What does trauma-informed care look like?
Published:
Dr. Danny Taggart explains what trauma-informed care might look like to children and young people with lived experience of trauma.
Dr. Danny Taggart explains what trauma-informed care might look like to children and young people with lived experience of trauma.
Talking Points
In this video, Dr Taggart:
- Explores the key ingredients of trauma-informed care, providing a framework to help organisations and individual practitioners structure their work with young people who have experienced trauma.
- Highlights the importance of developing safe systems for young people, focusing on being transparent, building trust and minimising retraumatisation.
- Reflects on the importance of giving young people agency and choice, balanced with the responsibility that practitioners have to address risk and harm.
- Advocates for practitioners to understand young people within their unique cultural, historical and gender context.
Reflective questions
Here are reflective questions to stimulate conversation and support practice.
- How are young people in your area enabled to participate in decisions about their own support and care? What could you do as part of your role to promote young people’s participation and agency?
- How could you work with young people, their families and other professionals to recognise the possibility of retraumatisation, and minimise it as much as possible?
- What opportunities do young people in your area have to build peer relationships with other young people who have experienced trauma?
Related resources
- Working with trauma-experienced parents in children’s social care: Video Learning Resources
- Trauma-informed approaches with young people: Frontline Briefing
- Building safety, connection and trust with trauma-experienced parents: Practice Guide
- Supporting effective participation with children and young people
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Relationships and effective direct work | Promote and govern excellent practice
PCF - Intervention and skills
What is the impact of trauma?
Dr. Danny Taggart describes the effect that trauma has on children and young people and what practitioners should bear in mind when working with them.
What do we mean by trauma?
Dr. Danny Taggart shares two definitions of trauma from the psychologists Peter Sedgwick and Bessel van der Kolk and examines the implications of these definitions for social care practice.
References
- Sweeney, A., Clement, S., Filson, B., & Kennedy, A. (2016). Trauma-informed mental healthcare in the UK: what is it and how can we further its development?. Mental Health Review Journal, 21(3), 174-192.