Services can do undue harm to clients when there is a lack of understanding of the effects of
trauma from various adverse life events on an individual’s functioning. A trauma-informed
organization provides care, compassion, and respect toward clients and staff with the
understanding that each individual may have experienced trauma in their lifetime. The goal
of a trauma-informed organization is to meet clients who have lived through trauma where
they are at in their healing journey and prevent re-traumatization.
My project focused on elucidating the main themes that are pertinent for an
organization to become trauma-informed. I utilized content analysis to examine five traumainformed
organizations’ guidebooks from health, child-welfare, education, counselling, and
community housing service sectors and created a trauma-informed guidebook. My
guidebook outlines eight trauma-informed themes – safety, trust, collaboration, choice,
culture, staff, listening, and resiliency – and examples of these themes in practice from the
aforementioned service contexts.
