Trauma-Informed Practice

<p>Medway Council’s Education and SEND Division is looking to roll out an extensive programme of training to embed Trauma-Informed Practice approaches across Medway’s Education Providers. The training and development programme needs to be driven by the evidence base so we would expect a provider to support schools to audit existing practice and then develop a transferable toolkit specifically aimed at Education Providers, which can be personalised to the needs of their school, to support them to continue to embedding trauma-informed approaches. The overarching aim is for all Medway Education Providers to be Trauma-Informed in how they work – strategically, culturally, and operational; on a whole-school and individual pupil basis. This means that Trauma-Informed approaches are the expected norm – they are accepted and embedded fully and leaders within those settings continue to have a focus on strengthening this practice, both in day-to-day operations and in their continuous improvement. In order for any Education Provider (and the Local Authority – as a key stakeholder and the commissioning authority) to understand the impact of Trauma-Informed Approaches, an evaluation framework will be needed that is relevant to both the wider cultural picture of a school/setting and the outcomes of pupils. The training and development programme needs to be focused on providing the knowledge, practice, guidance and resources for all Education Providers to develop from Trauma Aware to Trauma-Informed. Recognising that this cannot be done in one step and not all providers are in the same position currently within the Trauma-Informed space, the training and development programme needs to have a phased approach that allows different settings to ‘come on stream’ at the point where the training becomes relevant to their current practice status.</p>