What Does a Trauma-Informed Culture Look Like?
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 ...