Direct Service

In trauma-informed practice, human services professionals shift their perspective from a focus on “what is wrong” with consumers to a lens which consciously seeks to understand “what is this person’s experience?” This perspective is at the center of trauma-informed engagement, planning and service provision. The resources on this page provide useful and practical information to direct service professionals looking to develop a more trauma-informed approach.

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  • A Trauma Informed Approach to Employment Support

    Designed for employers, this resource provides information on how your program can incorporate information about trauma and mental health into employment support.

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  • Adverse Childhood Experiences Infographic

    This infographic explains Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and provides a few figures on the impact and prevalence of ACEs.

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  • Age-Related Trauma Reactions

    This resource describes how children of different ages may experience trauma reactions and provides suggestions on how to help depending on the developmental age of the child.

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  • Child Maltreatment Through a Neurodevelopmental Lens

    This article, aimed at providers, gives an overview of a neurodevelopmentally-informed approach to working with children and youth who have experienced trauma. It explains the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics.

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  • Children and Trauma

    This article provides an overview of how repeated traumatic stress impacts the body’s natural alarm system, how this alarm system can be triggered and what this may look like in a child’s behaviors.

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  • Children with Traumatic Separation

    This resource conveys information for professionals to help children that have experienced traumatic separation from a caregiver, highlighting potential post traumatic responses and ways to address them.

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  • Complex Trauma Facts for Educators

    Designed for educators, this fact sheet explains how complex trauma can affect learning in school and how to support children that have experienced trauma.

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  • Connecting the Dots between Childhood Trauma, Diagnoses and Outcomes

    A graphic that highlights the relationships between trauma, diagnoses and outcomes.

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  • Cultural Responsiveness Infographic

    This infographic provides information on understanding cultural responsiveness to racial trauma for mental health providers.

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  • From Survivors – Effective Responses to Sexual Abuse Disclosures

    This tool serves as a guide for practitioners to respond effectively to adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

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  • How to Support Someone who has Experienced Trauma

    This figure provides information and ways to support someone who experienced trauma

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  • Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences over the Lifespan

    A tool to assess an individual’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) score. This resource also provides information on how ACEs can impact behaviors and potential long-term effects if left unaddressed.

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  • Mental Health Interpretation – a socio-culturally linguistically responsive and trauma-informed approach

    For providing mental-health services interpretation with a culturally responsive and trauma-informed approach. The target audience for this resource is 1) professional interpreters and 2) qualified mental health clinicians. This resource is designed to enhance service provision to speakers with no or LEP by providing a review of basic interpretation in the mental health setting, offering a socio-culturally, linguistically-responsive and trauma-informed approach to mental health interpretation and preparing interpreters and mental health clinicians to work together in partnership.

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  • Resilience and Child Traumatic Stress

    This resource defines resilience and how systems can support the growth of resilience in children who have experienced trauma.

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  • Resilience in the Face of Potential Trauma

    This journal article examines how resilience is the most common response to trauma and what factors are involved with building resilience.

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  • Sensitive Practices for Practitioners

    This resource uses the acronym ‘SAVE: Stop, Appreciate, Validate, and Explore’ as a guide for responding to survivors of trauma.

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  • Sharing Power

    Sharing power is an approach to engage children, youth and families to share the knowledge and training of a provider with the lived experiences of the families. This source connects Sharing Power to Trauma-Informed Services.

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  • Sharing Power

    Sharing power, or combining the knowledge of the human service professional and the lived experience of the individual receiving services, is a key part of trauma informed engagement. This worksheet includes a checklist for reflecting on agency and individual practices.

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  • Talking about Trauma Tip Sheet

    This tip sheet provides practical strategies for engaging individuals in conversations about traumatic experiences.

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  • The Childhood Trust Events Survey

    A traumatic events screening tool for children and adolescents.

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  • The Invisible Suitcase

    This resource explains the “Invisible Suitcase” that children involved in the foster system may carry with them and provides suggestions for resource parents on how to address what is inside.

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  • Tip Cards for Talking About Trauma

    Tips and strategies for positive, effective engagement and planning for providers to talk about trauma.

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  • Trauma and Family Factsheet for Providers

    A fact sheet for providers explaining how trauma can affect families and how to best support them.

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  • Trauma and the Family

    This resource provides information on how trauma can affect the entire family and ways to cope with those experiences as a family.

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  • Trauma Informed Care Infographic

    This infographic translates a variety of practices and verbiage into a trauma-informed lens.

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  • Types of Racial Microaggressions

    This infographic is an expansion of Sue’s taxonomy’s framework for microaggressions where 16 categories of racial aggressions are identified in order to help avoid traumatization.

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