Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Toolkit

Building a Trauma Informed System of Care

One you have educated yourself and created interest in potential partner organizations, the next step in launching a communitywide trauma informed system of care is providing training. After a sufficient number of professionals are interested in this topic as a result of your advocacy efforts, it is essential to increase their understanding of ACEs science and trauma informed care through training. Educating System of Care Partners Educate Diverse Groups Be intentional in reaching out to a widely diverse group of professionals. Include those who are in healthcare, law enforcement, corrections, advocacy programs, homeless services, libraries, childcare, mental health, child protective services, education, and more. This was critical to accelerating the growth of the Johnson City system of care. It is important to maintain the fidelity of the training across trainings, trainers, and disciplines. Looking back, we know that by maintaining fidelity in our content (using the advocate, educate, and collaborate method, and using consistent language from The State of Tennessee Building Strong Brains (BSB) Initiative and the National Center for Trauma Informed Care (NCTIC)), a shared understanding of trauma was created. We ask for trainers to keep the BSB language and NCTIC language and core videos, but beyond that, we encourage trainers to add their own stories and customize content to the audience. When became interested in creating a trauma informed community in 2015, we requested technical assistance in the form of training materials from the SAMH SA-funded National Center for Trauma Informed Care (NCTIC). The NCTIC staff responded by sending the Center Director, Dr. Joan Gillece, and an associate, Dr. Brian Sims, to Johnson City to introduce these concepts to our community. Following their visit, they provided us with a draft course entitled, SAMHSA’s Trauma-Informed Approach: Key Assumptions and Principles 1 , which included a PowerPoint presenta tion and a companion Instructors Handbook which detailed how to teach the course and includes talking points for each slide or video. With NCTIC permission to edit, this became the foundation of many future trainings. Maintain Training Fidelity

1 NCTIC, https://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/TraumaTIACurriculumTrainersMan ual_2017.pdf

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