ABWG in real life
IRL: an acronym gifted us by this virtual age, “in real life” has itself become a gift to so many communities who gather day by day, week by week, month by month in virtual spaces to do our work across miles and time. The Anti-Bias Working Group, called into being just as COVID erupted, has been working between weekly Zoom meetings ever since. Our retreat over Halloween weekend was our full gathering in real life, and we all felt the odd mix of shyness and history, grief and gratitude that marks coming back into embodied community. It is this community we long for: the Real Life we want to share, to do the deeper work of unlocking and undoing bias.
Before sharing some of what we celebrated and planned, I want to name two big questions that came up for us, and an enormous gratitude.
The Gratitude, first: we hoped and planned back in 2020 that the work of addressing bias in ACPE would become an ACPE-wide endeavor, a broad and deep throughline in everything we do. And that has come to pass. Every Commission and committee and many communities of practice have taken on this challenge, some of them in partnership with the ABWG and some on their own of their own initiative. We don’t all know what we all are doing, so this feels important to mark. Over time, we’d love for the lifting up of this work – what you are doing and what we are accomplishing, together – to become even more central in our communications among each other.
The Big Questions. Undoing bias is personal work, and interpersonal work. It requires being together, and working together at what our association undertakes. As we work together, our unconscious and implicit bias arise, and then we notice and work through them. It is associational work. And yet, we don’t really have a line item in our budget for associating. Our association is funded by our Accreditation and Certification fees. This need to associate is something we all feel instinctively: we want to gather in our geographies so that more of us can touch into our work together more personally. I hope we can keep this question in mind as we live into our strategic plans and their budget implications.
Secondly, many of us are being touched by the war continuing to unfold in the Israel/Gaza conflict. That touch is more intimate and deeply painful for some of our membership, and yet troubling to us all. We want to find language and places to reflect, learn, and support each other. Some of us are challenged to be in spaces where a multiplicity of perspectives exist, so clear is our sense of what is right. Members of the Anti-Bias Working Group and the ACPE Board are hearing from various individuals and communities within ACPE who want to engage this challenge; these are conversations that are still unfolding. More to come.
In what follows, the ABWG would like to share what you, the members of ACPE focused on addressing bias, have accomplished or have in process, and what we envision for 2024-25.
2023 Accomplishments at-a-Glance
· ACPE Mission, Vision & Values: Developed revisions to these core ACPE statements for submission to the Strategic Planning Implementation Team for consideration. Status: Complete
· DEI Strategic Planning Recommendations: Provided comprehensive recommendations to the Strategic Planning Implementation group to expand/deepen/concretize diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Status: Complete
· Work with Certification – significant progress made this year to incorporate more inclusive language in Certification Manual that better aligns with ACPE’s justice, diversity, equity, inclusion & accessibility goals; engaged in a collaborative process with ACPE Certification Commission and Outcomes Workgroup. Status: nearly complete
· Work with Accreditation – we are beginning this work to review ACPE Accreditation Standards and incorporate more inclusive language as needed. Status: In progress
· Endorsement & Academic Requirements – Convened a group of APC and ACPE stakeholders to examine relevance of requirements for entry to the certification process, including divinity degree and endorsement. Status: In progress
· Added member to ABWG to facilitate solicitation of protocols utilized by psychotherapy members with respect to anti-bias perspectives in clinical practice. Status: complete
· Funding JDEIA Priorities – Foundation for ACPE awarded the first round of grants ($280k) through the new Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility grants program, with consultation from ABWG members, Research Committee members and other stakeholders.
o Funding priorities include CEC Ignite Grant (to launch CEC programs in under-represented areas and encourage CECs from underrepresented groups to enter the process); Research & Innovation around issues that promote diversity and inclusion; Hemenway Scholars Program to provide summer stipend support for ACPE Level 1 Students from underrepresented communities and the Boisen Scholars Program to provide professional development support for ACPE students to attend the ACPE Annual Conference. Status: ongoing
· Educational Resources for Membership - AWBG Task Forces developed webinars, Curriculum Resource Rooms, and other resources to help members engage education from an anti-bias and trauma-informed perspective. Resources are housed on SharePoint, and we will continue to promote this among the membership as the place to go to for resources. Status: ongoing
Recommendations and 2024-25 Plans
In our 2023 ABWG working retreat October 29-30, the Anti-Bias Working Group developed the following recommendations and plans for 2024 and 2025 and have presented them to the ACPE Board for affirmation.
· Establish shared understanding with and approval from board regarding accountability for anti-bias work in ACPE:
o ABWG understands its role as providing resources, education, advisory role, and leadership to assist ACPE in holding itself accountable for its commitment to justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (JDEI).
· ABWG will focus in 2024 and 2025 on partnering with ACPE entities in looking at the ecology of oversight for educators through an anti-bias, justice-oriented lens. We plan to:
o Continue work with Accreditation: reviewing Standards language, developing site team training, and reviewing complaints process
o Establish work with Ethics to review process and language
o Examine competence review process with Certification
o Explore with Professional Well-Being anti-bias focus in peer review process
· Ongoing anti-bias education will include:
o Continuing to offer anti-bias training for new members of ACPE Board, Accreditation, Certification, Ethics (eventually embed anti-bias training in Leadership Development process)
o Spring Leadership meeting: ABWG proposes to lead an interactive activity using an ACPE case study to foster conversation and visioning with board/commission/committee leaders and ACPE staff
o Annual Conference: ABWG proposes to lead an interactive exercise for educators: “Is it Supervision or Is It Bias?” to explore our ability to move from problematic narratives to our preferred narratives around addressing bias. Attendees will gain resources for supporting our practice through exploring case studies
o Spring Programming for CECs at Annual Conference: ABWG proposes panel on anti-bias resources as well as consultations by appointment throughout the conference timeframe
· Additional efforts in the planning process include:
o Establish partnership with the Research Committee to assess impact of completed work and establish priorities for subsequent anti-bias efforts
o Explore expanding anti-bias content in Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy curriculum
o Establish that an ABWG chair serve as an ex-officio board member (if not already a board member) and explore establishing ABWG relationships/members on all commissions and committees
Thank you for reading all the way through, and even more so, thank you for the part you have played in addressing bias in ACPE. It is all of our work to make ACPE a place where we all can experience belonging and justice, and there is a place for each of us in ACPE, and in the work of welcoming each other into the space we create together.
By: The ACPE Anti-Bias Working Group