Therapeutic & Workforce Development Tools
CAM Workbooks™
Developed by Lea S. Denny in 2021 CAM Workbooks™ are mental health focused, activity based, interactive, creative, and colorful. These workbooks are aimed at better relational health using the building blocks of Triple Attunement™. Denny tailored each book to age groups to better communicate using familiar language and imagery. All books include skill based exercises on learning about core CAM™ concepts, bettering an understanding of self, creating common language in community, and fostering cultural humility.
CAM™ Theoretical Approach
With Community Activated Medicine™ (CAM™), CAM™ Providers understand that the relative’s (clients) presenting symptoms, functioning, and concerns are interconnected and interdependent on their relational and environmental health. When working with a CAM™ Provider, a holistic and interdisciplinary approach is utilized. This is done by practice based generating evidence through biological, sensory, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritually informed assessments and evaluations to measure needs and identify interventions. To apply CAM™ techniques, a counselor works with relatives to understand self-attunement, relational attunement, environmental attunement, and community belonging. Relative’s are taught Healing Intergenerational Roots – Meaningful Attunement Processing Skills™ (HIR-MAPS™), identifying intergenerational ancestral strengths, building/ bridging a Circle of Care™, and nurturing a circle of Children’s Fire Guardians.
When working with a CAM™ Provider the outcomes that can be supported include: understanding of their presenting concerns/ symptoms, better relationships with self, improved over-all functioning, stronger sense of reciprocity, increased sense of belonging, a practice of responsibility, a connection with ancestral wisdoms, and increased comfort with vulnerability.
CAM™ is a foundational theoretical orientation in which the professional commits to working on their own healing, growth, and ancestral work as they offer a variety of techniques, tools, and therapies to their relatives (clients).
Circle of Care™
An interdisciplinary approach to relational integrated mental health practices. Utilizing Indigenous tools such as shared leadership, matriarchal governance, and teachings of The Children’s Fire. As Denny’s work grew so did concepts and practices that became her CAM Framework™. Part of CAM™ is leaning into the people around you that you consider safe, loving, joyful, and protective. Our guardians are those who helped us feel seen and heard. They are the people we are able to connect to within the community when we need advice, or someone to talk with when we are feeling a little down.
GATE Inventory
Grief Surveys
HIR-MAPS™
Developed out of the CAM Framework™ these are a set of tools to lean into those things throughout your life that bring you joy. These teach how to build your own wellness kits to continue your healing journey. These sets of tools are known as HIR-MAPS Healing Intergenerational Roots – Meaningful Attunement Processing Skills.
Medicine Kit™
A holistic practice that the HIR Wellness Institute has integrated into our Intergenerational Healing Approach™. This is rooted in a bio, psycho, social, relational, cultural, spiritual, and environmental approach. It is a personalized tool kit you build as a way to serve your wellness needs.
Racial Impact Acid Test
A test to take the pulse of racism and systemic oppression in your space. If you’re grown up in the United States it will be nearly impossible for you to not score on this test. This isn’t a reflection of you, but instead the systems that have informed your learning environment and community spaces.
Relational Healing Passport™
A concept coined by Denny in 2016. While working with relatives (clients) in therapy she noticed the emotional difficulty relatives had to starting or ending counseling with a therapist. The concerns she saw in relatives were around how to start sharing about their story with someone who was there to work with them for a short period of time or having to retell their story "again".
These feelings of always "retelling" their story with little gain or progress was informing a change. Denny realized that what was needed was a paradigm shift on how relatives (and the public) understood the role of a therapist and therapy in their life.
To support this mindset Denny began started sharing the concept of “No matter how much time you have together in a session, relatives are moving forward because they are making the decision to be on a healing journey. The therapeutic relationship between relative and therapist is one stop in what is a larger path of healing experiences. In the CAM™ process it’s important to remember that “people are the medicine”, there will be other people who will help inform your healing and relational wellbeing. Therapy is another “stamp” on a healing passport.”
She supported relatives to building a therapeutic web of care; (a concept she bridged from her training with the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) a social & neurobiological informed approach developed by Dr. Bruce Perry), a framework that provides a multi-systemic perspective on how to heal from complex & developmental trauma.
Road Map to Change
This is a group exercise to understand where your organization or team is on the continuum of transformative change. This exercise is designed to help understand individual existing capacity for growth to build an organizational understanding how to best approach transformational change into your organization’s practices.
Citations
Denny, L. S. (2020). CAM Workbooks™. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2022). The CAM™ Theoretical Approach. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2020). Circle of Care™. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2016). GATE Inventory. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2020). Grief Surveys. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2021). HIR-MAPS™. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2020). Medicine Kit™. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L.S., Mackenzie, J. (2022). An Acid Test: How Normalized is Racism in Your Community?. Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2019). Relational Healing Passport. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L.S., Mackenzie, J. (2022). Road Map to Change Exercise. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.
Denny, L. S. (2020). Story Mending. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America: HIR Wellness Institute.