Trauma Informed Schools

Beyond the Buzzwords: What Does Trauma-Informed Care Truly Mean?

Trauma-informed care recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system.

Trauma-informed care recognizes the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma. In recent years, more attention has been paid to how trauma is passed through generations. For example, Jewish psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Yahuda pioneered the field of intergenerational transmission of trauma by studying how children of Holocaust survivors were affected by their parents’ trauma. Native American social worker Dr. Maria Yellowhorse Braveheart studied similar patterns in indigenous communities, and African-American social worker Dr. Joy DeGruy expanded on this work and coined the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” Adaptive responses to trauma that are passed down are often pathologized by people of privilege. Trauma-informed care recognizes trauma on many levels.

Read all the components of what trauma-informed care truly means here

ACEs are adverse childhood experiences, or traumatic events such as abuse, neglect or a variety of household dysfunctions that occur during childhood. The orginal ACE Study found that our childhood experiences have a tremendous and lifelong impact on our health and the quality of our lives. The slides and handouts from the 2019-20 Special Populations Conference shared below will help to show the impact of ACEs on health outcomes and their role in helping to buffer the negative effects of ACEs for children and families.