Trauma-informed practice
Trauma-informed services take into account an understanding of trauma in all aspects of service delivery and increase safety, choice, and control. This creates a professional culture of non-violence, dignity and collaboration. This helps prevent burn-out and service provision failures.
Using trauma-informed approaches does not necessarily require disclosure of trauma. Rather, we simply learn to recognize the boundaries for physical and emotional safety, as well as healthy power balances.
I have worked with professionals all across Canada, and their clients, on trauma-informed approaches for high stress environments, that empower and respect everyone.
If you work with the public, especially in frontline areas like victim services, medicine, law enforcement, or legal and court services, you know that the human tragedy we often are dealing with can impact our state of mind. Without due care toward vicarious trauma prevention, interpersonal issues rise up suddenly that leave everyone stressed.
But trauma isn’t a necessary part of the job!
We can learn to practice healthy trauma responses, reduce triggering, and offer respect and support to ourselves and those around us.
Workshops are customized for your group. Topics typically covered in a full day training can include:
Definitions of trauma, vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue
Impacts and prevalence of trauma in populations served
- who is impacted?
- what are likely effects from trauma?
- impacts on community health, safety and access to services
How are our professional interactions are likely to be affected by trauma?
- working with clients who have experienced trauma:
- professional peers and trauma
- systemic issues relevant to trauma
How can we reduce triggering and create supportive professional practices? (This is small group work, using scenarios to learn new information as well gather and document our own existing expertise and professional experience)
Self-care and front-line work
- sharing of self-care practices
- creating a workplace culture of self-care
From recent trauma-informed workshop participants:
I felt respected heard and safe. Your modelling [of trauma-informed service] was excellent.
The connections made to organizational and institutional levels of trauma were important understandings.
The self-care when dealing with my work was important.
The practical aspects will help me be a better practitioner and human.
Learning how to use [trauma-informed] knowledge in my daily living and within my jobs with trauma survivors was personally very relevant.
It was an opportunity to learn, educate, socialize and revitalize. It was a true pleasure sharing the day…