ago and then made the switch to librarian about 15 years ago.

While I certainly have experience in public libraries, the bulk of my experience has been in academic libraries and I sort of stumbled into this topic of social work library partnerships in 2017 and that has been the bulk of my teaching, my research and events such as this.

And so I'm really, really pleased to be here today.

Thank you for your interest.

>> BETH: We have a book called "creating a person receive centered library" that was recently  published there's a discount code for anybody  attending this web lar that Jennifer and WebJunction will push out.

We insight you if you're interested in the book or more about what we're talking about today to please consider checking out the book from your local library or purchasing a copy of the book.

Today we're going to talk about a lot of different things.

We're going to talk about the changes needs of lay rare patrons and how those are impacts staff.

We're going to talk about strategies for assessing your own library's unique needs.

In our experience every library is different.

Different libraries have different needs and are doing well in some areas and may have some  challenges in other.

It's important to assess your own library's needs as you determine how to move forward with this work.

We're going to talk about programs, collaborations and/or services to help you address the needs and support your high-needs patrons.

We're going to talk about fern-centered strategies to begin creating cultural change in your own library and making sure you are using the strategies you can to support staff working in your own organization.

And we're going to talk about some common barriers to change and how to anticipate those and overcome those.

We have included a lot of different content in these slides and because of the time constraints today there are some pieces we may not be able to talk about in detail but we intentionally put material in the slides so that you can refer back to that and perhaps get some additional information that we may not have a lot of time to cover today.

We also are trying to address a lot of different audiences.

Today in your presentation we're talking to  front-line staff, middle management, we're also talking to upper management, directors, top administration and libraries and library systems.

So as you listen to the strategies we talk about, think about what applies to you and your role.

Try not to be overwhelmed by all of the different things we're talking about and instead think about one or two things you may be able to use in your own role and build upon.

So before we talk about strategies for addressing the needs of patrons and supporting staff, we wanted to provide a little bit of context about the different changing needs we're seeing that are impacting libraries everywhere and some context for why some of the changes are happening.

Library needs have really been changing for the past several decades, really going all the way back to the "60s when the deinstitutionalization movement that took place here in the US.

For those not familiar with what this means, at this time anybody who was deemed to have a mental health problem or a mental illness, anybody who was deemed to have a mental illness was often put in an  in-patient setting or an institution for years, sometimes decades, sometimes their entire lives.

And we learned up until -- we learned before the '60s that this wasn't beneficial for people and people actually thrive and do better when they're outside of an institution, in their community, able to be around their social support networks, maybe maintain housing, employment, et cetera.

So in the '60s there was a movement to close down a lot of the institutions that served people with mental health problems and move people back out into their own local communities.

And federal funds were put into community mental health support and mental health services.

The problem is that there has never been enough money to adequately support people in communities all across the country.

And especially when we think about urban and rural communities and everything in between.

So what happened is starting in the '60s we started seeing really huge increases in the number of people who were experiencing homelessness who also had mental health problems or substance use problems.

And that has continued to today.

We still do not have adequate mental health services for people in the community.

We don't have adequate substance abuse services, housing supports, all of the different things that people need who may have some of the cooccurring challenges.

People started going to the library during the day.

They needed place to go during the day.

We saw people in the community who didn't have anywhere safe to be who maybe sought out their local public library and then also sometimes other libraries.

We also started some needs that impacted libraries in the early 2000s with the great recession and the mortgage crisis.

At this time because of the mortgage crisis and the recession, we started seeing this huge increase in poverty-related needs in general in our country and we started seeing big increases in homelessness people who didn't have the co-occurring mental health or substance use abuse problems.

We saw increase in families with young children who were homeless, increases in women experiencing homelessness.

As homelessness increased and generally  poverty-related needs increased, this impacted the libraries serving the public with these needs.

We've had for years increasing costs an stagnant wages in this country.

The national minimum wage has been 7.25 an hour since 2009 even though the average living wage -- this is a two-wage-earner family with two children would have to make 25.02 an hour.

You have one wage earner with two dependents, you have to think about doubling that.

In some areas around the country the living wage is much higher than this.

This is the average for the entire country.

This doesn't just impact library patrons, this impacts the library staff who may not be making living wages in different communities around the country and also have poverty-related needs or challenges meeting their basic needs for themselves and their families.

We have a shortage of emergency shelter beds throughout the country.

Even when there is emergency shelter, who unhoused have to have somewhere to go during the day because they usually have to leave and they often pushes them into one of the only safe places that may be in their community, which is their library.

We also have had an increase in municipal statutes across the country that criminalize homelessness.

It's against the law in many different communities for people to be panhandling or loitering or sleeping in a public space.

Those regulations and laws also push people who are experiencing homelessness into a safe inside place which again is often their library.

Then of course the COVID pandemic has created increased stress, increased health problems, increased mental health problems.

We've seen increases in homelessness, increases in general poverty-related needs since the beginning of the pandemic four years ago.

These impacted library staff and library patrons.

And the current political climate.

Libraries are at the center in many different communities with culture war, people making threats to libraries or library staff based on programs which has caused increased stress and strain for library staff and in some places increased violence or decreased funding.

As we look at the general society around the country and how that impacts libraries, we are seeing in research on patron populations we have increase in psychosocial needs.

Patrons had needs including homelessness, unsafe or unstable housing, mental health challenges, increased sub dance use, increased overdoses happening often in libraries and increased  poverty-related needs.

These needs in patron populations have been increasing since the beginning of the COVID  pandemic.

Urban libraries are the ones highlighted in some of the research on this topic, we're seeing these same needs in rural or Suburban libraries.

They look a little different, for example, people chronically unhoused and living on the streets we see in urban areas because of the services being in those areas.

How many, homelessness and unstable housing is a huge need in rural areas but it seems to look different and people may be couch surfing or staying with friends and family in those areas.

And the number of people visiting in these needs varies based on the size of the library and the population.

We're seeing these same needs in all different kinds of libraries pap and this information on this slide pertains to public libraries but we're seeing similar needs in specifically school libraries, academic libraries and special libraries as well.

Many of these needs that patrons have are  trauma-related.

They're associated with trauma.

Meaning that somebody who experiences trauma is more likely to develop a mental health or a substance use problem or experience homelessness.

And once somebody has one of those problems, they're more likely to experience subsequent trauma.

And trauma and the experience of trauma can worsen their prognosis or cause challenges with the recovery process.

For staff populations I think it's important that working with people who have these kinds of needs can cause trauma and that's part of what we'll be talking about today is the impact on staff in libraries everywhere.

We're going to use the phrase high-needs patrons throughout this presentation.

We're talking about the group that have psychosocial needs and have high levels of very complex needs.

