Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Toolkit

Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Getting Started

Identify Partnerships

To build a trauma informed community, partnerships will be necessary. Whether you are a social worker, school teacher, or the Mayor of a town, you have partners. Make a list of all the service providers to whom you make referrals, seek guidance from for clients, or enlist for help meeting client needs. Making this list is how you begin to build your system of care. The next step is to reach out to your potential partners. Begin by suggesting a meeting with your potential partners, either to have a video screening or a planning meeting. If you start with a video then you will want to follow up with a meeting. We recommend that you provide a sign-in sheet at each meeting or event and announce that anyone who is interested in attending a follow up meeting further exploring involvement in bringing the message of ACEs and trauma informed care to the community, to please sign up. When planning the meeting for this group, prepare slides or handouts using the points offered in Chapter 1 Every Community Needs a System of Care . Offer these points and discuss how they apply to your particular community and the partners you have gathered and be sure to include the benefits for the community and the partners. In this meeting, you are asking partners to rethink some of the ways they provide services. Present information that will convince them of the universal prevalence of trauma, and they will come to realize we are all serving trauma survivors. Think of building a system of care like fishing. You put out the bait (education) and there will be some nibbles and then a “catch.” Use this meeting to issue a “call to action” and end it by setting a date for your first trauma informed care training! Remember our analogy of the child in the burning building needing to be rescued? Now we are assembling the responders!

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