St. Aemilian-Lakeside and its subsidiaries, Integrated Family Services and Capitol West Academy, held a daylong symposium on March 30, 2011, called Creating a Trauma Informed Community. The event focused on how the child welfare system serves some of the community’s most vulnerable children and families, most of whom have been affected by trauma such as abuse, neglect and exposure to drugs and alcohol, and how that impacts health, behavior and ultimately the community.
Internationally known experts Dr. Robert Anda and Dr. Bruce Perry discussed their research, which shows how trauma physically and behaviorally affects individuals — from acting-out behavior to shortened life spans due to poor health — and how therapeutic techniques based in neuroscience can mitigate these effects and create dramatic changes in people’s lives. These therapies are called trauma informed care.
More than 700 stakeholders, from social welfare agencies to health care organizations, schools, business leaders, elected officials and representatives of the judicial system, came together to learn how to create a more trauma informed community — and to improve outcomes for those most in need as well as the society in which we all live.
A key goal was getting the broader community to gain greater understanding of trauma and the effects it has on everyone to help fragile families achieve permanency and stability and become contributing members of society.
Speakers:
Dr. Robert Anda is the co-principal investigator for the ACE (adverse childhood experiences) Study, perhaps the largest scientific research study of its kind. This collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente analyzed the relationship between multiple categories of childhood trauma and health and behavioral outcomes later in life. To learn more, click here. Click on handout 1, handout 2, and handout 3 to access PDFs of handouts Dr. Anda distributed at the symposium.
Dr. Bruce Perry is a teacher, researcher, best-selling author and clinician in children’s mental health. He is the senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, a Houston-based organization that focuses on the workings of the brain and child development in order to create better ways to nurture children and heal those who have been affected by trauma. To learn more, click here. Click here to access a PDF of a handout Dr. Perry distributed at the symposium.
Trauma Informed Care Champions
Awards were given to six individuals for their efforts promoting and living the principles of trauma informed care. Winners were:
Linda Davis: a champion of children’s rights for many years who has provided generous financial support to fund training and development of trauma informed care at SAL and IFS.
Rhonda Howard: the treatment foster mother of a 10-year-old girl whose life has been turned around through her consistent efforts with trauma informed care.
Jesse Mireles and Lisa Roberts: staff at the Waukesha County Department of Health and Human Services who are the driving force behind the Trauma Informed Care Partnership of Waukesha County.
Paul and Stacie Nikolaus: treatment foster parents for 15 years who have served 25 children with severe emotional and behavioral challenges. They currently share their home with two teen-age boys and their 10-year-old biological daughter.
Click here for a more information on each.
Seven Essential Ingredients
Trauma informed care can be defined in many different ways, which include both philosophy and practices. At St. Aemilian-Lakeside, we believe seven elements are helpful in understanding what trauma informed care is and how to implement it. These elements are prevalence, impact, perception/reality, the lower brain, relationship, reason for being and caregiver capacity.
Click here for a downloadable PDF with explanations on the elements.
View our video
Click here to view a video about our approach to trauma informed care and some of our exciting success stories.