We know in a growing body of research that these needs are causing a lot of stress and strain for library staff everywhere.

Staff often describe not feeling that they're appropriately trained to work with people who have these needs or qualified to assist people with these kinds of needs.

Staff sometimes feel really conflicted about their role with people who have these needs or what the role of the library really even is with people that have these kinds of needs.

We find that patrons who have these needs sometimes take up more time that patrons who don't have these kinds of needs and that stretches staff thin and in many cases libraries are understaffed and  underresourced as it is, so it adds more stress to already stretched then staff trying to serve everybody in the library.

We're seeing increases in violence that are happening in libraries and many staff describe feeling afraid for their own safety or the safety of other patrons or other people in their libraries.

And in some libraries staff are calling police or emergency assistance frequently for help because of the challenges that are happening in libraries.

There is a growing body of research on library worker trauma.

Yes, these are causing stress and strain and in many cases we're seeing trauma based on serving high needs patrons or patrons with behavioral problems or things that are happening in the libraries.

Front-line staff in all kinds of libraries and all kinds of community.

This isn't just urban libraries.

We sere seeing the experiences of true a ma in rural and Suburban libraries as well.

Front-line staff, over half are reporting spiriting trauma in work-place incidents in their job.

These incidents include verbal abus, being attacked or verbally attacked or having people come in app and destroy library property.

These indents increased since the COVID pandemic four years ago.

The current political climate is contributing to the increased threats of violence and this is because of people who are really upset about diversity-related programs of events or collections that libraries have.

And what we're seeing is increase of threat of violence against library workers, library directors, bomb threats that are happening.

Lots of different threats to libraries.

When we look at staff experiencing these threats, staff coming from marginalized groups are experiencing higher trauma from these kinds of incidents because in many cases the threats of violence are specific to a characteristic that they have.

So, you know, people who staff people who are  LGBTQ+, for example, if threats are coming in about collection or events to that population, a staff person who identify as LGBTQIA+ is more likely to experience trauma from that.

And trauma responses vary.

Different people have experiencing different levels of trauma and experiencing trauma in different ways based on these events.

' trauma responses can look different in different people.

But trauma responses are any kind of adaptation our body or brain makes to experiencing a traumatic event.

And these responses can last our whole lifetime after we experience trauma.

And this can inner collude mental health symptoms, anxiety or depression, physical health problems, actually, you know, getting sick more often, they can include trouble with our cognitive functioning, with remembering things, being able to concentrate, being able to focus, being able to have  relationships, healthy relationships with other people or being able to trust other people or feel safe in the world.

So all of these things can be different trauma responses that people experience because of living through some sort of traumatic incident that has happened.

And we're seeing high numbers of staff who are describing trauma responses either because of trauma they've experienced outside of their job, because really the majority of adults by the time we get to adulthood, the majority of people have experienced some sort of traumatic incident in their life.

So we have a lot of people who are working in libraries who have experienced trauma outside the library.

We also have a huge number of staff who are experiencing trauma inside the library.

We also are seeing high rates of what we call secondary or vicarious traumatization.

And what this is, this is something that is very common in any kind of helping profession.

We see anytime social work, we see it in health  care, we see it in education r occasion, we see it in libraries.

And it's when we can develop a trauma response, not because we experienced the trauma first hand but because we're working so closely with other people who experience the trauma.

So we can actually see people who have developed trauma responses because of knowing coworkers who have experienced first hand trauma or because of working with patrons who have experienced first-hand trauma.

When we develop secondary or vicarious traumatization, it has the same impact on our mental health, physical health, overall well-being as if we experienced the trauma ourselves.

And the risk of secondary trauma is greater for women, people who are trauma survivors from other times in their lives, people untrained or undertrained on how to manage and deal with other people's trauma and people who have socially or organizationally isolated.

We see people who are empathetic and caring by nature.

That's why you're in the work.

Also people who are often undertrained for managing trauma or the impact or trauma.

And depending on the library we sometimes see people who have socially or organizationally isolated, especially when we think about smaller libraries when there may be a much smaller team, in some cases only one person work in that library.

We're also seeing high rates of burnout in staff populations right now.

So for burnout, burnout is a specific syndrome that's been defined by the world health organization as a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

I want to come back to that in a minute.

There are three different dimensions for people to be considered burned out.

One is that we have to feel exhausted.

The second is that we have to have increased negativity or cynicism about our job and the third is we have to have reduced effectiveness at work.

The risk of being burned out is increased by people who don't have much control over their job, who don't have adequate resource to do their job effectively, who has unclear job expectations or unclear roles, people who have dysfunctional work dynamic.

People working in places where they don't feel comfortable being themselves or they don't feel safe speaking up when something inappropriate is happening.

We see the risk of burnout increased in people who are isolated either at home or at work or both and people who have a work-life imbalance.

But the work-life imbalance piece is really tricky because as stress level goes up at work, we tend to have less energy for the things we used to do outside of work that helped us.

So we have less energy for seeing our friends or other people who are positive for us.

We have less energy for pursuing our hobbies.

So as stress level increases, that work-life balance tends to increase.

When I said I wanted to come back briefly to that definition, it's because I have a problem with this definition.

The definition sounds like it's a personal problem, like I haven't managed my stress appropriately.

But when we look at these risk factors, almost all of these are actually organizational risk factors.

And that means, though, that's actually good news because it means we can change things at the organizational level to actually reduce the rates of burnout that people are experiencing.

Other thing we're seeing in libraries which tends to be a new term for people is institutional betrayal.

And institutional betrayal is a term that comes from the trauma literature.

And Dr. Jennifer Freyd kind this term and it was based on her work and what she noticed with trauma survivors is that when people experienced a trauma in the context of working with an organization, if they felt like the trauma happened because of some act of negligence by the organization or they felt like there wasn't a compassionate or caring or sufficient response after the fact, that the trauma response was actually magnified and worsened than the if that person had experienced the same kind of trauma but didn't feel it was due to that institution or not responded to appropriately by that organization.

So when we look at research that's being done on library staff populations, we are seeing lots of people described worsened trauma responses from incidents happening in the library because of  feeling like either that incident happened because of some act of negligence or there wasn't an appropriate response after the fact.

So all of these things, whether we're talking about first-hand experiences with trauma, secondary or vicarious trauma, burnout or institutional betrayal, these are all really complex interconnected issues which require broad organizational solution to make a difference with.

And in libraries that does mean that we need to often look at ways we can make cultural change and make some big shifts to support not only high-needs patrons but to make sure we're adequately supporting the workforce inside the library as well.

So libraries sometimes struggle with this, with using what Sarah and I call a person-centered approach, because for most libraries, the policies and practices were created as a way to serve the community or serve the patrons.

Or they were created exec r specifically to protect and circulate and organize the collection.

