Trauma-Informed Self-Care for Child and Youth Care Workers

Abstract

This article presents a framework for understanding, developing, and applying a trauma-informed approach to staff, team, and organizational self-care in youth serving organizations. The article draws on current research in the areas of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), Trauma-Informed Care (TIC), Trauma Stewardship, resilience, and The Sanctuary Model. This approach will help child and youth care workers to develop a long lasting, effective trauma-informed self, team, and organizational care plan. The first article focuses on worker trauma-informed self-care, and the second on team and organizational approaches.
 Since there are limits as to what can be comprehensively covered in a short article, I will supply an extensive list of key references and resources relevant to self, team, and organizational care. Many of these are directly downloadable from the Internet. Thus, I do not attempt to answer all the issues but encourage readers to explore the various resources and ideas and apply them where relevant to the readers, their team, and organizations.

Maternal-Child Health Outcomes from Pre- to Post-Implementation of a Trauma-Informed Care Initiative in the Prenatal Care Setting: A Retrospective Study

“…The implementation of the ACEs questionnaire is best guided alongside the implementation of a trauma-informed care (TIC) approach [29,38]. The implementation of a TIC model would address most concerns with use of the ACEs questionnaire by ensuring that all aspects of care are committed to preventing harm and facilitating trauma recovery.…”

Trauma Aware and Anti-Oppressive Arts-Health and Community Arts Practice: Guiding Principles for Facilitating Healing, Health and Wellbeing

“…Essentially, trauma aware and informed services focus on avoiding re-traumatising people who are engaging with the service including staff (Fallot & Harris, 2009). Service delivery that is not trauma-informed can contribute to staff burn out, bullying and ‘toxic’ workplaces (Bowie, 2013).…”

“…Trauma-informed practice does not require participants to disclose traumatic experiences but, instead, seeks to provide safety and personal power by creating an environment based on an understanding the effects of trauma for individuals (Arthur et al, 2013; Lapum et al, 2019). An organisation, profession, arts program or individual that implements trauma-informed practice therefore sets the intention of ‘safety first’ and commits to ‘do no harm’ (Bowie, 2013).…”