Ryan White 2012 Grantee Meeting

This workshop will vividly describe a 10-year retrospective of a Part D- funded women's support group. The group was born from a need identified by the agency’s staff psychiatrist to give disenfranchised women who had been under his care a place to find support, connection, and community. Common denominators of the women in the group include extreme poverty, multiple co-morbid medical conditions, homelessness, addictions, sexual abuse. and histories of incarceration. Many of the women have lost children to illness and gun violence. Key factors to success have been group leadership, transportation, and food and child care on site. The group has seen women come and go, but there has been continuity. It has provided a safe, connected place that gives participants a sense of community and support, and has become an extended family to many. We hope that it will live long and prosper!

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will understand key elements for success in creating and sustaining a group for disenfranchised women living with HIV/AIDS.
• Participants will be able to identify the formats that allow for success of a support group for women living on the fringes of society, with great medical and social service needs.
• Therapeutic techniques used to provide guidance and structure to the suport group environment will be discussed, including but not limited to: motivational interviewing and psychoeducational sessions.