07/18/2026
Summit Pointe + UnSilenced = Healing & Hope (Branded joint logo created and approved with Summit Pointe)
On June 1, 2026, UnSilenced and Summit Pointe entered into an affiliation and training partnership—and this coming Wednesday, we will officially step into the room together for our first in-house training! I am so incredibly excited for what this partnership represents.
A few years ago, UnSilenced began providing human trafficking education within Integrated Services of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo County's community mental health system. Now, we are honored to stand beside Summit Pointe, Calhoun County's community mental health authority, as we strengthen the way behavioral health professionals recognize and respond to trafficking, exploitation, trauma, and vulnerability.
Our partnership is built around WMU's accredited Beyond the Chart: Recognizing Human Trafficking Through a Clinical and Survivor-Informed Lens—a three-hour training created by UnSilenced Battle Creek Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition, to help professionals recognize indicators, understand trauma responses, identify barriers to seeking help, and respond in ways that protect safety, dignity, trust, and choice.
A very special thank-you goes to Jeannie Goodrich, CEO of Summit Pointe, for believing in me, trusting UnSilenced to educate Summit Pointe staff, and creating space for lived experience to have a meaningful voice at the table. Your willingness to see value in both professional knowledge and lived experience means more than I can adequately put into words.
This Wednesday, we will passionately pour into Summit Pointe's staff, corporate team, and leadership by providing a broader understanding of what human trafficking looks like today and how easily it can remain hidden within behavioral health, crisis response, substance use, homelessness, domestic violence, and other complex situations. Together, we will examine the different forms of exploitation, including s*x trafficking, labor trafficking, familial trafficking, online-facilitated trafficking, cyber exploitation, and exploitation connected to po*******hy and s*xually explicit content. We will also explore how grooming, coercion, trauma, fear, dependency, and unmet basic needs can influence a survivor's behavior, increase emotional distress, and affect their ability to seek help. The training will also include su***de awareness and education, including how to recognize warning signs, respond with compassion, ask direct and supportive questions, and connect someone to appropriate help without judgment or panic. Most importantly, we will focus on helping professionals move beyond assumptions, recognize possible indicators, know what to say and do, and create safer pathways for support, appropriate referrals, crisis intervention, and coordinated community action.
I am also incredibly fortunate to co-facilitate alongside a powerful multidisciplinary team:
1. Danielle Sackrider, LMSW: UnSilenced Social Worker and Trainer, Su***de Prevention Coordinator, and Kalamazoo LOSS Team Co-Lead
2. Leyna Luttrull: Survivor, victum advocate, UnSilenced Trainier, Director of Collaborative Initiatives with the Michigan Anti-Trafficking Project and an appointed member of the Michigan Human Trafficking Commission
3. Chief Rich Mackey: UnSilenced Guest Trainier and the Chief of Public Safety for the Emmett Township, Battle Creek!
For three hours, the worlds of lived experience, social work, behavioral health, su***de prevention, law enforcement, community advocacy, and legislative systems change will come together in one room.
That is how we move from awareness to action.
That is how we stop working in separate lanes and begin building coordinated pathways of identification, safety, accountability, and support.
That is how we help professionals recognize that the person standing before them may not be "difficult," "noncompliant," "attention seeking," or "making poor choices." They may be surviving coercion, violence, fear, dependency, and circumstances that have never felt safe enough to disclose.
Calhoun County is already making a strong statement: there will be zero tolerance for the buying and selling of human beings for s*x. But accountability must be accompanied by education, survivor-centered services, prevention, safe reporting options, and systems prepared to respond when someone reaches for help.
This partnership is about creating those stronger systems. It is about making sure survivors are not overlooked because their stories are complicated. It is about helping professionals see beyond the chart. It is about building a community where people experiencing exploitation are met with understanding rather than judgment, options rather than demands, and a pathway toward safety rather than another closed door. Safer together. Stronger together. UnSilenced together.
