Priority 5: Trauma informed approach
Our objectives
- To adopt a trauma informed approach to helping people recover from homelessness.
Trauma can have a very negative impact on different aspects of someone’s life, including their health and wellbeing, employment and educational outcomes, and likelihood of experiencing multiple disadvantages such as substance misuse, mental ill health, domestic abuse, contact with the criminal justice system and homelessness.
Trauma can begin at childhood with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) incorporating a wide range of stressful events that children can be exposed to whilst growing up. While the types of adversities may vary, typically they include harms that affect children directly, such as neglect and physical, emotional and sexual abuse; and harms that affect the environment in which the child lives.
Trauma informed practice means being sensitive to the trauma that service users may have experienced throughout their lives. Being trauma informed can assist to understand a person’s experiences better so that support can be tailored to help improve overall health and social outcomes, and prevent re-traumatisation.
How we will meet our objectives
Deliver trauma awareness training to staff
Trauma awareness training will ensure our staff have the knowledge they need to understand trauma and adversity, equipping them with skills to support towards healing and recovering from homelessness.
Create an ACE Champion role within the homelessness service
The ACE Champion role will support and develop staff in the trauma informed approach to working.
How we will measure success
We will measure our successes through the monitoring of:
- Case outcomes and case studies using a trauma informed approach
- Evaluation of customer feedback received