Trauma-Informed Policies: Shifting organizational cultures

During the July Kings County ACEs Network of Care event, we dove into a deeper understanding of evidence-based trauma-informed policy development by looking at a real-life example of a training policy developed by Kings United Way, one of our Network of Care partners. Finally, we invited the community to share their successes and lessons learned through a Community Highlight segment.

As we move our community toward being ACEs Aware and trauma-informed, we feel it is imperative that we lead by example. Therefore the leading partners in our network of care are all embarking on a journey to shift the cultures within our individual organizations by developing Trauma-Informed policies. This is an ongoing process that requires us to not only utilize that trauma-informed and ACEs aware lens on our community and in evaluating the services that we provide, we also recognize that we must look inward and apply that same lens to staff, consultants, and organizational leaders.

We are utilizing the following framework and principles as described by ACEsAware to help guide us through this process:

Framework of Trauma-Informed Care:

Understanding the prevalence of trauma and adversity and their impacts on health and behavior
Recognizing the effects of of trauma and adversity on health and behavior and applying that recognition to clients and staff
Training leadership, providers, and staff on responding to patients/clients with best practices in trauma-informed care
Integrating knowledge about trauma and adversity into policies, procedures, practices and treatment planning
Avoiding re-traumatization by approaching patients/clients/staff who have experienced ACEs and or other adversities with non-judgmental support.

Principles of Trauma-Informed Organizations:

ACEs and Trauma Understanding: (i.e. mandatory training for existing staff, new hires, administrators, board members, consultants etc.)
Safety & Stability: (i.e. open door policies, establishing a physically/emotionally safe environment and culture)
Cultural Humility & Responsiveness: (i.e. culturally responsive services and work environments, recognizing and addressing historical trauma, anti-bias practices and policies, implicit bias awareness training, inclusive practices and language, access to gender responsive services, etc.)
Compassion & Dependability: (i.e. organizational operations & decisions are conducted with transparency, staff discipline policies are logical and transformative rather than punitive)
Collaboration & Empowerment: meaningful sharing of power and decision making between staff and clients and among organizational staff and leaders(i.e. Focus groups, committees, task forces, etc.)
Resilience & Recovery: (i.e. understanding and implementation of or provision of education and/or access to evidence-based toxic stress mitigation for clients and staff)

WE would like to share some additional resources with the community that we have found helpful in understanding pathways to trauma-informed policy development. We are also eager to hear your experiences and insight. Please share in the comments any wisdom gained and lessons learned in regard to Trauma-Informed policy development.