SUPPORT IN HEALTHCARE
Alive & Well Communities (AWC) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to activate communities to heal. The organization actualizes its mission most notably by widening the knowledge and understanding of trauma and its far-reaching implications. The organization is dedicated to shifting cultures, systems, and communities by developing pathways to equity, well-being, and healing. Within collaboration with healthcare partners, AWC has advanced the preceding principles of trauma-informed care to include equity as its center point, exploring a notion of “equity-centered” trauma informed care. Equity-centered trauma-informed care (EC-TIC) incorporates the added measure of identifying and addressing how the social determinants of health impact a wide range of health outcomes.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Alive & Well Communities’ (AWC) consulting services are designed to support organizations as they move through the stages of change outlined in the Missouri Model: A Developmental Approach to Trauma, developed by the Missouri Department of Mental Health. The continuum begins with becoming trauma aware and moves to trauma sensitive to responsive to being fully trauma informed. The implementation of equity-centered trauma-informed healthcare practices is a continuous organizational transformation process. This trauma-informed healthcare model is a profound paradigm shift in knowledge, perspective, attitudes, behaviors, and skills that continues to enhance and expand over time.
OUR WORK
AWC continues the work of its mission, in part, by consulting with a variety of agencies and organizations, understanding that addressing trauma requires a multi-faceted, multi-professional public health approach inclusive of education by building awareness and competency. The services available will guide the development of tools and infrastructure necessary to integrate equity-centered trauma-informed healthcare into institutions. The delivered content will help infuse EC-TIC into daily practice, program design, policy creation and the culture of the organization empowering them to respectively play its part in building an alive and well healthcare community. The journey to becoming trauma informed is as unique as each organization. A checklist to become trauma informed does not exist, but there is a general process that most organizations find best accelerates their work. This process is an ongoing one, and it generally takes three to five years for an organization to feel as though they have addressed all parts of their practices, policies, and culture.
OUR PROCESS
The following steps are recommendations for how to engage your organization/institution in becoming trauma informed:
Build – Deepen Your Knowledge
Universal Trauma Training: (Trauma Awareness)
In order to build a common vocabulary, identify champions, and build readiness for subsequent changes, it is important to provide an introductory training to all individuals within the entity.
Connect – Share Information
Create A Trauma Team: (Trauma Sensitive)
Becoming trauma informed requires the buy-in and investment of people throughout the organization. It is recommended that a small, core trauma team be developed to analyze existing practices and policies, create action plans, and implement change.
Activate – Accelerate Change
Ongoing Program, Practice, And Policy Change: (Trauma Responsive, Trauma Informed, And Expansion To EC-TIC)
Guided by the priorities of the trauma team, the organization must then start to examine all practices and policies within their entity through the lens of trauma.
Reach out to our team at the Community Health Commission of Missouri to learn more!
EQUITY CENTERED TRAUMA-INFORMED HEALTHCARE SERVICES
*Trainings provided for clinical, workplace, policy, and organizational transformation
TRAUMA AWARENESS
Clinical Transformation
“Foundational Trauma Awareness Training”
(Prerequisite to all other offered trainings)
Our most requested training, “Building Your Trauma Awareness” focuses on how trauma impacts social emotional and health outcomes. An introductory training will cover the following information.
Defining trauma
Community and historical trauma
Stress Response System (Fight, Flight, Freeze)
Prevalence
Adverse Childhood Experience Study
Effect of trauma on the developing brain and body
Long term of impacts of trauma on health, behavior, and learning
Impacts of trauma through the lifespan
The potential for healing and power of resilience
Changing the question from “what’s wrong with you” to “what happened to you.”
“Understanding the Impact of Trauma and The Core Principles”
(Pre-requisite to Trauma Informed Application Series)
This training will build knowledge, application, and skill development beyond the awareness stage. This level of training will explore the following information:
The core principles of equity-centered trauma-informed care (safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness, and empowerment).
The values of an EC-TIC approach
Introductory discussion on re-traumatization
TRAUMA SENSITIVE
Trauma Sensitive Clinical Practices Series
“Words Matter”
What does our communication and documentation reveal about our feelings and attitudes toward patients? Whether spoken or written, our lexicon has a direct impact on our patients and colleagues. Our perceptions are revealed in the language we use in our documentation. Just as our language has the power to save lives, it also holds the power to disparage our patients, undermine our care, and perpetuate inequity. In this training we discuss the impact of our words and how we can apply the trauma lens to help refine our language to promote respect and reduce disparities.
