Creating a Trauma-Informed and Disability Inclusive Workplace

Description: This set of Supervisory Guides provides advice on creating trauma informed workplaces that are disability inclusive for both staff and clients.

The four themes covered are:

Part 1: Hiring
Part 2: Onboarding New Staff
Part 3: Supervision
Part 4: Supporting Staff with Boundaries and Safety

 Downloadable from the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center website.


What's the evidence base for this resource: These are practice based resources, developed from the experiences of partner organisations.

 

Potential uses and limitation: They are best used along with in-person, interactive training to allow executive leadership, human resources, and supervisors the opportunity to practice skills and discuss challenges and ideas with each other. Particularly helpful to support supervisors prepare for conversations about both accessibility and vicarious trauma with new staff members.

 

Where it comes from: US based coalition MASS (Movement for Access, Safety & Survivors),



Resiliency Project: A Gecko’s Guide to Building Resiliency in Child Abuse Staff & Volunteers

Description: The (US based) Resiliency Project engaged researchers, educators, and practitioners from the child abuse field in a collaborative effort to develop, implement, and evaluate an organisationally based program to build resiliency in staff and volunteers. Twelve service organisations participated in the project.

Key to the project were the pilot "resiliency coaches" who evaluated all training and technical assistance products related to the organisational program model.

The model identified 5 key themes- self-knowledge and insight, sense of hope, healthy coping, strong relationships, and personal perspective and meaning- that can be promoted in the culture of organisations.


This is a summary report.

What's the evidence base for this resource: Evaluation conducted by the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA) at the University of Texas School of Social Work.


Potential uses and limitation:  It includes examples of specific interventions implemented under the categories of Policy, Supervisory Technique, and Competency-based Training. There are a range of training and reflection exercises that could be useful in supervision contexts.  Suggested practice examples  range from personal reflections, through to policies that promote staff well being.

Where it comes from:  Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA) in the Center for Social Work Research, School of Social Work


Compassion Satisfaction & Compassion Fatigue

Description: A range of resources related to the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) assessment tool.

What's the evidence base for this resource: The ProQOL is a widely used measure of Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue. The training slides describe how the ProQOL conceptualises and measures these constructs. It is not a standardised psychological test.

Potential uses and limitations: Useful for organisations wanting to introduce ProQOL as a baseline measure to inform a broader organisational response. Note that the ProQOL does not measure Vicarious Trauma as a discreet construct, it measures Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue (in two sub-scales: Burnout and Work Related Traumatic Stress).

Note that ProQOL, and this material, is mostly focussed on individual level factors.

Where it comes from© Beth Hudnall Stamm, 2009. See slide 1 for conditions of use in training and professional development.