But now that we know about the impact of the work of the people inside the library, we sometimes have to make some significant revisions to policies and practices to Mike sure we're adequately protecting and supporting the people inside the organization as well.

So when we talk about a person-centered library or a person-centered approach, what we're talking about is that yes, the people served by the library matter and they need to matter and their well-being needs to matter and we need to think about how the library can serve them.

But the people inside the library need to visibly matter as much as the people being served by the library.

In some cases that is not the case and everything seems to be more externally focused than also  looking internally.

So when libraries are really trying to implement this person-centered approach, one of the things that they need to look at is how they can implement a trauma-informed approach.

Because a trauma-informed approach is an example of a person-centered approach that supports the people served by the library as well as the people inside the library.

There are trainings you can find specifically on how to apply a trauma-informed to a library.

We're going to briefly cover this today.

When you're thinking about a trauma-informed approach in your library, it starts with making sure that everybody in the library is trained on the prevalence of trauma and how it impacts the behavior of both staff and patrons.

How it impacts the patron but also have how trauma is impacting the staff.

We don't stop with the training.

We think about how to incorporate this knowledge into our policies and our practices to benefit both patrons and staff

we work as a whole, as a whole library to make sure that we are sensitive to the traumatic experiences of others and that we actively work to reduce trauma and retraumatization of people interacting with our libraries.

And we learn to think about inappropriate behavior that's happening from this lens where rather than looking at it through our knee-jerk reaction of thinking, what's wrong with this person for them to be doing this, we instead reframe it and think, what happened to this person for them to be doing what they're doing.

And it doesn't change that when somebody is doing something inappropriate or disruptive in the library that we have to address that.

But reframing it and really thinking about what might have happened to make somebody do what they're doing can help us have more empathy, more patience and often respond with a more restorative approach rather than a punitive approach.

The six guiding principles of trauma-informed care is safety, both employs and staff and patrons.

Trustworthiness and transparency, making sure we're living out the values that we have as an organization.

Peer support is another principle of trauma-informed care.

We look for opportunities in the library for people to support each other and that's not only patrons but also staff.

We also have to take sure we're applying the principle of collaboration and mutuality.

Keeping in mind we're all in this together.

We're part of the same team.

We thrive as humans through relationships with each other and with one another.

Empowerment voice and choice is another principle of trauma-informed care and that's where we look for someone who may not have a voice in our normal procedures and we think about ways to increase opportunities for everybody to have a voice and make sure that we're making decisions with all of those voices being heard.

And then the last principle of trauma-informed care is cultural, historical and gender issues.

This means we keep in mind how we are operating in a world that has a lot of inequities and we need to keep working towards creating an equitable culture in our library and outside of our library and we need to make decisions with equity in mind trying to repair harm to certain marginalized and oppressed groups and individuals.

For libraries trying to work trauma-informed, we recommend that you create a workgroup in your library that is intentionally created with staff and administrators from all locations, all different positions.

So again we're getting voices from everybody.

This group can help assays your own labor rare's current state and areas of need, they can help make recommendations for priorities and strategies, help monitor progress as you're moving forward own your own journey to be trauma-informed, to keep the work moving forward, keep it on the radar so it doesn't fall off and can help point out and celebrate the small successes.

When we're talking about cultural change, as we're trying to change libraries or change organizations, this change can be very slow times.

It's not easy to change a whole organization, especially when we think about the size of some libraries or the size of some organizations.

And so we have to really look for small successes and celebrate those and build upon those and this kind of workgroup can help with that.

We also have to keep in mind throughout the library how we can create a culture of care.

Sarah and I are talking about a lot of different strategies today for supporting patrons and staff but I will say that the culture matters most.

Really working and intentionally creating a culture of care that is based on relationships between people and with each other is so important to move any of this work forward with a person-centered library or a trauma-informed approach.

We have to think about how from the top down in our library all of us can work to really use that relationship-first approach.

We want to think about how we can reduce the hierarchy when possible.

So libraries tend to be for hierarchical organizations and sometimes we need the hierarchy for certain task to get done.

But when we make decisions, have conversations, we need to think about how to reduce the impact of that hierarchy and create avenues for people at all level to communicate and have feedback and input.

We also want to think about how our differences in our library and inequities that are there and make sure at all levels we're actively working to try to reduce the inequities.

Again, at all levels in the library we want to think about how we can demonstrate personal and cultural humility.

So this is something that we all bring, no matter what role we're in in the library, we want to remember that other people are the experts on their own experiences.

And just because somebody is telling us they've had a different experience of something than we have, doesn't mean that it's not valid or it's not true.

We need to make sure that we're all exercising cultural humility and personal humility remembering that other people are the expert on their own experiences.

In our libraries we have to make sure that we are swiftly addressing and we have policies in place to address harassment, abuse, discrimination and  bullying.

When we look at research on staff populations, we see that many staff are experiencing these things from patrons but in some libraries, many staff are experiencing these things from other staff and from management as well.

And we need to make sure that we have policies in place and processes for handling these things so that we are not tolerating abuse or harassment or bullying in our libraries and that we're creating positive workplaces.

We need to Mike sure we're taking staffty concerns seriously animplements strategies to increase the safety of everybody.

That's physical and psychological safety.

Create opportunities for peer support, mentoring, collaboration and connection, create opportunities for people to really shine and feel appreciated and enjoy their work.

They ears important too.

We want to make sure that we're advocating for adequate support for staff and that includes tangible support, like trying to get increased wages or benefits, social support, creating opportunities for networking, emotional support, and that we're seeking consultation when we need to.

I see some of you are comment in the chat that you work in an environment that is doing some of these things already.

So we wanted to really invite you to share examples of strategies that your library or your supervisors have used to support staff and demonstrate a person-centered environment.

We would love to see what things are happening that you all can describe from your own personal experience.

And before we shift gears I do want to say that it is really important in your own library that you take the time to assess your own needs.

So every library, again, is different.

And what works in one library doesn't necessarily work in another.

And sometimes we see in our consulting with libraries we sometimes see libraries are using what other library used and they're disappointed because it doesn't work in their environment.

It's important to take the time to do a needs  assessment first and think about ways that you can gather information from your own teams, from your own staff or patrons that can help move this work forward and help you determine the priorities in your own library.

There's a link on the slide to an article that could be helpful about how to conduct a needs assessment in your own library as you think about conducting a needs assessment, just think first about the who, what, when, where and why of what you need to know, who has that information, how you can gather it, how having that information will help you determine the next steps.

And then use the results of your needs assessment.

So taking the time to gather some data first can be really helpful for a number of reasons.

One is that it can help you justify why you're using a new strategy to help you get funding or buy-in.

