Live Screening and Discussion of Implicit Bias: What it is and why it matters

When: Monday, September 30 - 1:00 PM

Duration: 1 hours 30 minutes

Location: Zoom

Event Details:

37Mental health providers working with youth are in a unique position to support the young person and their family. However, unexamined bias (i.e., racial or gender biases) can have a detrimental impact on this therapeutic relationship as well as treatment outcomes. It is therefore critical that clinicians learn how to become aware of these implicit biases and attend to them. 

To support you in this work, CTAC, in collaboration with Melanie Funchess, FPA, and Nicole Lee, LCSW, are excited to announce the launch of Understanding Implicit Bias: What it is and why it matters. This short animation video follows the difficult and vitally important conversation between a mentor in the behavioral health field and their mentee on unexamined biases. Self-awareness of these thoughts can help us to evolve and to disrupt our biases and lead to stopping mental health disparities. 

Please join Dr. Kara Dean-Assael, DSW, Melanie Funchess, FPA, and Nicole Lee, LCSW for the screening of Understanding Implicit Bias: What it is and why it matters. This virtual screening and discussion is for all mental health providers across New York State, working with youth and families to help build awareness and understanding of implicit biases, specifically racial bias, how they happen, how they cause harm to people, and what we can do about them. A deep discussion on this topic along with suggestions on how you can use the video with other staff members will follow the screening. 

Our Presenters:

Kara Dean-Assael, DSW is the Senior Director of Innovation and Education and the Leader of the Community Technical Assistance Center of New York State (CTAC) at NYU’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research and has been working with children and families since 1997.  As an innovator, Dr. Dean-Assael develops, coordinates, manages, produces, and facilitates various programs, projects, and trainings, both locally and nationally.

In 2012, she co-founded the 501c3 Fareground, Inc., an anti-hunger program focusing on food justice in Dutchess County, NY, and surrounding areas. Dr. Dean-Assael is passionate about collaboratively creating and disseminating programs and practices to improve family mental health and outcomes for youth, families, and adults and centering human rights. She served on the Commission on Human Rights in the City of Beacon, NY from 2020-2024.  Dr. Dean-Assael holds a BA in Psychology with Minors in both Sociology and Women’s Studies from West Virginia University (1996); an MSW degree from Columbia University School of Social Work (2001); and a Doctorate in Clinical Social Welfare from New York University (2020).  As a West Virginian native, she’s attached to her roots of family and resilience.


Melanie Funchess, FPA, is the CEO/ Principal of Ubuntu Village Works, LLC and the Director of Mental Health and Wellness of Common Ground Health, 
a health planning organization serving the nine county Finger Lakes region, where she has served as an advocate for families and youth for over two decades. Ubuntu Village Works, LLC, is an organization dedicated to culturally responsive community-driven healing and wellness spaces. Ms. Funchess has worked extensively in the areas of family engagement and empowerment as well as community building. She presents, trains, and consults locally and nationally on cultural competence, culturally responsive practice, implicit bias, family engagement, community partnership building, racial trauma and healing, and mental health in communities of color. Ms. Funchess has been involved in several national and community-based coalitions and organizations such as The Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch Council for the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), The National Network to End Disparities in Behavioral Healthcare (NNED), African American Leadership Development Program (AALDP), African American Health Coalition (AAHC), Black Women’s Leadership Forum (BWLF), Greater Rochester Black Agenda Group (BAG), Greater Rochester Parent Leadership Training Institute (PLTI), Community Task Force for School Climate (CTF), Roc The Future Parent Engagement Community Action Network (PECAN). She also served as a Commissioner of Schools for the Rochester City School District.  And, she is a member of CTAC’s Advisory Board, offering feedback and advice about the needs of the field.

She is a devoted wife and mother of four young adult children. Her mission is to use her knowledge of systems and communities to create culturally responsive spaces for healing and opportunities for youth and families to be empowered and successful.  Her vision is to rebuild the village, where every child is our own, we have front porch neighborhoods, and we use language that respects everyone.
 

Nicole Lee, LCSW joined Vibrant Emotional Health's national programs team as a manager of contracts in January 2023, in which she works closely with crisis centers across the United States to ensure quality service provision for 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline.  In her past professional roles, she has directed an outpatient child and family mental health program serving survivors of gender-based violence, led a team providing emergency transitional housing to families fleeing domestic violence, managed a school-based mental health clinic program, and served as an administrator at a NYC public hospital.  She also has a private practice serving children, adults, families, and couples since 2016.  After earning her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from New York University, she matriculated into NYU's Silver School of Social Work.  Nicole has earned a post-master’s certificate in Advanced Clinical Practice from NYU, training in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and is a certified supervisor in field instruction (SIFI).  In her free time, Nicole sits on the junior board of HeartShare St. Vincent’s and is a member and volunteer with Open House New York.  Nicole is passionate about centering the profession of social work as a vehicle toward social justice through core applications of empathy and advocacy.