Knowledge and Skills into Practice

Supporting people, services and organisations to become more trauma-informed is not a one-size- fits-all approach. The way that one service becomes trauma-informed may be very different to another service and depends on several factors. Examples of these factors include for core business/focus of the service, community context, resources, individual skill mix, service and local priorities, management and leadership structures etc.

Supporting services on their trauma informed journey therefore requires focus just as much on the ‘how’ as the ‘what’. This includes exploring how service contexts, strategy and leadership can support embedding trauma-informed knowledge and skills to create behavioural/practice and cultural change. One of the core principles of the Trauma-Informed Wales framework highlights the need to be strengths and resilience focused. Therefore, a key area for consideration is how trauma-informed approaches may align with the existing knowledge, skills and training of staff and services. For example, some staff members have received training in compassionate leadership approaches, so it would be important to reflect how these existing leadership skills fit with and support a trauma informed approach, instead of adding in more training in this area. Hence a more sophisticated and holistic approach than didactic training offers.