Y

My name is Lizzy Goad, I am a Senior Clinical Psychologist within a Community Learning Disability Team at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Although I have always held a strong interest in relational trauma prior to working in learning disability services I had previously predominantly worked 1: 1 therapeutically rather than considering the impact of our wider organizational processes of the people we aim to support. However, my acknowledgement of the need for a whole systems approach to relational trauma became a focus within learning disability services given the high levels of relational trauma people with learning disabilities and their families can often experience. Our complex caregiver/care receiving relationships we hold with our clients and the ability for our own relationships and service context to become either reparative or conversely traumatizing felt as though it needed further exploration. This led us to work towards understanding and then applying the framework of trauma-informed care (TIC) within our services.

One of my main therapeutic modalities is compassion focused therapy and combining ideas from attachment, evolutionary and developmental theory to consider how we embrace and sustain compassionate care has become a real focus. Working closely with my equally dedicated colleagues, developing TIC is something we are extremely passionate about and we look forward to continuing to drive forward compassionate change both within our own team, inter and intra-organizationally.   It is a real privilege to speak here today and I look forward to sharing our ideas with you. 

Developing Trauma-Informed Care in Learning Disability Services: Why do we care?  

With the exposure of horrors such as Winterbourne View in 2011 and more recently with Muckamore Abbey and Whorlton Hall, a question must be asked about how, at times, compassion in care has gone so badly wrong. There are of course many reasons why compassion can often be missing in both health and social care settings. Understanding some of these ‘why’s’, alongside the questions about ‘what we do about it’ led our learning disability services towards the concept of Trauma-Informed care. 

This presentation shares how the development of our Trauma-Informed Care framework has helped us to think about and develop compassion across all layers of the system.  We will consider TIC in its early concept, the development of the framework, and now its implementation phases in a relational context. We will explore some of the content of what we have achieved across these phases but more importantly we will share how connecting with others on our own relational journey has enabled us to develop the beginnings of a cultural shift towards Trauma-Informed Care. Finally, we will share our successes but also the challenges that we have and continue to meet. In an era of tremendous innovation and creativity within health and social care services, but equally of pressures, targets and limited resource, Trauma-Informed Care is not something we can afford to ignore.