What are trauma informed approaches ?

There views vary on what ‘trauma informed’ care involves. However, the academic literature identifies five consistent principles which underpin trauma informed approaches.

1.Recognise and respond to trauma

It’s vital that staff understand the prevalence of trauma amongst the children or adults they are supporting, and the impact this has upon them.

2. Provide safe environments

People who have been through traumatic experiences need to access services in an environment that doesn’t exacerbate their trauma. Safe environments are created and maintained when staff put relationships, collaboration, choice and empowerment for service users to the fore.

3. Take a strengths-based view

Research demonstrates that the most successful services working with trauma build on what people are capable of doing to create positive possibilities, rather than ‘doing things for them’. People who have experiences trauma are often asked ‘what is wrong with you?’ rather than ‘what happened to you?’. This view fails to empower people to support their recovery.

4. Collaboration – Building empowering relationships

Many traumatic experiences involve ‘power over’ abuses (i.e. where someone is abused by another person who is in a position of power over them). This can make it hard for survivors to engage in services that are built on the professional having power over the child or adult. Power-based relationships can trigger distressed responses in survivors which undermines their recovery.

This risk can be minimised involving the focal person in decision making, and concentrating on building empathetic, respectful, compassionate and trusting relationships.

5. Promote equality of access

At the heart of trauma-informed care is a recognition of the needs of each individual. People facing multiple disadvantage are not a uniform group; they are individuals with unique and diverse experiences.
Everyone deserves equal access to good quality treatment which takes account of the unique context of their life. Trauma-informed services do not exclude specific people because of things that have happened to them.

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