A suite of new Research in Practice resources support leaders to meaningfully build trauma-informed organisations.  

There is considerable work going into the development of trauma-informed practice across social care systems. But, as social care partners have told us, effectively embedding approaches can remain challenging. The resources throw light on these challenges.

Trauma is fundamentally about how we respond to threat. We often think about trauma-informed practice in relation to individuals – the resources show us that a trauma-informed lens enhances our understanding of the way threats impact organisational functioning.

Social care organisations, and the people working in them, are often motivated by deeply held values: supporting people to live better lives, to build relationships that bring about change and to challenge social injustice. Yet, despite these intentions, too often we hear from people with lived experience that this has not been their experience of services.

A new briefing supports leaders in social care and allied organisations to strengthen their approaches. It includes a detailed analysis of the way that threat and trauma can impact on organisational functioning, and how responses can inadvertently pull organisations away from their values. This can include things like high levels of scrutiny from regulators, governing bodies and the media, and responding to risk, distress and need with stretched resources. The second half explores the psychological foundations for a healthy trauma-informed organisational culture and system.

It is accompanied by a series of three linked podcasts that hear Dr Sheena Webb and Dr Danny Taggart explore the briefing’s key themes and implications for practice.

Together they explore the psychological conditions that support the development of a trauma-informed culture. They open up new ways of thinking to help organisations establish the conditions needed to mitigate the impact of trauma and threat, and to remain rooted in their core relational and person-centred values.

Using and developing the resources

The resources show that a trauma-informed lens gives organisations:

• a deeper understanding of the support that staff need to practice in a trauma-informed way  
• an understanding of how organisational responses to threat impact on staff and impede embedding trauma-informed practice 
• an understanding of what a healthy trauma-informed organisational culture looks like

The resources are based on learning from a Change Project: ‘Towards a trauma-informed organisational approach.’ This bought together Principal Social Workers and senior managers across children and families and adults’ social care from 30 different local authorities in England.