Trauma Informed Care
Best practices for trauma-informed care include understanding trauma and its effects, creating safe physical and emotional space, supporting consumer choice and control, and integrating trauma-informed care across service systems. Some people experience very few traumatic events in their lives. For others, experiences of traumatic stress are chronic. Research and experience tell us that for people experiencing homelessness, rates of trauma are extraordinarily high. Many who enter the homeless service system have experienced violence, loss, and disruptions to important relationships from an early age.
Additionally, people who lack housing experience the loss of place, safety, stability, and community. These losses are also traumatic. They have a major impact on how people understand themselves, the world, and others. People who have experienced multiple traumas do not relate to the world in the same way as those who have not. They require services and responses that are uniquely sensitive to their needs.