Trauma Informed Care

Exposure to trauma is very common. What do we mean when we refer to trauma? Trauma can be anything that results from experiences that overwhelm an individual's capacity to cope. Trauma can result from childhood abuse and neglect, undergoing repeated medical interventions, accidents and natural disasters, witnessing acts of violence or war, grief and loss, intergenerational and historical events, etc.
The Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) study (Kaiser Permanente and CDC, 1995-2009) estimates that 1 in 4 adults have been exposed to 2 adverse events as a child. Further to this, it has been demonstrated by neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that certain stages of life make people more vulnerable to the effects of trauma, including childhood and adolescence (Lupien et al., 2009). So now that we know this information what can we, as a pediatric health centre, do to help mitigate the impact of trauma on our patients and their families?
Adopting a systemic trauma informed care approach and offering trauma-specific services can help us to better serve children and youth who have experienced trauma. Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a universal, systematic, strength based approach that is grounded in an understanding of, and responsiveness to, the impact of trauma. It is operating at the client, family, staff and system levels from the core principles of trauma informed care: awareness, safety, trustworthiness, choice and collaboration; and building of strengths and skills. Operationally speaking, this would mean that services would strive to become trauma aware; learn more about the connections between trauma, mental health, and substance use; recognize trauma symptoms and adaptations; offer support and strategies that increase safety and support; and work with community partners to build trauma informed care resources in the community.
Trauma specific services are offered in trauma informed environments and are focused on treating trauma through therapeutic interventions involving practitioners with specialized skills. One example is trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
The goals of today’s presentation are:
to increase your awareness of the importance, prevalence and effects of trauma; and
to describe the IWK Health Centre’s journey towards becoming a trauma-informed health centre.
We hope our presentation will help demonstrate how everyone working in a paediatric health centre can play a role in making the space and services more trauma-informed. We invite you to partner with us in this important conversation!

[@superawesomechannel9371]

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[@rza8225]

Hi.
Do you happen to have a list of links for your citations?