Trauma Informed Care
What is Trauma Informed Care?
Trauma informed care is about creating spaces that prioritize emotional and psychological safety. Trauma informed care includes not only recognizing that someone is working to change (in this case a person unhoused status) but also realizing the root causes of the trauma at hand (in large part unemployment and general income loss) and additional key factors include (systemic racism, lack of affordable housing, housing discrimination, mental health challenges, substance abuse challenges, generational trauma and generational wealth gaps, disabilities, etc.). Trauma informed care is built on a 360 holistic approach that centers on hope, healing, and emergency relief. Trauma informed care starts with triage and addressing immediate needs but doesn’t stop there, the goal is for long-term lasting change.
What Trauma Informed Care looks like at CTH:
Trauma informed care at CTH looks like addressing people’s medical, nutritional, and other emergency needs first before addressing their direct housing needs. The key is to not cause additional trauma. Another example is that CTH has designed a specific intake form that allows us to get all the necessary content information to be able to navigate the client’s needs without having to repeatedly ask them questions that can cause them to look backward and be re-traumatized. Trauma informed care means having complete decriminalized services with no engagement with law enforcement connected to our programming and policies. These are all examples of the intentionality behind the work CTH does.
