For the last 18 months, Echo Parenting & Education (EPE) has been trying to do something audacious in its scope and enterprise - forming a collaborative to develop Trauma Informed Nonviolent Standards of Care (TINSOC) with a specific focus on the needs of domestic violence shelters.
Our audacity was not just to create an interesting visual acronym (I can't help thinking of ankle monitors), but that an agency specializing in nonviolent parenting would be the one to bring together shelters already implementing trauma-informed care to create these standards. Why, you may well ask. And what the heck is nonviolent parenting?
At EPE we define violence as anything that hurts the mind, body or emotions of a child. Remember that ACES question that asks if you were sworn at, insulted, put down or humiliated by your parent? Most of us can answer 'yes' to that and remember how that experience smarted, how disconnecting it was. Understanding the importance of attachment for the optimal development of a child, the nonviolent parenting philosophy centers on connection not compliance.
About 7 years ago, we took this parenting philosophy into domestic violence shelters to train survivors and child care workers. Knowing that a 'safe, stable relationship with a nurturing caregiver' is the only way for a child to recover from trauma, this form of parenting is critical in caring for children who have witnessed intimate partner violence. It is also the only way that the cycle of violence will be broken in these families.
Working with our shelter partners, we were able to come up with standards that combine the principles of trauma-informed care and nonviolent child raising. We built on the work we found popping up all round the nation to create guidelines, manuals or standards for trauma-informed care, some even addressing the needs of DV shelters. What we believe makes our project unique is the focus on nonviolent child raising, thus building in the principles that prevent ACES, create resilience and can heal a child from trauma.
We have been planning a TINSOC launch event to be held at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles on October 30 (10 a.m. to noon). We thought maybe we could attract some press, a few other interested parties, spread the word. What we weren't expecting was just how fast the word would get out; at our latest planning meeting, instead of the expected handful of faithful collaborative members, 17 agencies showed up wanting to be part of the project, including the LA City Attorney's Office, drug, substance abuse and violence prevention agencies, and other intimate partner violence service agencies that had not been part of the original effort. Most this was due to EPE's irrepressible staff member, Susan Hess, who is receiving an award from the LA City DV Taskforce October 9 at an event presided over by the Mayor for her work in bringing the collaborative together.
The interest in TINSOC continues to snowball. We hope that these standards become guidelines that will be adopted by the many different systems that come in contact with trauma survivors and their children. At the very least, we are raising awareness that being trauma-informed includes looking at the parenting paradigm we experienced as children and asking if we can't do better.
_________________________
Here's the TINSOC.pdf draft. It's also in the domestic violence section of the Social Services page on the ACEsConnection Resource Center.
Comments (5)