Contextual Practice: Centering Indigeneity at all levels of our practice - Friday, May 22, 2026

Contextual Indigeneity in Social Work (CISW) offers a transformative framework for providers, social workers, and educators who wish to deepen their cultural understanding and humility with ethical responsiveness. This workshop blends theory, human rights frameworks, and clinical applications to help professionals move beyond surface-level cultural sensitivity toward practices that actively begin to dismantle colonial harm.

Through discussion, case studies, and practical tools, participants will leave equipped to integrate decolonial strategies into therapy, supervision, and advocacy, ensuring alignment with both professional ethics and Indigenous sovereignty. Participants will examine:

• Colonial Legacies in Clinical Practice: How historic and systemic oppression continues to shape therapeutic encounters, diagnoses, and interventions.
• CISW Framework: Four core components: Cultural Sensitivity & Respect, Eco-Social Justice & Inclusion, Ethical Practice & Education, and Restorative Healing & Systemic Change-applied to mental health and social services.
• Clinical Application: Case vignettes and reflective exercises on integrating Indigenous-centered approaches with trauma-informed, somatic, and narrative modalities.
• Ethics and Relational Accountability: Tools to ensure consent, cultural safety, and anti-oppressive practice in therapeutic relationships.

1. Recognize how colonial legacies shape therapeutic settings, assessment models, and engagement with Indigenous communities.
2. Integrate the Contextual Indigeneity in Social Work (CISW) model into practice interventions to enhance cultural safety and therapeutic outcomes.
3. Apply relational and ethical strategies that honor Indigenous sovereignty and embed Indigenous Ways of Knowing in counseling, social work, and psychology practices.

CEUs: 3 Social and Cultural & 2 Ethic CEs or 5 Ethic CEs
Date: Friday, May 22, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: Monmouth University Main Campus – Edison Room 201
Presenter: Ausirys Alviz, DSW, MSW, LCSW (She/Her/Ella)

Ausirys Alviz, DSW, MSW, LCSW, is a multicultural, Spanish-speaking professional, excelling in various roles as a social worker, psychotherapist, adjunct professor, doctoral student, executive non-profit board member, and speaker. She holds a master’s degree in clinical social work from Rutgers University, with a specialization in interpersonal violence and trauma. Currently, Ausirys is pursuing her doctoral studies in human rights leadership at Monmouth University, aiming to contribute to international human rights social work.

AS a first-generation migrant from Colombia, Ausirys is a trailblazer in her family, being the first to attend a university, teach at the university level, and establish her own business. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker she has built her private practice, Transparent Healing Psychotherapy LLC, where she specializes in culturally affirming approaches offering, multicultural, holistic, and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). Her expertise extends to addressing a wide array of mental health issues, including those related to trauma, domestic violence, depression, anxiety, immigration/migration, bilingualism, multiculturalism, systemic oppression, and adjustment-related issues among others.

Committed to diverse forms of addressing trauma, she has extensive training in MDMA psychedelic-assisted therapy and ecotherapy, among some training in other modalities like IFS and EMDR. Ausirys’s dedication to making a difference has spanned the private and non-profit sectors, as well as intensive and outpatient levels of care. Beyond her clinical work, Ausirys serves as an adjunct professor at Monmouth University and often volunteers her time with non-profits supporting her local and international community. Her international involvement and doctorate studies are done through her involvement with the Guatemalan non-profit, A Better Life Guatemala. Here she is an executive board member, working internationally with the Mayan K’iche Indigenous community of Guatemala. When she is not working, Ausirys enjoys time outdoors in nature hiking or taking care of her plants.