It can act as a baseline to measure change over time so you can tell whether the strategies you're starting to use are having an impact or not.

A needs assessment can help you set priorities or goals.

And Sarah and I really recommend that as you think about what to do in your own library that you start small and scale up.

That is much more sustainable over time than trying to start with a huge new program or, you know, huge new strategy that may not be able to be sustained over time.

Gathering information through a needs assessment can also help make sure you're using a collaborative approach in your library and can get increased participation and buy-in from others.

So it's really helpful -- I know it takes time and energy.

But doing this up front can make sure you don't waste your time and energy on strategies that won't work in your context and it can be useful to you justifying what you're doing, getting funding and measuring change over time.

I'm going to turn things over to Sarah now.
.

>> HOST: Do you want to take a few questions now?

There are a few that have come through while you've been presenting, Beth.

>> BETH: Sure.

We can take a minute for a couple of questions.

>> HOST: There were a couple that were proposed that relate to the whole, you know when it's not -- when everybody is not on the same page in the organization in terms of this need.

So one question is what do you do when you're experiencing staff bullying and your supervisor is close to the other staff or chose -- close to the other staff to address the real issues.

So around the issue if you're alone, you feel alone and you can't go to your supervisor or leadership.

>> BETH: So I'm going to ask to hold on to that question because we actually are going to talk a little bit in the near future.

We're going to talk about strategies that you can use no matter what level you are in the library to help bring about change when it needs to happen.

>> HOST: Okay.

I'll add that the other question is a little bit similar but this is a little more about external perceptions.

And somebody said that their system is in a county which the county commissioners refuse to recognize that we have a homelessness and low-income  residents.

They have also decided to back out of a mental health facility which has caused great backlash from locals who want the facility.

So the question is, as a low-ranking librarian, how do you convince both supervisors and the board that we need to provide some sort of social service to support our community.

So I think that pairs a little bit with -- really it's an advocacy piece as well.

I think that --

>> BETH: Let's hold that thought and we'll come back to that.

Those are good questions and we'll make sure to come back to that a little later in the webinar.

>> HOST: Excellent.

Thank you.

>> SARAH: Okay.

All right.

So let's talk about some general strategies for supporting high-needs patrons.

And I'm going to provide some examples of common collaborations that libraries are currently involved in throughout the US to do this.

Broadly speaking, there are some overarching methods for supporting high-needs patrons.

The first is by way of intentional engagement.

This means that we are aware of both the covert and overt messages that we are sending to everyone who walks through our doors.

It looks like creating and inviting in a safe space for everyone.

And one of the easiest ways to do this is to simply learn the names of our patrons, especially our regulars.

This basic first step towards generating rapport and trust with our community.

And we think -- and when we think about patrons who may have complex psychosocial needs, intentional engagement is particularly important as it offers a relational approach with engaging with someone versus one that is merely transactional.

Another way this can be achieved is being by cognizant of our signage and our collections and making sure those collections are representatives of our communities.

Outreach is also a strategy.

And this goes beyond just being a welcoming environment.

It means that we extend our library services and information out into the community.

Examples of this include bringing library services to reach marginalized groups in nursing homes, shelters or jails.

It may very well include assisting them in signing up for a library card, helping them to create an e-mail address or engage in a fun recreational activity together.

Another way to support high-needs patrons is through what's known as a warm handoff.

This is an example of a relational approach rather than a transactional one where we may simply provide a patron with a phone number or website.

In our time or resources allow for it, it could mean helping the patron make a phone call or initiating an introduction to a neighboring agency or a community resource.

We of course want to first seek permission from the patron before doing so and.

And assuming we get the green light from the patron to help with ten gaugement, we then step aside, which is the handoff.

Finally we can also offer the coordination of services for high-needs patrons.

And this too is a step beyond the warm handoff in which we actually seek to follow through to ensure that patrons have received the services that they need.

This kind of assistance can be provided through peer navigators, social workers, library volunteers or dedicated outreach librarians.

Such persons can make phone calls, have in-person conversations, provide web assistance or physically walk a patron over to a local social service agency.

If these kind of supports are not feasible in your library, another means is through providing quality resource tips and tool sheets, such as a checklist of what an organization hires when a patron is  seeking assistance, such as ID or certain paperwork.

We can create current and validated referral sheets and brochures as well.

Primary collaboration.

So I'm going to go through these three  collaborations that are quite common in libraries.

Social work, public health workers or health navigators as well as peer navigators.

But before I do that, just posing a question to y'all that you can engage in in the chat is, are there existing collaborations that your library or you as an individual have developed to be helpful for serving high-needs patrons.

Okay.

So social workers.

This is probably the most popular collaboration is having a social worker in the library.

This movement started about 15 years ago and since that time has really ballooned until the last count I had a few days ago was approximately 325 partnerships across the US.

There are also global collaborations in Canada and in the south Pacific.

There's a variety of models in which libraries partner with social work, everything from employing a full-time social worker that is a full,  functioning member of the library team, to  contracting with a local agency to host a part-time or a volunteer social worker a few hours a week or a few days a week.

To libraries that are partnering with schools of social work to host student interns during the academic year.

To be clear, what we're talking about here is partnering with social workers.

We are not advocating that public libraries morph into becoming social service organizations.

Instead, we are discussing social workers providing assistance with a different type of information need that falls outside the typical training that we as librarians receive in school or even gain on the job.

And so this map here, this is a screen shot from whole-person librarian ship.

And this map depicts the number of public libraries across the country that are engaged in social work partnerships.

I help update and maintain this map.

And the different colored pins signify different types of collaborations.

So, for instance, the magenta pins indicate public libraries that currently or recently employed or contracted with full-time social workers.

The other ones are part-time social workers and libraries that team up with schools of social work.

All right.

A second primary collaboration that libraries are engaged in include working with health care providers.

The training may differ but we collectively refer to nurses, public health advocates, community health workers as health navigators or health advocates.

The aim of teaming up with libraries is for them to address health and wellness needs such as preventing disease, early detection, behavioral health, mobility and exercise.

Examples of this.

A recent example of health advocacy is the library nurses project at the Pima public library.

This collaboration began in 2012.

While I recently came to a close, it positioned a full-time and volunteer nurses from the local health department in the library by offering health screenings, education about nutrition, helping patrons who were experiencing behavioral health challenges as well.

In North Carolina currently the Charlotte Mecklenburg public library collaborates with Novant health.

Twice a week a health worker comes in and provides the following tools.

November gaiting local and online health services, education about life stages and general well-being.

There's also a mobile unit for health screenings and immunizations for children.

The library's health advocate has a monthly speaker series that addresses health and wellness-related information in the community.

Another collaboration is with peer navigators.

Sometimes they're referred to as peer supports or health and safety associates.

