Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Toolkit

Building a Trauma Informed System of Care System of Care Meetings

Trauma-Aware Organizations are aware of how prevalent trauma is and begin to consider that trauma might impact their clientele and staff. Agency staff realize there is a national conversation about trauma informed practices and ACEs science. Training often helps staff members reach this step. The organization might decide to use a screening tool to assess staff members’ perceptions and knowledge about trauma. Organizations have begun to 1) explore and discuss SAMHSA’s Six Principles of Trauma-Informed Organizations; 2) consider adopting the principles; and 3) prepare for organizational change. Again, once trained, staff members typically begin to think of their services through a trauma informed lens. We regularly have participants indicate by the end of the initial training they attend that they are aware of signage in their facility that might be shaming and should be changed to create a more welcoming and engaging environment for clients. It is important to recognize the four stages of becoming trauma informed: trauma aware, trauma sensitive, trauma responsive and trauma informed 1 . Documenting movement from stage to stage benchmarks organizational progress in a similar manner to measuring a child’s height change on a growth chart. The following are the definitions of these stages of growth: Trauma-Sensitive

Trauma-Responsive

Organizations begin to change the culture to highlight the importance of trauma and resilience. All levels of staff begin re-thinking routines and the infrastructure of the organization. Discussion among staff and leadership take place to consider improved routines and how to implement them. Ongoing training is provided for staff and the agency considers engaging those with lived experiences of trauma to participate in the change process to gain a survivor perspectives.

1 Missouri Model: A Developmental Framework for Trauma Informed Approaches , MO Dept. of Mental Health and Partners (2014) https://dmh.mo.gov/dd/docs/tieredsupporttraumainformedschools.pdf

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