Self-care in trauma-informed organisations

This course is about your wellbeing. It offers you, your families/whānau, leadership teams and organisations practical steps to manage the impact of trauma and improve wellbeing.

The children’s/tamariki workforce is often exposed to practice experiences and life stories that are hard to hear and presented with behaviours that are difficult to understand and manage. It is common for people working  with vulnerable children/tamariki to experience stress and at times secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue or burnout.

The course aims to help you understand how trauma can affect people who support, protect and serve vulnerable children/tamariki and families/whānau.

At the end of this course you will:

• Understand the types of trauma and responses to ongoing stress that can impact the children’s/tamariki workforce.
• Recognise the importance of self-care / kaimahi ora as the responsibility of both the organisation and individual.
• Consider self-care/ kaimahi ora from a Māori perspective.
• Develop your own self-care/oranga plan.
• Learn ways to look after yourself and your colleagues.

We all bring our own history and experience to our work. This can include a personal history of trauma, e.g. childhood abuse or intimate partner violence.

For Māori as Tangata Whenua (indigenous peoples) this can include a personal and family experience of colonisation and oppression. Likewise, for some Tauiwi (non-indigenous) groups, such as Pasifika practitioners this can also include a personal and family experience of colonisation and oppression.

It is important and healthy to recognise personal traumas. If you believe your personal trauma may affect your ability to practice effectively we strongly recommend you seek support, such as through Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP), supervision or cultural supervision.

Acknowledgements

This content was developed as a result of collaboration with the Ngātahi Workforce project in the Hawke's Bay, Dr Leland Ruwhiu from Oranga Tamariki, Associate Professor Nicola Atwool from the University of Otago and Whāraurau, a national workforce development centre for infant, child and youth mental health, Uniservices Ltd, at the University of Auckland.

It has been reviewed by Dr Russell Wills MB ChB (Otago) 1988, DObs (Otago) 1989, DCH RCP (Lond) 1991, MPH (Qld) 1998, FRACP 1999.