These individuals have lived experiences with one or all of the following.

This could be homelessness, substance abuse.

Many of these individuals are in recovery.

It could be ongoing or prior mental health  challenges.

Or it could just be someone from a traditionally marginalized population.

And what they do is they help patrons to access and navigate online and in-person resources.

They provide immediate personalized support as someone who has been where they are.

This type of collaboration can rapidly build trust and rapport with patrons seeking assistance and it can also reduce any potential stigma of asking for help.

Peer navigators might be supervised by a social  worker on the library team or they may receive their supervision from other peers through a partnering agency.

So one example of this is the Kalamazoo public library in Michigan.

They contract with a local community organization to have certified and -- sorry, certified and supervised peer navigators at the library.

In addition to supporting patrons experience health or substance use challenge, the library's outreach coordinator, Kevin king who is as of last week at east Lansing public library.

He's found that the peer's presence at the library really diminished the number of violent incidents in their libraries as well as challenging behaviors from patrons at their branch.

Peers can also simply be someone for patrons to talk to, even if they are not interested or capable of making changes in their lives.

So a friendly face to connect with.

As I mentioned, others are health and safety advocates.

That's happening at San Francisco public library.

Washington, D.C. has peers and Denver public library has them as well.

When I'm talking about additional programming here, I'm going to give some examples that don't include partnering with outside organizations but they're generally internally generated by the library.

So this includes creating or designating specific library roles such as community outreach librarians or what The New York Public Library, they employed someone full time and they refer to that person as a manager of community wellness.

And those librarians specifically focus on  supporting high-needs patrons.

It can also look like inviting local community agencies for tabling events in order for them to showcase their services and to connect with patrons in person.

On a microlevel this can look like including -- I'm sorry, creating accessible resource guides.

I know at the Caseyville public library, the librarian there, one of their librarians created a tough topics call numbers that are posted throughout the branch to help patrons with locating text resources on topics such as domestic violence or mental health.

And then when you go to that part of the shelf they have brochures literally embed into the shelves so individuals can take that information right there in an anonymous way.

Another common program is creating book clubs for specific communities such as new Americans, young mothers, youth or patrons experiencing homelessness.

A final example of additional programming focusing on staff.

There are a variety of topics for which public librarians across the country routinely request quality basic or additional training.

 social workers or community staff can train staff in any of these areas, which I won't read through.

What I want to say is that in order for trainings to be worthwhile and effective, they really need to be relevant to library staff as well as practical.

And they need to be offered regularly.

This can be accomplished by teaching library staff actual skills and responses through realistic scenarios rather than staying at a high level of theory alone.

Ideally the psychosocial education is offered in a way that's efficient, such as closing the library for a day or a half day to focus on in-service trainings, to really maximize attendance instead of it being an additional task that already busy staff need to find extra time for.

Therefore, we need -- training needs to adapt to staff's schedules.

Another way this can happen is by recording the training sessions so that individuals who couldn't be there on a certain training day can watch later or few it more than once.

And I'll hand it back over to Beth.

>> BETH: Sarah was just talking about some  strategies for addressing patron neath.

But I'm going to shift gears and talk about ways we can increase staff support in libraries.

So often when staff are asking for more support or asking for help or talking about feeling really stressed in their work or experiencing trauma, the solution that is offered to people is to focus on individual self care.

And from this slide you can see that individual self care is a piece of the puzzle when we're talking about protecting our own health and well-being.

We do have to use strategies to care for ourselves.

But we also have to think about comprehensive strategies for supporting the wellness of staff, staff and administrators, really, everybody working in a library.

So I'm going to talk briefly about individual self-care, supportive supervisory practices, overall organizational strategies and also professional advocacy.

When we're talking about self-care, we have to actually think about this from a two-pronged approach.

Self-care is any strategy that any of us uses to improve or increase our overall wellness.

When we think about wellness, we have to think about wellness in a multidimensional sense.

So wellness includes our mental health, our physical health, our intellectual wellness, emotional  wellness, our spiritual wellness.

All of these different dimensions that we really have to be focusing on all of them and trying to balance all of them if we're going to really improve our wellness over time.

But when we're talking about self-care -- and I said that we needed to have a two-pronged strategy -- it's because we really need some strategies that we're all using to focus on our long-term wellness, their long-term strategy to help increase our resilience to stress over time.

But we also need short-term strategies that we can use in a time of crisis or immediately after a  high-stress incident that could help us regulate our nervous system.

Often when we go to trainings on self-care, they're focusing on the long-term strategies and not really talking about the short-term strategies.

When we think about individual self-care, we also sometimes talk about these big strategies that take a lot of money, take a lot of time, take a lot of resources that we don't all have.

So what I want to talk about today and what Sarah and I have tried to talk about in our book is focusing on strategies that are really affordablable and sustainable and time efficient.

They don't have to be these big huge things.

Really self-care made up of lots of different small strategies.

Those small strategies add up over time.

So when we're thinking about those short-term strategies, we have to think about things -- so anytime we're in a high-stress incident -- and that happens all of the time when we're working with people in the library.

It could happen because of an interaction with a colleague that was really tense.

It could happen because of a patron interaction, a patron complaint or some sort of huge incident or crisis that happened in the library.

And when we experience those things, we tend to notice that our own nervous system becomes disregulated.

We can feel our heart rate racing short of breath, light-headed, have trouble focusing or  concentrating.

We get in the fight or flight kind of response.

So when we can feel that happening, we have to have a toolbox of strategies that we can use to help us regulate our nervous system and really regain a sense of control over our own bodies at that point.

Because that can help us focus, help us respond, get it out of that panicked state.

These are strategies, given for different people.

What works for me maybe doesn't work for you.

We have to try different things to find strategies that work for each of us.

But these tend to be things that are either movement or sensory related activities.

So there's a list here of some things that can help regulate people's nervous systems in a time of acute stress.

So those can be breathing exercises, like deep breathing or square breathing or slowed-down breathing.

But breathing exercises don't work for everybody.

For some f us they work really well to regulate our nervous system.

For other people they can make them feel escalated or worse.

Also just making ourselves practice a pause, having some kind of sensory break where we can remove ourselves from the place where it's high stress, get off the floor, get to a quiet area.

Music, singing, humming, you know, again, that combines our senses and sometimes that can also use movement if we're moving around as we're listening to music.

Stretching, yoga, short walks.

Making ourselves feel things that are hot or cold.

Drinking something that has ice in it and making ourselves pay attention to the cold sensation, followed by something that's warm.

Like anything that we can make ourselves use our senses can help us regulate our nervous system in a time of crisis.

We also think about how we can shift our focus intentionally rather than thinking why is this happening to me or really sort of getting upset with ourselves for our own reaction.

