TRAUMA RESPONSIVE INTERVENTIONS

Trauma impacts the body and the brain, hence our responses need to target both cortical and subcortical parts of the brain to support healing. (ACF 2021)

For people to heal from trauma, they need to:

  • Feel safe

  • Be able to self regulate or have co-regulation

  • Have positive relationships

  • Understand their own responses

  • Process the trauma

    Our interventions need to be intentional and therapeutic. Mitchell et al., 2020 refers therapeutic care for children as micro-opportunities that exist between the interactions between children and their caregivers that build moments of repair, that are deposited in the child’s bank of implicit memories that accumulate overtime and provide a reservoir of deepening compensatory experiences for the failure of such repair to have been offered to them in their relationships where abuse and neglect occurred.

Interventions need to be needs based, they must be relational, attuned, integrated, body based and regulation focussed. The assessments will guide these.

Practitioners need to be able to cultivate a creative capacity to utilise the strategies and interventions to facilitate the process of integration and recovery of trauma. And these interventions will include goals and needs that address:

-       Sensory integration

-       Recognition and integration of a person’s inner experiences

-       Relationship developing, rupture and repair

-       Regulation, calming and grounding strategies

-       Play, dance and art therapy interventions

We need to prioritise a emotional recovery. For chidlren, the caregiver-child relationship is the critical ingredient for children’s healing. It is in the how the caregivers plan routine experiences, handle unexpected experiences, the sensory dimensions of the physical environments and that the carer’s ability to respond to a child’s everyday experiences and challenges in a way that makes them feel safe, valued and understood (Mitchell et al, 2020). On this link are some therapeutic interventions that may be employed when working with children.

We all need to feel connected, to belong and to meaningfully participate in community.

Relationships are the primary vehicles for change and recovery.