Trauma-informed services

Trauma- informed services
Sharing perspectives, connecting practice

"If people providing services just have compassion, everything follows. "

Mimi Jalmasco

MSCOS · Trauma - Informed Services - Wendy

Wendy explains the need for trauma-informed services and how they provide needed support and a distinct contrast from traffickers.

Keith Lewis explains the need for trauma-informed services in relation to the criminal justice system.

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Survivors have suffered unimaginable things in modern slavery: all sense of their power is crushed, their hopes are crushed, there is no trust left – they feel they cannot have trust in anyone.
So they need to have support from people that they are comfortable speaking to. Often, they will feel shy nervous, or uncomfortable with professionals, especially those who are not trauma-informed. When you approach survivors in a trauma-informed way, you are helping them regain those powers back, build their trust back, the ability to do things for themselves, and able to be involved in whatever plans are being made for them. It is really important that they can choose the gender of interpreters also.

When trauma-informed services work with survivors they get better outcomes from their situation, better understanding of how to deal with challenges. They also ensure survivors feel educated and empowered, rather than being told what to do.

MSCOS study descriptor: This outcome describes the need for staff who are trained and experienced in working with survivors who have traumatic histories. Survivors need to be able to trust all the professionals who work with them including police, immigration authorities, support workers, social workers, and shelter staff. This means developing trusting relationships, working to realistic expectations, supporting survivors to understand all the information they are being given, communicating to survivors in their language, and being honest. At a very basic level, this outcome is about staff treating survivors as human beings, listening to their stories and needs, and being a positive force in people's lives. All services need to be as inclusive and sensitively delivered as possible.

Relevant Practice Models and Frameworks
for compassionate, trauma-informed services

Key trauma-informed framework

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach responds to and recognizes the impact of trauma on many sectors in behavioral health and beyond. The paper introduces the concept of trauma and offers a framework for how organizations, systems, and service sectors can become trauma-informed.

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Event(s)
Experience of the event(s)
Effect

Definition of a trauma-informed approach (the four “Rs”):

Realize
Recognize
Respond
Resist retraumatization

Six key principles of a trauma-informed approach:

Safety
Trustworthiness and transparency
Peer support
Collaboration and mutuality
Empowerment, voice, and choice
Cultural, historical, and gender issues

Ten implementation domains:

Governance and leadership
Policy
Physical environment of the organization
Engagement and involvement of people in recovery, trauma survivors, consumers, and family members receiving services
Cross-sector collaboration
Screening, assessment, and treatment services
Training and workforce development
Progress monitoring and quality assurance
Financing
Evaluation

By cross-walking the key principles with trauma-specific content, this paper aims to provide a viable and unified framework that can be used to support the work of consumers, communities, and stakeholders. The engagement process with the public was a critical piece in creating such a framework for the many sectors who serve survivors and their families.

Task-based trauma-informed guidance

The Trauma-Informed Code of Conduct by Rachel Witkin and Dr Katy Robjant draws upon practical, experiential and therapeutic methods of working with survivors of trafficking to provide professionals from any field or discipline with simple techniques that they can absorb into their own communications and conduct with survivors.

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Establish and maintain a mutual relationship of trust with survivors in any working context or environment
Impart a consistent sense of calm, security and safety throughout the course of their work
Increase the confidence of survivors and minimise the risks of causing distress and re-traumatisation
Remain safe and well in the course of their work, avoiding secondary traumatisation and professional ‘burnout.'

The trauma-informed methods in the TiCC can be applied to all forms of communication regardless of length and level of formality, and therefore benefit law enforcement and national authorities as well as NGOs and civil society organisations. They are helpful for professionals working at any basic level in communications with possible or known survivors of trafficking, as well as those with more detailed remits, who need to build a longer term relationship of trust, who may need to obtain disclosure of traumatic trafficking histories, and support survivors who have backgrounds of ritualized violence.

The TiCC is intended for use only within the strict parameters of each professional’s allocated role and remit. It is equally applicable to people who have been domestically trafficked (within the borders of one country) as to those who have crossed international borders. Although tailored, trauma-informed environments are ideal for working with survivors, the significant value of trauma-informed working lies in professionals’ ability to exercise it solely within their conduct and communications in any situation or setting.

TiCC methods do not conflict with any other recommended practice, for example, cultural congruence, child specialist work, use of interpreters and cultural mediators. Rather, the space, time and dignity afforded to survivors through the use of trauma-informed working methods permits these practices to operate to a fuller effect.

For child rights-centred communications see The Lundy Model.

Helpful Resources

National Trauma-Informed Training and Practice

NHS Scotland's Trauma-informed Practice Toolkit
This trauma-informed practice toolkit has been developed as part of the National Trauma Training Programme, to support all sectors of the workforce, in planning and developing trauma informed services.

The Scottish Government has funded a National Trauma Training Strategy for the broad Scottish workforce. The Transforming Psychological Trauma framework is a 4-tiered training model designed to increase understanding of trauma and its impact. It does not require that everyone in the workforce should be a trauma expert, but that all workers, in the context of their own role and work remit, have a unique and essential trauma-informed role to play in responding to people who are affected by trauma.

Read more about the framework here

The framework applies for working with all forms of trauma from any experience. It applies for workers (in conjunction with their appropriate generic and/or professional guidance), managers and supervisors, organisations (to ensure staff have the necessary knowledge and skills), education and training providers and people affected by trauma, their families and supporters.

A [trauma informed] workforce ...can minimise the barriers to receiving care, support and interventions that those affected by trauma can experience when memories of trauma are triggered by aspects of the service or interactions with staff ... In our meetings with those affected by trauma, almost universally they told us about the importance of their relationships with workers in accessing the support, interventions or life chances they needed, whether this be in justice, in physical health, or in education for example. They told us that above all else, the development of a trusting relationship with a worker had the greatest impact upon their capacity to seek and receive care, support or interventions. Trauma informed services change the question from 'What is wrong with you?' to 'What has happened to you?”