The Cultivating SEEDS System®:A Culturally Responsive Framework, Providing Mental Health Support for the Counselor, Client and Community.

Link for Access:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81274251453

This session introduces the participants to the CSS® (Cultivating SEEDS System) Framework to the participants and explains how this culturally relevant approach to conceptualizing mental health support can meet the needs of the counselor, client, and community. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted on a global scale the need for community-driven mental health support (Murray-Larrier, et al., 2022). Due to various barriers, mental health support within the wider society continues to be out of the reach of many in need (Larrier, Allen & Larrier, 2017). The CSS (Cultivating SEEDS System) presents a means of conceptualizing mental health using the social determinants of and social-emotional competencies to understand human behavior.

The CSS® framework (Cultivating SEEDS System), with SEEDS representing Social Emotional Education, “is an innovative, reconceptualized approach that offers hope for task-shifting and sharing (T-S/S), community-driven mental health support, delivery, and practice” (Murray-Larrier, et al, p. 98, 2022). It was designed to increase access to mental health support and aims to educate, equip and empower persons of diverse backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and cultures to access resources to move them from intra and interpersonal imbalance to intra and interpersonal balance through the RUMERTIME Process (RP) intervention (Larrier, Allen & Larrier, 2017). The CSS® Framework is a multi-theoretical Framework based on an agricultural metaphor that explains human behavior using social determinants and social-emotional competencies (Larrier, Allen & Larrier, 2017).

The RUMERTIME Process (RP), is “a five-step culturally responsive, social-emotional problem-solving strategy that supports individuals as they move from intra- and interpersonal imbalance to balance and from unconscious to conscious living” (Murray-Larrier et al., p. 99, 2022). The CSS® Framework is relevant to this conference as it levels of engagement or what it refers to as the “who” of the CSS Framework applying the ecological systems theory to include the individual client, the family, the school, diverse work settings, and the community as the client” (Murray-Larrier et al., p. 98, 2022). The counselor as a member of the community who serves clients within the society will also benefit from this presentation. The RUMERTIME Process intervention is a problem-solving strategy that can be used by clinicians to engage in self-care as a way of life.

Nadine Isaac-Dennis, Ph.D., LLPC, NCC

Dr. Isaac-Dennis is an Assistant Professor of Counselor Education, Program Coordinator, and part-time Staff Counselor at a Michigan University. She has served in various capacities at GCSORED, Inc for the past 10 years and is currently completing the Wellness Champion training, founded on the CSS framework.

Dr. Yvonne Murray-Larrier, founding president of GCSCORED believes individual, institutional and community wholeness is attainable when all stakeholders are fully engaged. She believes that her God given purpose, and by extension the purpose of GCSCORED in this world is to educate, equip and empower individuals to cultivate relationship capacity building skills. She defines relationship capacity cultivation as the process of developing and strengthening the MARKERS™ that individuals in homes, schools, workplaces, communities, organizations, and institutions need to survive, thrive, adapt, and grow in a fast-changing world.

She has over 35 years in the field of social work, community mental health, education and research and has brought her diverse experiences and expertise to this organization. She is the Creator of the Cultivating SEEDS System Framework® (CSS®)and the RUMERTIME Process®. She has designed several workbooks, curriculum, training programs that uses the CSS Framework as its foundation. Her CSS® workbooks, curriculum, learning/teaching materials and training and coaching programs are culturally responsive, scalable, research-informed and practice-based. Dr. Larrier’s CSS® Framework and RUMERTIME® Process have been utilized locally and globally.