We want to change our thinking to think about what can I do right now to try to help, you know, come back to myself.

Positive telephone-talk could be really helpful, mindfulness, visualization, meditation, practicing grounding exercises, which are exercises where we intentionally think about three things I can use different senses for.

Making myself think about what are three things I can see right now, what are three things I can hear right now, what do I feel right now underneath my body.

Those kinds of things can help regulate our nervous systems in a time of crisis and we all need a toolbox to pull those things from because we are going to be in high-stress times sometimes when we're working in a library.

We also have to think about the long-term  strategies.

So these long-term strategies, I'm not going to get in depth with them.

You can find self-assessment instruments available online for free.

Or you can do a self-care assessment.

You want to look for something that has the different dimensions of wellness and different self-care strategies under each dimension.

And going through that and answering those  assessment questions can help you identify what new strategies might help.

And these strategies are the ones that can increase our resilience to stress over time.

These are like practicing good sleep hygiene,  thinking about how we're eating and caring for our bodies, thinking about what we're having social interactions with others, exercising, doing things enjoyable, pursuing a hobby, challenging our own intellectual awareness, learning a language.

The things that work for different people are different and we just need to think about what works for us as an individual.

And how we can make sure that we're focusing on multiple areas of wellness and not just one.

When we talk about individual self-care though, we have to think about the limits of self-care.

Self-care is not a cure to everything we've been talking about in this webinar.

We can't self care ourselves out of poor organizational practices, discrimination, bias, harassment, bullying, abuse, no matter what kind of self-care practices we have, we can't take away the impact of those things and we need to be working on organizational strategies to address those and reduce those challenge rather than putting the onus on the individual to take care of themselves.

Remember that self-care takes resources that many of us don't have.

We have to think about sustainable and affordable strategies that we can use.

And we have to member that trauma, vicarious trauma, burnout, experience trauma until betrayal, all of those are related to organizational trauma.

We have to address those things rather than just expecting employees to take care of themselves.

When we're talking about individual strategies, we also all have to realize that working in a library is going to have some unavoidable stress and sometimes unavoidable trauma.

There are inherent risks to serving the public and we can't take away all risk of harm in this kind of environment.

So individual employees have to think about a number of things.

One is what meaning does this work give you.

What are your personal motivations

it's often those things that help us persevere in the face of stress and keep going even when it's a stressful environment sometimes.

We also have to really reflect on our own personal attributes and acknowledge, you know, anytime we're in a field or a profession where we are the tool that we're using to help other people, we don't have a machine we're using.

It really is we're relating person to person to the people we're serving, we have to acknowledge that the work we're doing impacts us as humans and what we bring to the work impacts our interactions with others.

So there are times that we really need to reflect on ourselves and what it is about ourselves that may help us in the job, what about ourselves may  actually be a challenge for us in our particular role.

We also have to think about what is within our own power or control to change.

So sometimes we have the ability to change our behavior.

We have the ability to change our circle or our  team.

And there are some strategies we can use to try to influence people above us.

But seems we also have to accept that we have control over some things but we may be powerless over others and that may cause us to make a choice about our job in some cases or a choice that maybe this isn't the place that we want to work.

We also have to make sure as individuals that we are all monitoring ourselves for signs of vicarious trauma, first-hand trauma or burnout.

And that when we're noticing those things that we reach out to our supervisors or our colleagues when it's safe to do so.

In some cases we need to seek professional help when we need to.

We also may have -- we talked earlier about how common trauma is for all of us.

There are times that our job may be triggering things for us that have happened outside of the job that may mean we need to seek some professional  help.

In any job where we are bringing ourselves to the job and we influence the job and the job influences us, we have to take care of ourselves and notice when we actually do need to seek professional help.

There were questions earlier about what we can do.

So if we are lower in the organizational structure and we're noticing things that need to change or we're noticing problems, there are some strategies we can use to try to influence people above us, whether it's people with our county or our city, our board or our supervisor.

We want to make sure that we are speaking up when possible and we're making it known when there are challenges and what the challenges are.

We want to make sure that we're connecting with allies if possible.

Power in numbers.

When we talk about change and how an organization changes, that change is driven forward by somebody or some thing.

So sometimes the change in an organization is pushed forward by administration or by leaders.

Sometimes it's by the staff at another level in the organization.

Sometimes it's by the community.

So we have to think about how we can combine with other allies to help move things forward and make our voices known because there's power in numbers.

When people realize it's not just one person that's having this problem but it's really most of the people at this level are having this problem or having this experience.

They're more likely to do something about it.

You also want to think about how you can collect data or personal stories to help get buy-in from managers or your director or your board or whoever it is that is the power that be above you.

So the information earlier about a needs assessment, you can do with a small team or a small group and you want to think about how you can collect data.

Because it's hard to ignore numbers sometimes about incidents that are happening or the experiences that people are having.

And you want to think about how you can use that data to show a discrepancy between the stated mission and the goals and the values and what the reality really is.

But also we want to point out that sometimes you need to know when it's time to walk away or make a change.

So if you're work in a really toxic environment and there's nothing that's changing and you've used these strategies, then at some point sometimes you to know when it's time to walk away.

And I know that's easier said than done.

And also sometimes it's time to change jobs.

I may not be the organization that is toxic but, you know, when I think back to my own career as a social worker, there have been lots of times I have been burned out because of high-stress interactions,  high-stress work and I've needed to make a change in my particular position to get a little bit of a break from that.

There's nothing wrong with that.

That doesn't mean anybody failed or, you know, anything negative.

It's just the reality of working with high-stress situations on an ongoing basis.

You to reflect on yourself and think about when it may be time to walk away or make a change in some way.

Just very briefly I'm going to go over these next few slides.

If you are a supervisor of a team, you want to think about overall supervisory strategies you can use to support your team.

Make sure you're focused on team building, relationship building between you and the people you supervise and between team members.

You want to use shared decision-making processes to make decisions, make sure you're maintaining open lines of communication, that you are clearly communicating your expectations, you are addressing workplace bullying and inappropriate behavior.

You want to think about how to incorporate conversations about health and well-being and self-care and community care, thinking to have library or the team as a community and how can we all support one another.

How can we care for one another.

You can incorporate those conversations in your team meetings.

And then really thinking about how you create space for staff to engage in discussions and peer support can be really helpful.

Then organizational strategies.

So for people who have power large, you know, at larger, higher levels of the library system or the library organization.

You want to think about as a whole how can you move things forward through the whole organization to focus on the library as a community.

Think about how we're all in this together.

How can we all support one another.

Think about as a whole how can you add time in the schedule for people to have support, to support one another, to have conversations about the stress of the work, to mentor one another.

And I know again that depends on your staffing resources, the number of people you have.

Sometimes that's possible and sometimes that's not.

