Question
What are the guiding principles of trauma-informed care?
Answer
The guiding principles of trauma-informed care are:
- Safety
- Trustworthiness and transparency
- Peer support and mutual self-help
- Collaboration and mutuality
- Empowerment, voice, and choice
- Cultural, historical, and gender issues
The first step in having trauma-informed care is establishing safety. Your classroom or space can be that child's safe haven because maybe at home, they don't feel safe and are witnessing domestic violence. Be transparent and straightforward, so children and families can trust you. Peer support is vital because we are all social creatures, and we need to be able to develop our emotional support within our peer group.
Collaboration between all working with the child and family is vital to helping a child succeed. When I was a social worker at a school, I would go into the classroom and observe a child on my caseload. Then I would work with the teacher on how we could help the child better manage some of his symptoms. Sometimes I could see when the child would be triggered and how he would respond. I also observed what the teachers were doing and if anything contributed to the child's behavior. Often we may accidentally make things worse by telling someone to calm down. I have found that when people say calm down, it escalates the kids even more. We need to empower children to do certain things and have their own voice because maybe elsewhere, they don't have a voice or get to make choices. Provide children opportunities to make age-appropriate choices. Be culturally sensitive and address gender issues.
Note that these elements of trauma-informed care are not merely a one-time task to be checked off of a list. Instead, a true trauma-informed approach is a series of ongoing, deliberate interactions that put the child as an individual at the forefront and not the exhibited behavior. All of these principles need to be implemented daily to be a true trauma-informed environment.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Collective Trauma and Building a Trauma-Informed Culture, presented by Nadia Tourinho, MSW, LICSW, LCSW-C.
