debor016

On 3/31/13 I wrote a post "A Small Thought About Band Aids" (http://tinyurl.com/phgvsmv) Now I have written a poem in response to the concern that certain interventions are "just putting a band aid on the problem". Before I share the poem with you, I want to mention that we are VERY CLOSE to opening our new service. It is entitled "Partners for Healing" and will be your tool for more compassionate and effective healing. After the poem I will give you an opportunity to sign up to learn more about your Partners for Healing, and receive a free infographic of the poem. Aren't We Just Putting a BandAid on the Problem? Let me be your band aid Stretch over you Protect you Keep out the dirt and germs Strengthen you Cushion you - imperfectly- From that jolt of pain  When your wound hits the world.  Let me cling to you Faithfully Enclosing you As you heal. As your skin knits together. As your pain subsides. As you become whole.  I'd be very interested in you...

We at the Traumatic Stress Institute have been working hard for six months or so on an entirely new service to better support you, all our friends in trauma informed care. In order to do this right, I am learning all sorts of new web skills. I'm having a great time. Just to make sure we respond to your most important needs, can you take this one question survey? One Question Survey I've also created an infographic on beginning trauma informed care. Get your free copy here: Click here to join our community and recieve a free infographic. And here is the link to a list for updates about our new service. Get updates on upcoming new service Stay tuned- I think you are going to be delighted with this new product!

We just finished a Joint Commission survey. We did very well. One of my best moments was when the surveyor remarked that this was a special agency. A staff member asked him what he saw that made it special. He replied, "many agencies teach their staff about trauma-informed care. In this agency, that approach is deep in the culture." So I have been thinking: what did the surveyor observe that enabled him to know that? He experienced: The outpatient therapist talking about how the mother of her client had suffered early trauma, and how this was complicating her response to her daughter. An in depth discussion of a diabetic girls' eating a large muffin snack at school, that included systems issues, peer issues, biological factors, her loneliness and hopelessness, and the pediatrician's personal experience with diabetes and eating muffins. A group home therapist who was worried that a client who was " doing everything right" still wasn't letting any one get ...

I have recently attended two high powered conferences in a row. The first was Bessel van der Kolk’s 25th Annual International Trauma Conference: PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA: Neuroscience, Attachment, and Therapeutic Interventions on May 28 - 31, 2014 in Boston. The theme was  What We Have Discovered Over The Past Quarter Century About Traumatic Stress and Its Treatment. Then I presented at Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Treatment Inaugural Symposium: Brain Development and Trauma: Implications for Interventions and Policy, June 10 – 12, 2014 in Alberta, Canada at the Banff Centre. What a lovely place! So my head is spinning with new ideas and new takes on old ideas, which I will be sharing with you in the upcoming weeks. First let me focus on a basic premise of the Neurosequential Model. We cannot think when we are dysregulated. We can think best when we are in relationships to others. So, in every situation, for us and for our clients, follow the sequence: Regulate Relate Re...

This week I taught a Risking Connection© Basic three-day training for a Connecticut agency.  This agency provides various types of home-based services, school-based mental health clinics, out patient clinics, parent resource centers, and day care. It was a joy to teach such caring and thoughtful people. At the end of the training we did an exercise that involved people saying what they would keep from the training. Here are the top five things staff will keep: I learned tools that help me understand my clients’ behaviors in a new way I have new ideas for how to help my clients more effectively. I feel more connected to my agency and the individuals within it. I feel more valued by my agency. I learned it is okay to be a human being with human feelings, and how to take care of myself to remain energized and hopeful. It is always inspiring to participate in the increase of hope and energy that this training creates.

My colleagues and I are engaged in an effort to develop a reliable and validated measure of beliefs favorable to trauma-informed care. When complete, this measure will help establish the effects of training, will assist in agency self-assessment, may be used in hiring decisions, and could have many other uses. As part of the process we are asking many professionals in the field to take a longer version of the survey, which will help us determine which questions work best. Would you like to join us? Dear Colleague, At this time, there are no reliable and valid measures of trauma-informed care. For this reason, we are working on an instrument to measure staff beliefs related to TIC. When finished, this could be used to measure such things as the extent to which a school or agency is trauma-informed or the outcome of trauma-informed change interventions. We need your help. We need as many health and education professionals as possible to participate in a brief online survey. The online su...