"Caring Through Hard Times: Supporting Immigrant Families & Ourselves"This session helps social workers support immigrant clients with culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and sustainable care during increased immigration enforcement. Participants will learn about the challenges immigrant families face—such as emotional stress, chronic fear, separation, and legal uncertainty—and how to address these while maintaining their own wellbeing through self-care and collective care strategies.
PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN HOW TO:
- Increase understanding of the psychological and social impacts of immigration enforcement on individuals and families, including chronic fear, family separation, legal uncertainty, and their effects on mental health and functioning.
- Identify culturally responsive and trauma-informed approaches for supporting immigrant clients navigating a complex and precarious immigration system.
- Examine how heightened enforcement conditions affect social workers and service providers, including secondary trauma, moral distress, and burnout in high-stress practice settings and identify self-care and collective care strategies that promote sustainability, emotional regulation, and ethical engagement, recognizing that effective support for immigrant families requires sustained care for practitioners.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Understanding heightened enforcement practices and how they shape clients’ daily realities
- Recognizing chronic fear, anxiety, grief, depression, and impacts on functioning across the lifespan
- Addressing trauma related to detention, deportation risk, mixed-status families, and prolonged uncertainty
- Applying trauma-informed practice in high-fear environments
- Honoring cultural values, language, migration histories, and community strengths
- Navigating ethical practice, confidentiality, informed consent, documentation, and advocacy under enforcement pressure
- Implementing strengths-based and resilience-focused interventions
- Coordinating care models that reduce harm and increase access to resources
- Managing secondary trauma, moral distress, compassion fatigue, and burnout
- Integrating self-care and collective care strategies for sustainability
- Maintaining effectiveness and wellbeing in prolonged crisis settings
This course offers three (3) Human Populations CEUs.
Registration Information
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Registration Fees
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NASW Members
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$65
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NASW Retired and Transitional Members
| $45 |
NASW Student Members
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FREE
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| Not Yet Members |
$85
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Preregistration is available online at NASWTX.ORG until Thursday, February 26, 2026. Zoom link will be coming from Virginia Cantu (NASW Texas) at vcantu.naswtx@socialworkers.org. Keep an eye out in your email a few days before the webinar.
Note: If you are unable to attend the workshop for any reason, please notify the chapter office immediately if the invoice has not been paid so that we may have an accurate count for attendance. If it has been paid, please notify the chapter office no later than the date listed in the cancellation policy. Unfortunately, we cannot issue a refund after the cancellation deadline and a recording will not be available after the webinar.
Cancellations will be refunded less a $35 processing fee if made by February 13, 2026. Registrations are nonrefundable after that date.
Registration fees must be paid by February 26, 2026. Workshop link will only be sent to paid registrants.
Not an NASW Member?
Sign up today at https://www.socialworkers.org/nasw/join and enjoy discounted registration on this and many other great events! Please allow up to 24 hours for us to receive your new member information. You can then use the same username and password at naswtx.org to access member rates for this event.
ABOUT the presenter:
 | Monica Romo, LCSW, is a bicultural and bilingual Licensed Clinical Social Worker committed to advancing immigrant justice and trauma-informed care. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Our Lady of the Lake University.
With extensive experience supporting immigrant communities, Monica has worked across a range of systems, including shelters, advocacy organizations, and post-release services, always centering the dignity, autonomy, and cultural identity of those she serves. Her clinical work has focused on providing trauma-responsive mental health care to families, unaccompanied minors, and young children forcibly separated from their families under the “zero tolerance” policy. As a Child Advocate Supervisor and later as a Clinical Supervisor for Enhanced Post-Release Services, Monica supported children and families navigating the ongoing trauma of displacement, surveillance, and legal uncertainty.
In addition to her direct practice, Monica has facilitated hundreds of hours of training and support groups for legal and mental health professionals working with immigrant populations. She offers specialized training on conducting immigration-related mental health assessments, with an approach grounded in cultural humility and a deep understanding of systemic harm.
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