“Mitigating Re-traumatization”
In this training we will discuss tools used to prevent replicating prior trauma dynamics and how collaborative relationships can empower participation opportunities and reduce occurrences of re-traumatization.
“Healing the Healers” Series
Ideal training for frontline staff that interface with patients. Two-part series that discusses the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue and burn out among staff. We provide tools to help restore compassion through understanding the impact of trauma.
Part two of the series we discuss how to build resilience and the importance of restorative practices and self-care.
Healing Space
“TEA – L – C”
A safe space for healthcare community conversations designed to normalize discussions surrounding emotional trauma within the healthcare community. This is a peer-support environment to critically reflect and share.
TRAUMA RESPONSIVE
Managing Trauma in Healthcare Series
"Lending Our Lens"
This training will discuss the different types of emotional trauma that is seen in the healthcare setting, from the patient’s perspective, the provider’s perspective, and the entity. This training can be done as one set or a three-part series.
Trauma Informed Application Series
The journey to become trauma informed is not a linear one, there is no single roadmap or checklist to complete. This training will provide tools that can be incorporated into clinical practices to reflect a more trauma-responsive approach. This series will help clinicians create environments rooted in trauma-informed principles which will allow individuals to feel safe. This training will cover the following:
Trauma-Informed Screening and Assessment
Trauma-Informed Prevention and Treatment
Trauma-Informed Intervention and Treatment Principles
Tran-the-Trainer: Becoming Trauma Responsive
We believe that in order to create sustainable change within our communities, we must multiply our efforts, which is why our "Train-the-Trainer and Trauma Responsive" workshop aims to invest in you and your organization to lead your own trauma-informed work. During this interactive training, we go beyond the science of the impact and prevalence of trauma. Together we will:
Examine systems in which we live and work that perpetuate trauma
Assess our own environments for the impact of trauma
Discuss strategies for building resilience in people and organizations
Be equipped to work within their organization and provide Trauma Awareness trainings.
What’s included:
Have access to two individual coaching hours from Alive & Well staff.
WORKPLACE POLICY & TRANSFORMATION
WORKPLACE ASSESSMENTS & POLICY REVIEW
Ensure your policies, procedures and physical environment support trauma-informed practices through our tailored assessments and recommendations.
TRAUMA-INFORMED STRATEGY FOR LEADERSHIP
Supporting a trauma-informed environment requires a shared language around the basics of trauma, an understanding of the role policies & procedures in a community of care, and the ability to lead as your authentic self. It can be helpful to have the support of other leaders. What’s Included:
The Basics of Trauma Awareness
Building Relationships
The Core Principles
Leadership Roundtable (optional)
SUPERVISOR SERIES
Leaders and supervisors have a unique role to play in building and sustaining trauma-informed teams and organizations. The following professional development are designed to build those unique skills and address challenges faced by supervisors and people leaders.
LEADERSHIP COACHING
Equip your people leaders and administrators with the support needed to implement trauma-informed practices and policies within their teams and organizations with 1:1 coaching sessions.
ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
ORGANIZATION CONSULTING SERVICES
Being trauma-informed is a process and a long-term commitment with many short-term goals throughout the journey. Alive and Well Communities will help navigate challenges, offer support, and assist your organization in reaching or re-directing goals as an institution as you implement this work. This service provides regular, ongoing reflective consultation, strategic advice, and recommendations to organizations as they embark on the trauma-informed transformation.
Community Empowerment Workshops
Ideal for students, patients, and community members; designed as a three-part workshop series
Workshop 1 – “Know Thyself: We’re More than Our Experiences”
Traumatic experiences occur more often than we think. We tend to overlook the impact traumatic experiences and everyday stressors have on us. We help participants understand the impact chronic trauma and toxic stress have on our social, emotional and health outcomes and how to begin viewing individuals through a lens of trauma.
Workshop 2 – “Self-Care is the Best Care”
Interfacing with customers and community members is critical and can take a toll on your own mental health and well-being. To support others, individuals must first be healthy and well themselves. This training imparts the importance of prioritizing your own self-care, strategies for making self-care a daily activity, and ways to increase community care amongst staff to build an organizational culture of care.
Workshop 3 – “Together We Triumph Over Trauma”
Trauma can be widespread, impacting individuals and communities. However, Community Care can limit the impact of trauma. We will learn about the importance of community-care as a way to combat trauma and identify tools and strategies to build supportive communities.