Trauma-informed Principles
Putting trauma-informed principles into practice supports better service outcomes and client experience (Blue Knot, 2021). When we experience events in our life that are traumatic, and espeically if events are reoccurring, it can affect our send of safety, empowerment and dignity. Trauma-informed principles help to restore our sense of safety and dignity. These principles are simple, however require practice and awarness to embody them as a way of being and relating to others.
It has recently occurred to me, there is a lot of talk of trauma-informed principles and practice amongst professionals but many consumers are in the dark about them. Although these principles are being adopted across many industry including NSW Health, many consumers are unaware of this, and what the implications to practice should be. These principles in practice support emotional, cultural, psychological and spiritual safety as well as physical safety (NSW Health, 2023) and as stated earlier, have been shown to improve service outcomes and help people have a more positive experience (Blue Knot, 2021).
As a client, being aware of these principles can be helpful to look for service providers that offer choice, collaboration, empowerment and above all, help you feel safe and give you the dignity that all humans deserves.
Establishing a sense of safety in the world can be difficult when people have proven to hurt you and let you down. Trauma-informed principles are a framework for services to support people's healing and recovery from traumatic events and experiences. A sense of safety needs to come first.
As recent chair of the Training and Education Standards committee of Yoga Australia, I am proud to have helped implement the trauma-informed principles into the yoga professional association. The goal being to enable all yoga services to become trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive. It will be a journey for practices to change across the industry but a big step has been taken with the new curriculum being developed, the coming compulsory professional development for yoga teachers and therapists and changes to documents such as code of conduct.
I encourage everyone to become familiar with the principles and practice them. Ask service providers if they use the trauma-informed principles and if not, request that they do. Let's create a trauma-informed world together.
References
Prevention and Response to Violence Abuse and Neglect Government Relations. (2023, February). Integrated trauma-informed care - integrated trauma-informed care framework: My story, my health, my future. Integrated Trauma-Informed Care Framework: My story, my health, my future - Integrated trauma-informed care. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/patients/trauma/Pages/itic-framework.aspx
Trauma-informed services. Blue Knot Foundation. (2021, September 20). https://professionals.blueknot.org.au/resources/trauma-informed-services
