Lionheart EQ2

What is it about?

The EQ2 app is part of the EQ2 Program which provides a comprehensive approach to supporting staff in building trauma-sensitive communities for youth in residential settings. The EQ2 app provides direct care staff with a diverse tool-kit that reinforces the trauma-informed concepts, relationship-building techniques, and self-regulation and co-regulation skills taught throughout the EQ2 program. Self-regulation and relationship skills take repeated practice to “stick.” The EQ2 app offers the opportunity for repeated exposure to these skills as well as to practices designed to increase staff’s resiliency and lower the impact of secondary traumatic stress. Staff enter the app through the Daily Check-In which helps build their awareness of feeling states; this reinforces the understanding that emotions are contagious and how staff emotionally show up impacts their fellow staff, the youth they serve, and the larger emotional climate of the agency. Users receive supportive and instructive messages based on the valence of their responses to the Daily Check-In. The app also contains dozens of spoken animated videos designed to reinforce key EQ2 concepts and skills such as Stop, Breathe, and Choose, Mindful Underreaction and Coaching from the Core Self. A range of guided mindfulness meditations and visualizations are also included. These can be played during EQ2 groups to support facilitators in leading the mindfulness exercises or listened to away from work to help build staff resiliency and lower burnout. In addition, the app is designed to be used as a structured resource to provide high-quality supervision to direct care staff or as “homework” for staff who need practice with specific skills. The app also offers a vehicle to “on-board” new staff both in terms of skills acquisition and the qualities associated with the role of direct-care workers.