2024 Wilderness Risk Management Conference

In our programs and our workplaces, generative conflict can be an opportunity for your group to build trust, and create a culture of safety and risk awareness that is imperative to our risk management goals. When do you hold more power? When do you hold less? And how does this show up when conflict arises on our programs or between our staff? In this workshop we will review how power dynamics show up in our conflict responses, explore compassionate listening skills, and learn foundational tools for conflict transformation. All of this contributes to a culture of trust and empowers participants to engage in socially risky conversations. Participants will learn their own conflict styles and be able to recognize the conflict styles of others, as well as leave the workshop with tools to discuss power and conflict in their own organizations.

Traveling as a visibly marginalized group poses inherent risks to programs and participants. With 25+ years of experience traveling in predominantly white outdoor spaces as People of Color, City Kids continues to develop a holistic approach to reducing the risk of emotional or physical harm to participants and staff through program design, staff training, incident mitigation and response. This presentation aims to provide a framework and replicable tools for other organizations

Over the past season, we've embraced technology to enhance our programs, introducing a digital adaptive medical form that adjusts questions based on user responses, integrates doctor approvals, and converts submissions into both an office and field form. We've also developed an open-source AI bot to efficiently organize program groups based on criteria like cabin assignments, age breakdown, and student rooming preferences. Currently, we're developing another AI engine to review medical and participant documents against our Essential Eligibility Criteria (EEC), aiming to streamline processes and improve accuracy.

This workshop will highlight the pros and cons of current wilderness therapy (WT) program models. It will address the concept of totalistic youth programming and the critiques of the “troubled teen industry” by highlighting client rights and client voice. The workshop presenters bring perspectives of WT clients, field staff, clinicians, and researchers. Together, the facilitators hope to promote a safe and open space for dialogue to better establish a trauma-responsive WT intervention model. The larger context of mental health treatment in the US will be highlighted as a limitation but with a focus on how both wilderness and adventure therapy practitioners can embrace more of a human rights perspective, bringing in some of the work of the recent work done by the ATIC Ethics Committee, as well as the revisions being made to the OBH Accreditation Standards re: involuntary treatment and transport.