NAPD 2026 Recruit, Retain, Sustain

I am pleased to invite you to a transformative one-hour session on Self-Care: Shifting the Mindset and Adding Structure and Purpose. In this session, we will used the work of Carol Dweck as outlined in her book discussing Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets, and explore how these concepts can be applied to enhance our self-care practices.

• Understanding Mindsets: Gain clarity on the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and learn why adopting the latter is crucial for personal development.
• Self-Care with Purpose: Discover how to integrate purposeful activities into your self-care routine, ensuring that every action is aligned with your personal growth goals.
• Structured Self-Care Regimens: Learn how to design a self-care plan that adds structure to your day-to-day life, making your wellness practices more consistent and effective.
• Practical Strategies: Receive practical tips and strategies for maintaining resilience and motivation, especially when facing challenges or setbacks.
• Interactive Discussion: Participate in an engaging discussion to share experiences, insights, and gain new perspectives from others on the same journey towards better self-care.

Burnout is commonly framed as an individual issue necessitating individualized solutions. Using activist Vikki Reynolds' framework called the "Zone of Balance," this workshop offers a transformative shift towards understanding burnout as relational. This workshop will discuss this new framework for maintaining balance by staying true to ethical, client-centered practice.

As public defenders, we work with the people we represent at some of the most difficult times of their lives.  Often, our work involves managing moments of crisis both individually and as teams of defenders in different roles.  As social worker and trauma exposure researcher Laura van Dernoot Lipsky reminds us, it is critical to "metabolize all that we are experiencing" in the course of our work.   In this session, we will discuss a model for bringing structured "crisis debriefings" into public defender offices as one way to metabolize our experiences and learn from managing moments of crisis.