Beginning January 2023, Benchmarks’ Center for Quality Integration will add “Trauma & Resilience” to our catalog of offered trainings. “Trauma & Resilience” uses the National Childhood Traumatic Stress Networks’ (NCTSN’s) Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit as its base curricula with influences from our teams’ own “on the ground” knowledge, research, and experiences. Across North Carolina, Benchmarks has been assisting communities in efforts to become more trauma-informed over the past 9 years by training this curriculum and consulting regarding meaningful sustainable changes.
As agencies consider what it means to be trauma-informed, it is important to understand that it is more of a journey than a destination. The transition to becoming trauma-informed requires more than simply adding to staff’s awareness of trauma through basic training on related concepts and definitions. Becoming trauma-informed in your practice requires a culture shift. It demands a change in how we identify and respond to trauma as well as how we plan for it. While “Trauma & Resilience” includes basic overviews of trauma concepts and definitions, the training is designed to help participants go beyond a fundamental understanding of trauma. This course helps participants think through how to implement changes in practices from individual levels to systemic ones. Agencies can expect participants to learn:
- How to identify trauma and its impacts
- Developmental differences in presentations and reactions to trauma
- Trauma-informed case planning strategies
- How to work with and engage trauma-impacted caregivers
- Strategies to reduce the impact of trauma in the workplace on staff
- Key components of evidenced-based and informed trauma treatments
- Best practices for partnering with other agencies and systems
- Best practices for partnering with children and families
- Activities to promote wellbeing and resilience
So, what are the benefits of having your agency trained in “Trauma & Resilience”? Over the past several years, many of us have attended trauma trainings and encouraged others to do the same. As a result, we have noticed the use of the term increase among our professional and social groups and maybe even recognized an increased awareness of trauma among the general public. However, a constant critique of this rapidly growing awareness is the failure to answer the question, “what’s next?”. As awareness, research, and science around the topic grows, so must our practice. As we continue to learn more about the impacts of trauma, we simultaneously generate an increased need to respond to it. To make any significant impact on the trauma affected individuals involved in our systems, we must engage in the development of supportive practices and environments that are congruent with what research tells us are the best ways to combat trauma. Having a trauma-informed agency culture is the next step. Agencies who commit to having a truly trauma-informed culture are typically less reactive in nature and are better positioned to create upstream solutions and approaches to working with trauma-impacted youth, families, and staff. In addition, these agencies can equip staff with tools to be more effective in crisis situations when they arise.
Who should offer “Trauma & Resilience”? Just about anyone in the child serving system! We often think of the term child welfare to mean child protective service agencies. However, child welfare includes anyone working in the child serving system including schools, juvenile justice, mental and behavioral health agencies, and more. Agencies or businesses can start by offering “Trauma & Resilience” training to agency leadership and staff. They may also consider expanding offered training to include other organizations and overlapping systems. Communities can also offer “Trauma & Resilience” to county leadership, councils, and advisory groups as another way to enhance the trauma-informed services offered to their citizens. To learn more about Benchmarks’ face-to-face trainings, please visit https://www.benchmarksnc.org/training-catalog-2/.
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