About Kourtney
Kourtney Barr serves as the Deputy Director of Transformational Services at the Topeka Rescue Mission (TRM). Transformational Services includes all of TRM’s programming for both guests and community members alike. Programming options include Trauma Education, Life Skills Development, Financial Literacy, Career Readiness, and Biblical Learning & Equipping.
Kourtney has become an experienced professional in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) through her work with TRM and the Practitioner program through Texas Christian University and the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development. This intervention is designed to meet the complex needs of individuals who have experienced adversity, abuse, toxic stress, and/or other forms of trauma.
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During her 6+-year tenure with TRM, Kourtney has worked in many different facets of the ministry. Her work started with some of the most vulnerable of the population TRM serves as a preschool teacher at the Children’s Palace. Through this role Kourtney strived to help make paths of healing for the children while holistically wrapping around the families and teaching new skills and insights. Kourtney’s next role was within a food relief program that was executed at the height of the covid-19 pandemic called Operation Food Secure (OFS). OFS provided 5 million pounds of food to 110,123 people across 10 counties, each with their own name and story. Through this initiative nearly 500 volunteers were trained and equipped with education on trauma and how to use food boxes as a catalyst for deeper connections and relationships. This led to the development of a 5-year trauma interventions plan to be the first rescue mission in the nation to holistically incorporate Trust-Based Relational Intervention. Within her time as the Director of Trauma Education and Development, Kourtney provided professional development centered on TBRI through the integration of effective trainings, skill development and quality assurance methods relevant to the implementation of trauma-informed practices throughout TRM Ministries.
Kourtney’s goal is to continually help the body of Christ walk in the fullness of her identity by encouraging the Church to step outside the church walls, having hearts that break for what breaks the Lord’s, stopping for the one, loving the one, and encouraging the one. By sharing her love for Christ and TBRI literacy and techniques, Kourtney aspires to have a community that sees people through the eyes of Jesus with a lens of trauma.
About TBRI: Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) is an attachment-based, trauma-informed, therapeutic model that trains caregivers to provide effective support and treatment for at-risk individuals. TBRI uses Empowering Principles to address physical and environmental needs, Connecting Principles for attachment needs and engagement, and Correcting Principles to disarm fear-based behaviors. TBRI has been applied in courts, residential treatment facilities, group homes, foster and adoptive homes, churches, schools, correctional facilities, with survivors of sex-trafficking, law enforcement, clinical practices and beyond. TBRI is designed to meet complex needs of vulnerable individuals. While the intervention is based on years of attachment, sensory processing and neuroscience research, the heartbeat of TBRI is connection.