We're so grateful that CDSS has sponsored The Cool Aunt Series, monthly trainings and youth mentorship for four awesome years! Unfortunately, that funding ends June 2026. To encourage counties to continue partnering with The Cool Aunt, CDSS has pre-approved The Cool Aunt as an eligible service for Complex Care Funding (over $34M awarded across CA). To learn more, please email [email protected] or click the button to schedule a meeting!
Some Uncool News:
The Cool Aunt's CDSS Sponsorship for all CA Counties ends June 30, 2026. BUT!! Here's the cool news... Counties can keep TCA services active for under $10K!
Training/Event Descriptions
The Heart of Cultivating Rapport, Relationship, and Reciprocity
Theme: The relational core of CSEC and foster youth work
Core Message: Regulated adults build regulated relationships.
Topics: Rapport & Trust Building • Supportive Boundaries • Conversations that Tame Confrontation
This training focuses on building relationships with CSEC and system-impacted youth. Participants will learn how trust and reciprocity form the foundation of safety, crucial for accuracy and healing. Through interactive activities and real-world scenarios, we explore how trauma and systemic issues influence behavior. Attendees will gain skills to build trust without rescuing, set supportive boundaries, and handle tough conversations calmly. The training includes trauma-informed strategies, somatic awareness, and California-specific CSEC frameworks. Participants will leave with practical tools for de-escalation and youth-centered engagement that respects agency and dignity.
Exploring the Complexities of Trauma: Unraveling Youth Behavior
Theme: Why youth show up the way they do
Core Message: Change the narrative from “strong” to supported.
Topics: Poly‑Victimization • Intergenerational Trauma • Survival Strategies • Resilience Fatigue
This session unpacks the layered realities shaping how trauma‑impacted and CSEC‑involved youth think, feel, and survive. We explore poly‑victimization, intergenerational trauma, and the reframing of “maladaptive behaviors” as adaptive survival strategies. We also examine resilience fatigue—the hidden cost of being “strong” for too long. Participants leave with practical, culturally responsive tools to interpret behavior through a trauma lens, respond with attunement, and support youth without reinforcing shame, pressure, or punitive system patterns.
The Next Best Choice: Collaborative, Trauma‑Informed Tools for High‑Risk Decisions
Theme: Practical tools that keep youth safe when options are limited, and stakes are high
Core Message: Meet youth in the reality of their choices.
Topics: Safety Planning • Harm Reduction • Choice-Based • Youth Centered
Safety in Motion is a virtual, hands‑on, empowerment‑centered masterclass that teaches professionals how to co‑create realistic safety plans and harm‑reduction strategies with CSEC‑impacted youth. Participants learn practical tools that honor autonomy, reduce risk without shame, and strengthen relational trust. Through interactive exercises, somatic awareness practices, and real‑world scenarios, this session equips providers to support youth in making the next best choice—even in high‑pressure, high‑risk moments. The focus: collaboration, dignity, and survival‑aligned safety.
The Stories We Carry: Healing the Wounds Within Youth, Providers, and the Systems Between Us
Theme: The parallel wounds that shape how we show up — and the pathways back to wholeness
Core Message: Every story held shapes the one we offer back.
Topics: Moral Injury • Grief • Generational Trauma • Systemic Harm • Justice & Healing • Vicarious Trauma • Resilience Fatigue in Providers • Organizational Trauma • Caring for Ourselves Well
The Stories We Carry is a three‑hour, trauma‑ and healing‑centered training that weaves together the invisible wounds carried by trauma‑impacted youth and the often‑unseen burdens carried by the providers who support them. This session integrates two previously separate trainings into a cohesive experience, offering a mirrored exploration of how trauma, moral injury, and resilience fatigue shape behavior, identity, and connection on both sides of the helping relationship.
Building Embodied Safety, Strengthening Agency, and Expanding Future Possibilities
Theme: Safety creates the conditions. Hope grows in the space safety makes.
Core Message: Regulate. Reconnect. Reimagine.
Topics: Post-Traumatic Growth • Hope-Based Solutions • Restoring Agency • Somatic Practices • Grounding • Breathwork • Mindfulness • Calm in Chaos
An immersive three‑hour training that blends somatic regulation, neurobiological insight, and post‑traumatic growth strategies for CSEC and trauma‑impacted youth. This session equips providers with practical, evidence‑aligned, body‑based tools and hope‑driven practices that help youth return to safety, reclaim their agency, and imagine futures that feel real. A dynamic integration of somatics, relational work, and grounded hope for professionals committed to supporting CSEC and foster youth.
TCA Legacy Celebration Summit: Four Years of Courage, Connection, and Collective Transformation
Theme: “What We Built Together” — A Ritual of Meaning, Memory, and Momentum
Core Message: Honor the work. Celebrate the wins. Carry the hope forward.
The TCA Legacy Celebration Summit is a closing ritual honoring four years of shared learning, courageous partnership, and youth‑centered transformation. Together, we’ll revisit the moments that shaped us, celebrate the collective wins that moved systems forward, and reflect on the stories, relationships, and innovations that made this work possible. Through highlight reels, provider appreciations, anonymized youth narratives, and a grounding PTG + hope ritual, we’ll transform this finale into a space of meaning‑making, gratitude, and renewed commitment. This is more than a training—it’s a celebration of what we built together and the legacy we carry into the future.