Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Toolkit

Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Educating System of Care Partners

describe what participants will see and give them permission to step out of the room. All training on ACEs science and trauma informed care needs to model trauma informed practices. After the video, we discuss what was and was not trauma informed within the video and how things could have been done differently. The second module learning objectives include: understanding ACEs, the prevalence of ACEs and a second survivor story video called, “Healing Neen”. 1 This video tells the story of Tonier “Neen” Cain. In telling her story, Tonier powerfully illustrates the connection between childhood adversity and addiction which lead her to crime and criminal justice involvement. By attending a trauma informed program while incarcerated, she saw the association between childhood adversity and choosing risky behaviors as coping strategies, including drug use. Participation in this group began to lead to her own healing and now she is a national speaker and advocate for trauma informed care. The last module of the course contains SAMHSA’s principles for trauma informed approaches. These principles are values-based rather than offering specific treatment interventions, and can be applied in a multitude of settings. Implementing a trauma informed approach requires compassion and caring; it’s not about learning a particular technique or checking off a checklist. It is a “way of being,” looking at the world through trauma informed lenses, rather than a set of actions. We teach the SAMHSA six pillars as organization self-inventory tools to encourage organizations to move from training to changing organizational culture. In order for organizations to provide a healing environment to trauma survivors, the following six pillars (concepts) need to be addressed: safety; trustworthiness and respect; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; and cultural, historical and gender issues. 2 From April of 2016 through the summer of 2018, we trained over 4,000 professionals using this training. We often teach mixed audiences that can include individuals in various roles, from various service systems. We have included the four-hour version of training used in Johnson City in this toolkit. We also offer several customized versions that included examples of trauma informed care programming specific to the type of audience. When we began training community partners, we were unable to find customized training for nurses, homeless service providers, educators, foster care, law enforcement or other types of professionals – so, we created our own with permission from NCTIC. When training

1 2

Length 25:26; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJPJ4eW8kQ https://store.samhsa.gov/system/files/sma14-4884.pdf

26

Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs