ABBY TARTARO
Special to The Leader
Trauma-informed care is a therapeutic style approach to assisting those who have endured trauma.
The natural instinct when someone sees something as “not normal” is to wonder what is wrong with the person. Trauma-informed care shifts the question from “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
This approach helps the survivor understand what is happening inside their brain and understand that the trauma response is the brain’s way of trying to protect them.
It is important for trauma-informed care at SUNY Fredonia to be incorporated in order to treat each person in a way that they can feel cared about.
Following the recent program cuts, students and faculty have expressed a large decline in their mental health.
When we are met with vague or no answers, it leaves us feeling hopeless. When we express the mental health struggles we are facing from the dysfunctional environment that the campus has become, we are sent to the Counseling Center, where the issues we are facing become pathologized when the problem is systematic.
The mental health of students will continue to plummet as the response the campus has is to attack the person and not the problem.
The problem is the way we are being treated.
This can lead to a trauma trigger in the future, as students may not trust the very administration that is supposed to be advocating for them. They may have trouble furthering their education, feeling as if they are not valued.
Thus, a trauma-informed care plan is a great way to help these students and faculty in need.
There are 10 implementation domains for trauma-informed care.
These domains include Governance and Leadership, Policy, Physical Environment, Engagement and Involvement, Cross Sector Collaboration, Screening Assessment and Treatment Services, Training and Workforce Development, Progress Monitoring and Quality Assurance, Financial and Evaluation.
There are six principles of a trauma-informed approach including Safety, Trustworthiness and Transparency, Peer Support, Collaboration and Mutuality, Empowerment, Voice and Choice, and Cultural, Historical and Gender Issues.
Governance and Leadership consists of identifying a point of responsibility, leading and overseeing the work, implementing a trauma-informed approach, inclusion of peer voice and initiating a system of change. This can be done when drastic changes at our college need to be made by including the voices of the people who would be impacted by the decision being made. This would also include principles of trauma-informed care, which include collaboration and mutuality. A decision needs to include a diverse set of voices and not just those who have the most power or control over the situation.
Policy consists of written policies and protocols establishing a trauma-informed approach as an essential part of the organizational mission and procedures and protocols that include it as well.
This approach must be hard-wired into practice and procedures, not just relying on training workshops or a well-intentioned leader. I believe it would be helpful for our administration to create a trauma-informed care guide and written policy for future decisions.
The policy should focus on ways to prioritize the mental health of people impacted by large decisions and have a plan set in place for if or when mental health plummets. The administration should attend trauma-informed care training prior to announcing decisions so that they are aware of how their actions may impact people.
Physical environment as a space should also allow a collaborative approach that supports openness, transparency and shared spaces.
An example of a way our administrators can incorporate this is by cognitively thinking about the location where they are meeting people and how the seating is arranged. This would also address the safety aspect of the six principles of trauma-informed care.
Engagement and involvement include people in recovery, trauma survivors, people receiving services and family members receiving services. These people need to have significant involvement, voice and meaningful choice at all levels.
At SUNY Fredonia, this means including our faculty, staff and students. Trauma survivors often feel powerless and unable to control the situation. By including their voices, they are given the opportunity to have a sense of power and to feel as if their voice matters. This also refers to empowerment, voice and choice in the six principles of trauma-informed care.
Cross-sector collaboration is collaboration across sectors that is built on a shared understanding of trauma-informed approaches and principles. This can be incorporated at Fredonia by including other offices.
The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Counseling Center would be beneficial offices to incorporate. DEI should be looped in when students are expressing their socioeconomic struggles relating to disability, race and other vulnerable or at-risk populations.
The Counseling Center should be looped in for students experiencing severe stress and crises. In addition, student support groups can be a way to introduce student voices into issues. Examples of this can include Life Club and Students for Fredonia. This would incorporate peer support, a principle of trauma-informed care.
However, this should not move fully into one office or group and no longer include the administration. This would address the principle of cultural, historical and gender issues in trauma-informed care.
Screening, assessment and treatment services are utilized when practitioners use and are trained in interventions based on the best available empirical evidence and science, are culturally appropriate and reflect principles of a trauma-informed approach. It is important for our students and faculty to be given proper intervention when they are experiencing trauma.
This would go hand-in-hand with the trustworthiness and transparency principle of trauma-informed care. Students and faculty need to be able to trust our administrators in order to work effectively with them.
In order for students and faculty to trust the administrators, they need to be transparent with us on what is occurring and how they plan to address it.
Similarly, the domain training and workforce development recognize that ongoing training on trauma and peer support are essential. The human resources system is supposed to use a trauma-informed approach in its operations.
I believe it is important for our administrators to be trained in trauma-informed care in addition to our Human Resources (HR) system so that they can avoid making the same mistakes in the future. This would also address the collaboration and mutuality principle of trauma-informed care, as the HR systems and administrators would collaborate to create a trauma-informed environment through their employees.
Progress monitoring and quality assistance is an ongoing assessment, tracking and monitoring of trauma-informed principles and effective use of trauma-specific, evidence-based screening assessments. This means that there needs to be a system in place to hold each office and position accountable for following through with their trauma-informed care approach.
This can be done if all offices are trained and check in with each other.
The financial piece of trauma-informed care refers to finance structures that are designed to support a trauma-informed care organization: staff training support. Given that Fredonia is already in a structural deficit, it can be hard to allocate more money for additional training. However, this training would be necessary to provide students and faculty on campus with a sense of importance and belonging when they are addressed as people instead of their emotions.
Evaluation is the effectiveness of the services and trauma-informed approach being implemented.
Evaluation should occur from the students and faculty through a Google Form where they are allowed to voice their opinions and concerns. This will create a collaborative approach to working together in a trauma-informed environment.
All voices are needed to make a system function properly, and it is important to acknowledge this. This would be an ongoing, long-term process that allows for the opportunity for healing to occur.