Trauma/Informed Care

The traumas our children/young people experience are individual to them but can significantly impact their ability to function and their wellbeing. We endeavour to provide a trauma informed approach to the care we provide to the children we work with. By adopting this approach into our daily practice, we aim to reduce the negative impact of traumatic experiences and support mental and physical health outcomes. 

How we do this?

Awareness of how trauma can negatively impact on a child/young person is key. How feeling safe and developing trusting relationships with the staff team is at the centre of our approach and we strive to achieve. This embeds quality into our provision and focuses working practices to see beyond a child/young person’s presenting behaviour and ask, ‘what they need?’ rather than ‘what is wrong with the person?’. Through recognising the barriers traumatic experiences present to a child/young person, we can work towards breaking them down and supporting positive outcomes.

There are 6 principles of trauma-informed practice: safety, trust, choice, collaboration, empowerment and cultural consideration. The impact of trauma often manifests in emotional responses, such as feeling shame, anger, sadness and/or embarrassment. Building effective relationships enables our staff team to identify triggers and have awareness of how emotional responses may be displayed. This allows us to fully support our children/young people and creates an environment in which they can thrive.

‘Working definition of trauma-informed practice’ – Nov, 22 - Office for Health Improvement & Disparities.

Click the link below for more information on the governments definition of trauma-informed practices.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-definition-of-trauma-informed-practice/working-definition-of-trauma-informed-practice#working-definition-of-trauma-informed-practice