Looking at how you can add wellness spaces or sensory-friendly spaces for staff.

Is there a meeting room, a break room, something that can be that sensory-friendly space for people who need a break who have had a high-stress  incident.

We want to think about how to hire with the reality of the role in mind.

Make sure we're training and supporting people for the roles that they're in.

Also looking at workload across the staff and making sure that we're balancing things as possible.

Often some positions are in really high-stress positions and other people may not be and there may be ways we can rotate positions or staff things differently to balance the workload.

And then really taking a look at all of your policies and practices to make sure that they are internally supporting as much as they're externally supporting and that they are there to support staff well-being as much as to serve the patrons.

And then advocate with the powers that be.

That's going to link to this next slide.

We also have to all think about how we can continue to advocate for library staff and libraries everywhere.

So if we really hope to make a difference long term across the board, we need to think about how we can advocate so that the general public has a general public of what library work really is.

That LIS programs adequately reprayer people for the reality of the work.

We want to advocate for adequate funding for libraries so they can pay a living wage so there are enough benefits to support wellness and health for people work in the organization.

We want to make sure we can advocate for professional development opportunities that really support staff with knowing how to address the patron needs coming in now and happening now.

And we want to make sure that we are continuing to support research on effective supports for library workers.

>> SARAH: I'm going to nowgo through the rest of these slides by 20 after so we at least have ten minutes for Q&A.

It's important for library staff and administrators to anticipate challenges to change and therefore have more realistic expectations about the change process.

To begin, a common barrier or challenge to change is resistance from library staff.

This can emerge in direct or indirect ways such as an inability or unwillingness to accept the purpose of the proposed change, understand the need that it seek to fill or valuing how the proposed change aligns with the labor rare's mission.

There may also be disagreement about the role that staff should play when it comes to patrons who have psychosocial needs.

To buffer against disagreements, administrators need to generate a sense of psychological safety that Beth talked about earlier in the library in which staff feel that their opinions are valued and they feel comfortable speaking up and asking questions without fear of retribution.

And where all staff members feel heard.

This is all part of a trauma-informed library space.

Administrators can circumvent barrier to change by presenting a United front on planned changes.

This consensus is critical to reach prior to moving forward on something.

Library administrators should seek and welcome  feedback from staff.

And this form of observe communication in which disagreements are voiced and staff concerns are heard is important for librarians to know that their feedback will be used to shape outcomes.

To be sure if the majority of staff are opposed to a particular initiative, administrators would do well to change course as internal work still needs to be addressed prior to any changes or proposed changes.

Other barriers can come from patrons.

What I mean here are nonviolent challenges by  patrons who are not struggling to have their basic needs met.

So while certainly there are plenty of patrons who do support the library's efforts to assist those with psychosocial needs, there are also patrons who may complain about programs or services provided by the library.

This might come in the form of verbal or written complaints, of refusal by patrons to use the library again or starting arguments with other patrons.

It's important to listen to and try to understand these patrons' concerns, yet leaders must not allow these kind of complaints to derail efforts to  change.

In response to patrons' concerns, library staff can calmly state the library's position.

They can ensure that services and programs are open and accessible to all patrons.

And libraries can also hold community-wide events with the aim to educate the public about diverse populations to foster a sense of acceptance and belonging.

It's also not uncommon for library administrators to encounter challenges from library governing boards or city administrators.

Someone had a question about this earlier.

And these individuals may lack accurate knowledge about the library's struggles or difficulties experienced by library staff.

Administrators can respond to gaps in knowledge by presenting data to decision makers gathered through, as we talked about, needs assessments, providing incident reports or information gathered by student interns.

If, however, lack of data is not the issue but it's rather a differing of beliefs about changes that need or need not be made, administrators can then present information about the different types of programs offered in libraries and how these services align with the stated mission and scope of the library.

So let's suppose that a library would like to host a social work student and the board or the city council disagrees that this is a path that the library should take, presenting decision makers with the growing trove of data from other libraries around the country engaged in such partnerships can help shift the needle.

A website such as [indiscernible] is a really great starting place for evidence speaking to the scope and the variations on existing social work library collaborations.

Security.

This is a tricky subject.

As some libraries have had really good success with hired security or have a solid working relationship with their local police.

While others find that uniformed guards may actually provoke a sense of disease, fear or escalate potentially volatile situations.

Often hired security are not properly trained in deescalation or trauma intervention.

We certainly do not want to minimize the very real threats that library staff and administrators have faced and we also want to note that the bulk of research shows that folks with psychosocial needs are often victims of violence or a threat to themselves rather than being perpetrators of violence.

Some strategies to overcome challenges with security include hiring them as library employees rather than contracting with an outside company.

This can create an atmosphere in which all library personnel are in agreement on behavioral policies and are trained in a consistent manner, ideally trauma-informed manner, with very clear responses and consequences.

Ideally plain-clothed security officers and library staff, as I said, are all trained in a trauma-informed modalities that also incorporates dee what Las Vegas techniques.

And finally funding.

This is a common barrier to change.

Library leaders need to make sure that their staff are not overextended because there are often a myriad of needs in the community, it's best to determine which need is most feasible to address and to focus an effort on just that to start.

In the same vein, start small with a new initiative and then scale up later or make changes as needed.

You want to aim for sustainability prior to starting a new program or service, such as planning beyond the initial startup funds or grant monies by  gathering basic quantitative and qualitative data to justify ongoing financial support.

One example of navigating funding is that libraries around the country have contracted with their local universities to create internship opportunities for students of social work as well as students of public health and nursing.

These students can assist with conducting the needs assessments that we mentioned earlier.

They can also facilitate training for library staff on topics such as boundary setting, mental health 101 and self-care.

In the chat you can share examples of ways that your library has successfully navigated any of these barriers to change that I just mentioned.

And Beth, I think I took that last slide from you so I'll hand it back to you.

>> BETH: Yeah.

We've just included some additional resources with links that might be helpful for any of you wanting to read more or know more about these topics.

And then on the very next slide we've got our websites and ways to stay updated and get more information from each of us as well.

So we invite all of you to follow us and, you know, feel free to connect with us on social media or through our websites.

>> HOST: Wow.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Really so much information and lots to continue to mull over.

There are a couple of questions that we can touch  on.

But if folks have other questions, feel free to post those into chat.

And again, thanks for providing a way to follow up with you all as well.

One of the questions addresses how to specifically address some of this in academic libraries.

I don't know, Sarah, especially I know you've worked with folks in academic libraries as well as  yourself, but can you talk a little bit noting that it's a bit harder to get support for all of this when the safety concerns and long lists of threats, harassments aren't taken seriously, and especially noting that, you know, in an academic environment your patrons are students paying for tuition as  well.

