Explore the themes below
Human Experience Language
Human Experience Language
The description of services and mental health, the language that is used within services and wider communities and language that includes everyday language to promote a more equal and inclusive discussion.
Language that is non stigmatising and inclusive is important. The concepts that make a service trauma informed should be explicitly described in policies and vision.
Staff Practice Points
1. Service-user presentations and symptoms are considered as strategies to cope with current or historical life experiences.
2. All potential causes of current presenting issues are assessed including physical health issues.
3. The survival value of a service-user’s coping strategies is acknowledged because of their adversity or trauma history.
4. We allow for multiple narratives around someone’s distress and seek to understand rather than to seek to impose one model of understanding.
5. Our services are flexible and will adapt to the broader needs of those with complex trauma histories.
6. Understanding the trauma narrative needs to evolve over time and at the service user’s pace.
7. Our model of understanding of trauma accounts for cognition, sense of self, relationships, and physiological impact.
User Practice Points
1. My symptoms, or the way I appear and behave, are considered as meaningful reactions to my current or past experiences.
2. All causes of my symptoms, or the way I appear and behave, are considered, including my physical health.
3. Staff recognise the survival value of my ways of coping as well as my personal strengths.
4. Staff hold in mind different ways my distress can be understood and do not impose a single model of understanding.
5. My mental health services are able to adapt to my individual needs.
6. Staff recognise that a person’s understanding changes over time and needs a sense of safety to adapt.
7. Staff’s understanding of the context of my mental health problems takes into account my relationships, physical impact, thoughts and sense of self.
8. I understand that staff may have their own stories of adversity which impacts their way of being and understanding of me.
Narratives
Supporting Community Mental Health Teams’ to work in a more Trauma Informed Way
We evaluated training through team reporting and service user feedback on changes in practice. The trust has asked this training to be rolled out across all CMHTs and other acute and community-based services. We are in the process of training Psychology dept colleagues as part of roll out. We recently shared the outcome of this pilot at a local conference and colleagues in the Police, Social Work and Probation have requested provision of training.
human experience language
Experiential staff training: understanding developmental trauma and knowing how to connect and support in a safe, sustainable way
Development of a training session for staff working with individuals with trauma histories
human experience language, relational reparation