Claire Ryan Heatley, Trauma Lead Officer for Edinburgh, is supporting Advice Services in the city with a one off in person training session on Trauma Informed Practice tailored for advice practitioners. This follows discussion with advice services in the Edinburgh Advice Partnership on how they are developing a workforce and services that are Trauma Informed and Responsive. Many services have already embedded this approach in their organisation and have found benefits in doing so both for their workforce and the clients they serve.
Leaders of advice services commented on the high level of trauma that many of their clients have experienced. Perhaps this is no surprise given the Scottish Government evidence showing that 1 in 7 adults report having experienced four or more adverse events in childhood with this rising to 1 in 5 in the most deprived areas.
The National Trauma Transformation Programme (NTTP), led by NHS Education for Scotland (NES), was developed to meet the Scottish Government and COSLA’s ambition for a trauma informed and responsive workforce and services. This means that we universally recognise where people are affected by trauma and adversity, respond in ways that prevent further harm and support recovery.  It is important we recognise that this applies to our workforce and the people that we support as we begin to acknowledge that trauma is not the rare exception we thought it was and that understanding how to work in trauma informed and responsive ways is relevant to all of us, whatever our role.
Claire Ryan Heatley shares a range of training materials that any advice practitioner in Edinburgh can access:
This is a series of e-modules that are organised into four different practice levels with additional resources also available for leaders. Many advice practitioners will likely want to train to the Trauma skilled level, so she has shared a factsheet explaining how to access.
Claire encourages practitioners to make time for this resource if you have been impacted by current or previous, personal or professional trauma. It is a gentle, helpful resource, that supports us to develop insight understanding and skills to contain our own previous difficult experiences. It takes 60-90 minutes to complete and can be done in bite size chunks. Information on accessing the resource is attached. Please be aware sue to the sensitive nature of the subject, it does have the potential to retrigger, so please give thought to this. If it does not feel like the right time to undertake any of this learning, please prioritise your wellbeing and know you can attend the session and undertake any learning at a later stage.
In addition to the online courses above, there are limited places available on the following In Person Course, which is available to members of Edinburgh Advice Network:
Monday 27 January 9.30 - 4.30; Duncan Place
This is a face to face course that is aimed at Team Leaders, Managers, and those wishing to become champions of the Trauma Informed Approach and Response in their workplace. Attendees should have completed the Trauma Skilled e-modules in preparation for this course.
Comments