Are you interested in working to make your organization more “trauma-informed”?
Nowadays every organization seems to claim that they are trauma-informed but very few organizations have actually implemented SAMHSA’s guidance for trauma-informed organizations and practice. We can help you and your organization do just that!
Being “trauma-informed” is much more than having a trauma therapist on your team or providing a training to your team on trauma. Trauma-informed organizations have committed to critically reflecting on every area aspects of their practice, procedures, and policies through the lens of the six trauma-informed principles. SAMHSA offers specific guidance for organizational leaders in implementing these principles within 10 agency domains through 16 strategies.
Our Director/Founder, Dr. Scott Giacomucci, is an internationally-recognized expert on trauma-informed care and is available as a resource to help you and your organization become more trauma-informed. Learn more about trauma-informed care and organizations in Dr. Scott’s book!
SAMHSA created trauma-informed care, not only for guidance in how we provide services to our clients, but to guide us in structuring our organizations. Trauma-informed care must be integrated into all aspects of an organization and embodied at every level of the organization from leadership to frontline staff.
The trauma-informed care framework is relevant for ALL organizations – not just treatment centers or trauma therapists. Trauma-informed care philosophy can be integrated into an profession and is relevant for all professionals including organizational leaders, counselors, educators, healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, caseworkers, lawyers, judges, first responders, massage therapists, bodyworkers, and any professional working with other humans. If you are working with humans, you are working with trauma survivors!
Many licensing boards and grant funders are starting to require organizations to integrate SAMHSA’s trauma-informed care framework into their organization. This can be a complicated process and we can help!
Reach out to us for training or consultation on trauma-informed care at your organization!
SAMHSA outlines six core principles of trauma-informed practice which guide practitioners and organizations in embodying a trauma-informed care that prevents retraumatization and supports healing. SAMHSA defines trauma-informed care through these key principles:
- Safety: Providers promote physical and emotional safety through the design of their facility, social interactions, and the provision of services. Providers seek to understand what safety means through the perspective and experience of those they serve.
- Trustworthiness and Transparency: Decision-making at all levels is done with transparency for staff, clients, and the community in the spirit of establishing and maintaining trust.
- Peer Support: Trauma survivors are incorporated as essential members of one’s recovery process using their lived experiences to promote healing.
- Collaboration and Mutuality: Power dynamics between various staff members and with clients are managed in a way that values each person, emphasizes each role as important, and distributes power and decision-making.
- Empowerment, Voice, and Choice: Providers emphasize the resilience and autonomy of clients, communities, and staff. Everyone is empowered in decision-making, goal-setting, and self-advocacy. “Staff are facilitators of recovery rather than controllers of recovery”.
- Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues: Providers actively address their own biases while developing practices/policies that are conducive to the needs and values related to the race, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, sexuality, and age of those they serve and employ. The impact of historic/collective trauma or discrimination is acknowledged while mitigating the potential for reenactments of oppression and microaggressions. The healing potential of cultural and identity values are leveraged and emphasized for clients when appropriate.
Reach out to us today for support in integrating trauma-informed care into your organization. We have provided education on trauma-informed for various organizations including treatment centers, therapists, counselors, organizational leaders, government agencies, non-profits, universities, lawyers and judges, first responders, security firms, corporate businesses, financial institutions, massage therapists and bodyworkers, and other healthcare professionals.
Reach out to us for training or consultation on trauma-informed care at your organization!
