Children and young people who reside in children’s residential homes have often experienced significant trauma and adversity. These experiences can have a profound and lasting impact on a young person’s physical, emotional, social and neurological development.
Adopting a trauma-informed approach is, therefore, essential for effectively supporting and caring for children and young people in residential settings. It ensures that staff understand the effects of trauma and that they can respond in ways that promote healing and avoid re-traumatisation.
What is Trauma-Informed Practice?
Trauma-informed practice acknowledges the widespread impact of trauma. Its fundamental principles include safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment.
By prioritising trauma-informed care, residential children’s homes can better meet the complex and diverse needs of the young people in their care.
This approach equips staff with the skills, knowledge and strategies to build trusting relationships, provide emotionally attuned support, and implement trauma-sensitive and trauma-responsive systems, policies and practices which lead to improved outcomes for children and young people.
How to Create a Trauma-Informed Practice In Residential Homes
Here are some key steps you can take to create a trauma-informed residential children’s home:
Staff Training and Support
Ensure all staff have access to comprehensive training and support. With a sound understanding of the impact of trauma on a child’s development, staff are better equipped to support young people using trauma-sensitive practices.
The Physical Environment
Ensure that the physical environment is designed to promote a sense of safety and comfort.
Young people should be involved in designing their environment, and attention should be paid to ensuring it is homely, with comfortable furnishings and minimal triggers.
Policies and Procedures
All existing policies and procedures should be reviewed through a trauma-informed lens, eliminating practices that may re-traumatise and ensuring all staff are utilising trauma-informed approaches to manage difficulties (e.g., behavioural concerns, conflict, and emotional distress).
Relationships and Interactions
Carers should be confident in their ability to use therapeutic skills to develop attuned, respectful, and empathic relationships with the young people in their care in order to foster an environment of trust and safety.
Young people should be given ample opportunity to build healthy peer connections and offered choice and control wherever possible.
Holistic, Integrated Services
Children and young people should have access to a range of services to support and attend to their individual needs, including mental health support, physical health services, education, and support to develop and build on essential life skills.
Family engagement should also be supported and promoted where safe and appropriate.
Collaborating with external providers who are experts in trauma-informed practice can help to ensure each child receives effective, individually tailored support, which can drastically improve their long-term outcomes.
Organisational Level Commitment
Trauma-informed care needs to be an organisational priority, with appropriate buy-in and modelling from senior leaders.
Organisations must be committed to regularly evaluating the effectiveness of trauma-informed practices and must remain up to date with the evidence base to ensure they are continuously improving the support they provide in accordance with best practice recommendations.
What Are the Benefits of a Trauma-Informed Residential Home?
Trauma-informed residential homes have a number of benefits for both young people and care staff. For example:
They help to prevent young people from being re-traumatised
This is important, as re-traumatisation can have a negative impact on a young person’s well-being and can prevent them from seeking further professional support.
It can help to reduce staff burnout
Creating a trauma-informed environment can ensure that staff feel valued and listened to. This can improve staff well-being and positively impact staff turnover rates.
It can lead to greater job satisfaction for residential care staff
Staff who have access to appropriate specialist support and training feel better equipped to support young people impacted by trauma.
It ensures young people feel safe and leads to improved child-carer relationships.
This increases engagement with support, reduces challenging behaviours in young people, and positively affects service outcomes.
It helps young people feel empowered and in control, which promotes the development of healthy coping and resilience.
How Meadows Psychology Service Can Help
Meadows Psychology Service provides support to various residential children’s homes across the country to develop trauma-informed practices.
We help caregivers and professionals deliver trauma-informed care through training, consultation, reflective practice, and evidence-based psychological assessments.
We also provide specialist, tailored trauma-informed support to providers of education, fostering and adoption services and supported accommodation providers.
To learn more about how Meadows Psychology Service can support you to implement trauma informed principles in your service, please get in touch via our online contact form.
