Working in a trauma-informed way

Experiences of trauma and adversity can have a profound and wide-reaching impact on the lives of individuals, families, communities and the workforce. These experiences can influence how we interact with others, how we interpret our surroundings and the world around us, and how we access, engage with and experience services.

Our trauma-informed model:

• Realises that experiences of trauma are common within our society
• Recognises the signs and symptoms of trauma and the way this impacts people
• Resists re-traumatisation by actively working to avoid causing further harm or distress
• Responds to people’s trauma in a way that is compassionate, supportive and helps people not feel shame or judgment around their experiences and how they have survived them
• Ensures relationships are recognised as central to healing, helping to create a sense of safety and support recovery from trauma and adversity.

An important part of becoming more trauma-informed as individuals, services and organisations is considering how we are applying the trauma-informed model and building the trauma-informed principles into how we work.

This includes how we interact with others, how we support each other and how we design our services, our policies and procedures and all parts of the work that we do.

The principles that underpin a trauma-informed approach are:

• safety
• trustworthiness and transparency
• choice and clarity
• collaboration
• empowerment
• inclusivity.

Embedding a trauma-informed approach has been identified as a key enabler to support how we will deliver our Integrated Care System strategy. In Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire we champion the ongoing development of trauma-informed ways of working within services and we have created a Trauma-Informed Practice Framework to support the development of this work