So there's sort of an added expectation to serve those folks as well.

>> SARAH: Yeah.

I do think that a lot of these principles that we've discussed today can be applied to academic  libraries.

I know that for myself when I started out in academic libraries open I was not in a tenured track position I was leery of speaking 0 up of the challenges in my library.

So I had to rely on those in a more solidified position to speak up on my behalf.

I think that -- I mean I can certainly -- I don't have it on hand here, but there's a couple of really good articles that have been published lately about creating trauma-informed spaces in academic libraries.

I think a lot of the same principles apply to library administrators, Deans of library schools and leaning on quality leadership to create safe working environments for library staff.

I know in my experience it wasn't just students who sometimes had challenges or was presenting  challenges, but it was often alumni as well.

And depending on access privileges and academic libraries, I know the one I worked at you had to have a student or an alumni ID to get into the library.

Other libraries are open to the public.

So it's really kind of -- that can present extra questions about how to navigate challenges and addressing needs of different patron populations.

So I can certainly provide that information after the webinar on those -- on the papers that have been written about academic libraries.

>> HOST: That would be great.

I mean another opportunity for -- what did you call the team at the beginning, the name of the group to focus on this?

A smaller group?

I can't remember what.

>> SARAH: A working group to focus on this?

>> HOST: Yeah.

Sometimes finding peer to start, I think that sense of power is really tricky and I think, you know, having folks to sort of work through with that and finding your allies at different -- it could be folks outside of the library.

Could be folks in the social work department at the institution.

Some of those folks might be able to help you,  again, with the assessment.

Are there stories that you need to bring to the forefront in terms of what you're seeing.

So that's super helpful.

There's definitely folks asking about  recommendations for mental health-related trainings designed specifically for staff.

Folks have talked about hosting some of those kinds of training at staff day.

I've heard folks ask about training related to boundaries.

I know I've heard boundaries come up in other sessions related to this topic.

And I do encourage folks to explore WebJunction, you know, both the site and the course catalog for opportunities to bring folks into that training and to encourage folks to think about how that could be done as a cohort.

You know, encouraging folks to maybe watch a recording or view a course on their own and then bring that to the conversation.

So definitely explore that.

But I put that to both Beth and Sarah, if there are other places where you have seen effective training opportunities for folks on these topics.

>> BETH: Yeah, there are more state libraries offering training on the topics and I know it varies based on the state.

I do a lot of training with my on consulting business.

I have done training on boundaries and mental health for groups that are available in state association websites.

Mental health first-aid is a really helpful training -- it depends who you find.

Some people can facilitate it for free and will facilitate it for free.

In some cases there's a charge.

If you Google mental health first-aid it takes you to a website of all certified trainers.

And that's a training that's really helpful for how to recognize when somebody is having a mental health or a substance use related crisis or emergency in our library and how to respond.

It's specifically -- it's not specifically for libraries.

It's specifically designed for anybody who is not in a mental health sort of setting.

So lots of public services like libraries and it's been really helpful for library groups.

I would encourage you to look for that as an option.

>> HOST: Excellent.

Yes.

I'm going to put a link in here.

We did a webinar specifically on the mental health first-aid program.

So definitely explore that as well.

There was a specific question posed to me around working with teens.

And I don't know if you've found successful approaches for folks that are having trouble with teens that don't follow rules, pulling down  marketing materials, throwing things over the balcony, laying all over the floor.

I recommended in chat one of the webinars we did that really did kind of talk about how to engage with teens around culture change was creating a restorative library culture.

I encourage you to look at that.

But do you all have specific examples of ways that staff have focused on engaging with their teens to create a caring culture?

>> SARAH: I know that some libraries have created teen advisory boards where they recruit teenagers to actively be local leaders at the library and present their ideas and suggestions of changes that need to be made and really engaging those teenagers in those choices and brainstorming and buy-in as well.

And certainly if your library has a teen librarian or a youth librarian they can certainly help with that.

But engaging teenagers as much as possible in those discussions can be really beneficial.

>> HOST: I know sometimes the peer -- if you do have a group that, you know, then cares, you know, you build that care and ownership of the library is their space, sometimes they're the best ones to do that work with their peers.

Go ahead.

>> BETH: I was just going to say, I think sometimes the instinct -- so when we have a large teen group and they are potentially disruptive in the space, sometimes the instinct is to try to get them out or move them out.

But really as Sarah was talking about, the  strategies that are most successful are the ones where we're intentionally inviting them in and involving them and getting their feedback and trying to help give them a task and let them know they are a value to us and our library and we want to make sure that our library is a value to them.

Thinking about advisory boards or ways that we can help send the message that they are valued and we want their feedback and we want the space to be of value to them can then counter act some of that disruption that happens.

>> HOST: Excellent.

That's super helpful.

The one final thing that came up in question was around how to ensure that supports -- that the learning is throughout all levels of the organization.

Someone noted that as a library director they felt more supported.

So I just want to do a shout out for all levelses of your organization, sometimes those front-line staff are the ones encountering the trauma from their experiences with the public more.

So do you want to wrap us with with a reminder of how to serve the learning needs of all your staff.

Any final comments?

>> BETH: I thought Sarah was getting ready to talk.

It really does -- like people's experiences in the library vary greatly based on the support of people around them.

Whether directors have support from the board or city or county officials, middle management have support from higher administration, whether people who are front-line staff have support from their direct supervisors.

All of those different levels matter.

And if we're going to change the culture in a library, we really have to address all of them and make sure that we are incorporating and engaging -- like engaging all of those groups.

Making sure we're understanding the needs and perspectives of all of those groups and caring for all of those groups to move this work forward.

>> HOST: Fantastic.

That's really great.

Thank you both so much.

Like I said, I know there's a lot here for folks to revisit, so remember that the slides will be available, the learner guide is a great tool for you to take some of those initial steps, next steps.

Make it your own.

If you have specific areas that you would like to focus on in your next steps.

But definitely take advantage of that resource as well.

And a reminder that I will be sending you all an e-mail later today, once the recording is posted.

I'll also be sending you a certificate for attending today.

I automatically send that to you so you don't need to request it.

And then as you leave I'm going to send you to a survey and I know that you've spent a lot of time in the session so know that the link to the survey will also be in the e-mail I send you.

So know that you can provide that feedback but please take some time to provide us with that  feedsback.

We'll share that with Beth and Sarah for their ongoing work and it supports our ongoing  programming.

So thank you all so much for being here.

Thank you all for the fantastic contribution to  chat.

Revisit chat.

There is so many ideas in there as well.

Thank you, Beth and Sarah.

>> SARAH: Thank you for having us.

>> BETH: Thank you.

>> HOST: Everyone have a great rest of your week.

Be well.