We were pleased to host the second day of training and to welcome staff from other charities supported by The Mercers’ Company. Led by Developing Together, the Social Work Teaching Partnership covering South West London and Surrey (we are a proud primary partner agency), the training recognised that trauma can affect individuals, groups and communities. Trauma-informed practice is an approach to health and care interventions grounded in the understanding that trauma exposure can impact an individual’s neurological, biological, psychological and social development.
We explored how we hold more power due to the nature of our role as practitioners and social workers assessing the parents and children we work with or person of lived experience (PLE). These power dynamics affect our interaction with other people and services e.g. in multi-disciplinary TAF or TAC meetings.
We were encouraged to:
- Suspend judgmental thinking
- Value and accept everyone as individuals
- Think positively without imposing conditions
- Show positive belief in capacity to adapt and change
- Work alongside giving value to differences
The training also explored the need to develop resilience especially as resilience and trauma are not fixed traits but are dynamic and influenced by the context or system that the person operates in.
Resilience can come from the individual or the community or family in which they thrive or a combination of both. The approach of an agency or charity supporting an individual, whether it is trauma-informed or not, impacts on the resilience of the individual or the community.
Our concluding exercises focused on how we could reframe our language and view common statements with a more trauma-informed lens.
