"The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love." Bruce Perry

How do we create a trauma-informed system which privileges relationships and allows our young people to thrive?

Introducing trauma-informed approaches can bring many benefits to service users including hope, empowerment and appropriate support. This is through a fundamental shift in the way in which service users and providers relate to one another. We know that in order to enable this shift, we need to go beyond providing a one-off training course and simply adapting our policies and procedures to include the current language of ACEs and Trauma. Being truly trauma-informed is challenging. It requires a whole-systems approach and commitment to change at all levels. But how do we go about doing this in a complex, multifaceted system?

Here at Staf, we share Karen Treisman's passionate belief that in order to create trauma-informed and responsive environments we need to acknowledge the multi-layered impact of trauma and adversity on individuals and communities, and create environments which actively resist and reduce further re-traumatising. We need to create and enable systems which allow relationships to grow and develop as they are the most powerful tool that we have to enable healing.

Building healthy relationships with our young people in order that they can thrive is the cornerstone of the work that we do and in delivering trauma-informed services which recognise trauma and strive to avoid re-traumatisation, we are saying to young people 'we see you, we believe you, and we see you as a unique person, we will love and care for you and help you love and care for yourself'.

During her closing keynote input at our National Conference, Karen will guide us through how we create trauma-informed cultural change focusing on humanising systems and making them healthier, more relational, connected and reflective, demonstrating how we can embed trauma-informed ideas and practises into our everyday to enable our young people to heal from trauma and move on.