About Trauma & Behaviour Change
We take a simple approach to managing complexity.
What is trauma?
The term ‘trauma’ originates from a Greek word, meaning ‘wound’. With our early understanding of trauma coming from soldiers’ experiences of war, clinical definitions originally focused on occurrences that involve “serious threat to one’s life or physical integrity; serious threat or harm to one’s children, spouse, or other close relatives or friends; sudden destruction of one’s home or community; seeing another person who is or has recently been seriously injured or killed as a result of accident or physical violence.”
However, psychiatrists began to note the similarities in symptoms between soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and those reported by ‘civilian’ adults who had experienced childhood sexual abuse and/or domestic violence. So our understanding of trauma expanded to include long-term exposure to harm and fear in the home.
As our knowledge of children’s developmental and attachment needs continues to expand, we now have greater awareness of the impact of experiencing harm and/or neglect at a young age. As a result, our understanding of what causes trauma – and how, if left unaddressed its effects can last a lifetime - is growing.
Unfortunately, most people do not recognise the traumas they have experienced. Nor do they understand what triggers their emotional responses to new stressful situations, how their behaviour can spiral destructively, or how they could better contain the harmful impact that trauma has upon their lives. It is therefore crucial, even when working with adults, to understand the impact that adversity has upon a child’s brain and body, as well as the potential long-term physical and mental health effects.
Our Approach with People
We have a self-development course that we have been delivering to people in the Criminal Justice System for 4 years. This course has been internally and externally evaluated and has consistently proven successful in helping people to understand their experiences and develop better coping strategies. We use relational practice models to help people learn to form healthy relationship, then we mentor them to manage and cope with symptoms whilst still progressing with life. To guide the support, we offer we have 13 modules that people will access as they feel ready to do so. Each module will layer up their understanding of their behaviour and ability to cope with their experiences, with outstanding results. We prioritise all the people who use our services for voluntary and paid roles within the organisation.
A big part of our work with people in the Criminal Justice System is learning. We believe that the people who use our services are the experts in trauma. In all our direct work with people we collect data that will assist us in understanding the prevalence of trauma within this cohort. This data is rich and informs all our other work, as well as our quality assurance processes.
Our Approach with Organisations
Dignifi® assists innovation and system change across sectors. One of our aims is to support people to become trauma-responsive in their approach to people who use services. Front-facing roles in the current climate present many challenges. Practitioners are required to complete to complex work that requires time and sensitivity and are often balancing that against reduced staffing and budgets, increase in demand and reduced capacity. For many of our customers early signs that include burn out, moral injury and compassion fatigue have led to increased grievances and complaints and worse staff attrition.
We offer a range of bespoke solutions that have been developed collaboratively with our customers over the years. Through our training and consultancy offer, we provide fluid ongoing support recognises that trauma-informed practice is a journey rather than a destination. That journey has many layers, beginning with helping people to become more informed and moving them towards becoming more responsive. We are focussed on the practical application of this work as well as understanding the latest research underpinning.
There is a direct correlation between experiences of trauma and adversity, experiences of discrimination, inequalities and poverty. The prevalence varies significantly across socio-economic backgrounds, geographical locations and the intersecting parts of people’s identities within those environments. Dignifi’s work spans across preventative work and solutions for recovery to ensure we can prevent children being exposed to trauma, whilst supporting adults to understand the impact so we can prevent trauma for generations to come. By doing direct delivery and training and consultancy we can ensure we marry this knowledge to develop the right packages for organisations.
Developing trauma responsive practice.
Trauma is a huge topic that takes time to understand and assimilate. However, there are some key approaches to make your practice more trauma-responsive:
Relate to each service user as a person to be understood – not just a ‘case’
Don’t shut down conversations about trauma if service users open up to you – show compassion for what they have lived through, but don’t probe for details
Support each person to identify and work towards their goals and aspirations
Do ‘with’ and not ‘to’ - involve clients and listen to what they need to feel safe, connected, and purposeful
Understand that they will face setbacks – and will need your continuous support
Don’t project or tell clients why they do things – ask them, create a space where they can explore their own motivations without fear of judgement or consequence
Remember they have faced enormous adversity and deserve respect
Never give up
Emphasis on self-care.
Importantly, all our training acknowledges that you, as a professional may have experienced your own traumas in your personal life or through your work with service users. The Dignifi® model does not encourage you to talk about your own trauma on the course – although if there is something around your trauma that you think is relevant and would like to share, we will support you to do so safely – in a way that does not trigger you or fellow participants.
Even if you do not feel you have experienced much trauma in your life, providing support to people with complex needs is extremely emotionally draining. Many of us work in high-pressure environments where there is constant stress and so learning to care for ourselves, and ensure that we are continuously able to support others is crucial. So we pay a lot of attention to developing self-care strategies and mutual support between colleagues throughout all our training.