What is the impact of trauma?
Published:
Dr. Danny Taggart describes the effect that trauma has on children and young people and what practitioners should bear in mind when working with them.
Dr. Danny Taggart describes the effect that trauma has on children and young people and what practitioners should bear in mind when working with them.
Talking Points
In this video, Dr Taggart:
- Reframes young people’s behaviours in context of trauma: as coping strategies that helped them to survive.
- Gives examples of the impact of trauma on how young people and how they relate to others.
- Explores the idea of a ‘broken social contract’, and how and why professional’s need to maintain control and authority can clash with a young person’s need to maintain vigilance and survival.
Reflective questions
Here are reflective questions to stimulate conversation and support practice.
- How can you advocate for young people affected by trauma as part of your role, so that their behaviours are understood in the context of the trauma that they have experienced?
- What can you do to ensure that you do not pathologise children and young peoples’ response to trauma?
- What can you do as part of your role to create opportunities for young people to explore and develop different coping strategies?
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Relationships and effective direct work | Promote and govern excellent practice
PCF - Intervention and skills
What does trauma-informed care look like?
Dr. Danny Taggart explains what trauma-informed care might look like to children and young people with lived experience of trauma.
What do we mean by trauma?
Dr. Danny Taggart shares two definitions of trauma from the psychologists Peter Sedgwick and Bessel van der Kolk and examines the implications of these definitions for social care practice.
References
- Ford, J. D., & Blaustein, M. E. (2013). Systemic self-regulation: A framework for trauma-informed services in residential juvenile justice programs. Journal of family violence, 28, 665-677.
- Steinberg, L. (2009). Adolescent development and juvenile justice. Annual review of clinical psychology, 5, 459-485.
- Ford, J. D. (2005). Treatment implications of altered neurobiology, affect regulation and information processing following child maltreatment. Psychiatric Annals, 35, 410–419.