Trauma-Aware Port Phillip organisations

The responsibility of creating a Trauma Aware Port Phillip involves everyone in our community, including our organisations.

Being a trauma-aware organisation means understanding trauma, its signs, how it affects our workforce and its prevalence among people accessing our services. It means we are beginning to notice the part our organisational spaces, policies and procedures play in triggering, re-traumatizing and shaming.  

Becoming a trauma-informed organisation means we embed this knowledge across all areas of our organisation. For some organisations, this is a big undertaking. For organisations with legacies of harmful policies, it can seem overwhelming. Be mindful of this and recognise what you can achieve within your position and be compassionate with yourself.

The 4 Rs of Trauma-Informed Organisations: 

Realise the widespread impact of trauma and potential paths for recovery. 
Recognise the signs and symptoms of trauma in service users, staff and the community.  
Respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices. 
Resist triggering and re-traumatization.

This can look like:  

Maximising choice, flexibility, autonomy, and transparency for staff and service users.
Avoiding controlling and rigid approaches. 
Providing staff the education and support necessary to recognise and respond to the impacts of trauma. 
Addressing the barriers trauma can create who accessing services.

Importance of trauma-informed approaches

Group	Outcomes
Service user	Reduction in trauma symptoms, behavioural issues and crisis, improved engagement, improved retention in programs and services.
Service user and provider	Improved overall mental wellbeing, mutual respect, enhanced sense of safety.
Service provider	Reduction in fatigue and burnout related to secondary trauma, reduction in injuries, improved morale, lower staff turnover, greater collaboration within and across systems.

Within an organisation

A vertical trauma-informed approach

A trauma-informed approach can be implemented vertically and horizontally. This means within an organisational, vertically, and across organisational referral networks, horizontally.  

Being trauma-aware different areas of an organization need attention. This includes policies, structures, systems and procedures; governance, management and leadership; treatment and education of staff; the physical environment; and involvement of people with lived and living experience.

The first step to making policies, structures, systems, and procedures trauma-informed is to understand the impact they have on service users, the community and staff.
The impact could be service users feeling triggered or re-traumatised, or staff experiencing secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, burn out or compassion fatigued. These impacts could be experienced due to rigid and inflexible policies, or lack of private space.
To be trauma-informed, these policies, structures, systems, and procedures, must be reviewed, re-written and evaluated.
Trauma-informed organisations support their staff to build resilience and actively mitigate impacts of trauma.
This means having direct interventions as well as preventative measures such as creating a safe, supportive and welcoming cultures and environments.  
This looks like:  
- Maximising staff input, choice, and flexibility in relation to their role, working conditions and the organisation.
- Creating cultures of communication, tolerance, respect, and cohesion.
- Having interventions for managing and supporting overwhelmed staff.  
Thinking about the effect of the physical environment is essential to trauma-awareness.
While our surroundings affect us all, if someone has experienced trauma, feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in an environment can create severe anxiety, potentially triggering a survival response.  
Creating a space that feels warm, welcoming and safe helps staff and service users feel engaged, calm and in control.
Creating a safe environment can look like: 
- Keeping spaces inside and outside well lit
- Being considerate of noise levels and the effects music. 
- Arranging spaces to enhance privacy and a sense of calm.
- Using clear and welcoming language on signage. 
- Having comfortable and private staff break rooms to decompress. This can help manage burnout, compassion fatigues, vicarious trauma and secondary trauma.
Partnering with people with lived or living experience of trauma creates more responsive and inclusive services. This work asks for a lot of emotional labour. It is important organisations take as much of this labour on as possible. This can be done through making environments and cultures as receptive and accessible as possible, and building trusting, committed and reciprocal relationships patiently over time.  
This could look like: 
- Respecting lived and living experience as a job and participants as experts in their field.  
- Organizing work arrangements before engagement, such as payment, time, and meeting agendas.
- Recognising the emotional labour of this work and making sure participants have support.
- Being mindful that professional spaces can feel intimidating.

Across organisations

Horizontal trauma-informed approaches

Trauma-informed organisations encourage collaboration across referral networks.

This requires understanding your organisations place within a referral network, the role of other organisations, and how service users experience that network.   

A collaborative referral network means staff and organisations know what situations are beyond their means and know where and how to safely refer service users. This ensures staff do not take on responsibilities beyond their capacity, which would put them and service users at risk. It also means service users are safely and respectfully referred to a suitable system of care.  

Creating collaborative, coordinated and trauma-informed referral networks means service users can experience a continuity of care. This also means service users whole health can be taken into consideration and the different ways trauma is impacting them can come to light.