President’s Letter: Opioid Crisis Training in Tennessee

This has been an exciting month for TSCA. During March, we co-sponsored an opioid summit targeting helping professionals, such as school counselors, who are impacted by the current crisis yet may lack specialized training to understand how they can effectively assist their clients or understand their role from a systems perspective. The summit consisted of a two-day event, with more than 180 attendees on both days. Session topics included an overview of Tennessee prevention efforts, delivered by the director of prevention for Tennessee; medically assisted therapies; training attendees to administer Naloxone, the anti-overdose drug; and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and addiction. I presented on evidence-based prevention for children and youth. I am also scheduled to present about school counselors and the opioid epidemic this July at the ASCA annual conference in Boston. 
 

 
During the upcoming months, TSCA will be working on its transition from an executive council to a board structure, which we hope to roll out in the next fiscal year.  We will be recruiting speakers to present at invited sessions at the Tennessee Counselor Association conference in November. We also plan to offer some exciting webinars to train school counselors across Tennessee on relevant topics that are highly applicable to your everyday practice.
 
Contact Chloe Lancaster, TSCA president, at chloelancaster97@gmail.com.