DIGNIFI
Trauma responsive behaviour
change solutions

What we do

Dignifi® was set up to raise awareness about how emotional and developmental trauma impacts upon people’s emotions and behaviours – with a focus on supporting frontline practitioners to better understand and respond to young people in the care system and people in the criminal justice system.

But rather than simply raise awareness, we train and support practitioners to deliver a self-development programme that helps people who have experienced trauma understand what has happened to them and how to manage their responses better. We also advise organisations on how to develop more supportive environments for their staff to help them deliver such complex and emotionally draining work over the long-term.

The Concept

The Dignifi® Model has been developed over the past 10 years using research and good practice from across the criminal justice, voluntary, community and social sectors. The founder and Managing Director Julia Pennington has worked with professionals in the fields of criminology, clinical forensic psychology, neuroscience, trauma and research to develop the concepts for the model. In doing so, she has been able to align the model with the NICE principles for trauma informed approaches.

Importantly, the model is also grounded in lived experience: the interventions programme has developed not only out of her personal experience of recovery from trauma, but also with continuous feedback and refinement from the many people she has supported.

Our approach

Dignifi® assists innovation within social care and criminal justice organisations. Our aim is to support practitioners working on the frontline to become trauma responsive in their approach with clients. Front-facing roles can be traumatising by nature. There may be exposure to stress, aggression and many forms of harm. We know from our own work that clients are quite often highly traumatised, but we also work from the understanding that everyone has experienced trauma at some point in their lives.

Our training and ongoing support recognises that to be responsive, practitioners need to simultaneously understand the roots of their clients’ problematic behaviour whilst also caring for their own well-being. Our model is therefore focused on supporting staff to understand the impact of trauma on both themselves and their clients.

Our Services

We offer:

• Training for frontline staff (as well as ongoing support and Action Learning Groups)

• Interventions for people with complex support needs

• Consultancy for organisations: to develop more effective interventions for service users with complex needs and provide effective support for frontline staff