Trauma Informed Wales

Staff across BCA have been undertaking training around the Trauma Informed Wales Framework. Trauma informed is about understanding that lots of people have adversity and trauma that affects them in all kinds of ways.

The framework is for everyone in Wales, it’s everyone’s business.

It’s for everyone of all ages.

It helps everyone to work together, to see what works well and the difference it can make to people’s lives.

The framework will help make sure:

• Everyone knows about adversity and trauma and understands how they affect people.
• Everyone knows how to step in and stop adversity and trauma from happening.
• Everyone knows how to support someone affected by trauma.

It’s about making sure people get the right support at the right time in the right ways.

We all experience different challenges as part of life. Sometimes we cope and manage quite quickly with help from family and friends. But sometimes things happen that cause distress or frighten us.

Trauma is any experience that is unpleasant and can cause us distress or anxiety. Trauma can also refer to the effects of a traumatic event such as experiencing abuse or neglect, someone you love gets a serious illness or dies, divorce or separation, feeling unsafe, being threatened, being involved in an accident, seeing crime or violence, falling when older or not being able to manage financially.

Trauma can affect how we feel about life, our mental health and emotions, physical health, our ability to do everyday things, our ability to learn new things and our relationships with family, friends and other people.

Our early experiences can have great impact on our emotional and physical wellbeing throughout out life. These experiences can impact our growth, milestones, development, feelings, thoughts and behaviors, and can have lasting effects. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) might include single incidents of adversity or prolonged experiences of trauma. Children and young people can also experience ACEs if those around them are suffering with their own mental health and therefore unable to be emotionally or physically available to them. The experiences that children have while growing up can have life-long effects on their health and well-being.

The video below explains how ACEs impact children, young people and adults

Adverse Childhood Experiences - Public Health Wales

Home - ACE Hub Wales

Data indicates that there is an increased risk for mental health difficulties among those who have experienced ACEs and the risk increases depending on the level and nature of different trauma and adversity a child has experienced. ACEs can affect any child in any family.

However, we also know that every child is different and that resilience and support networks can have huge value and impact in mitigating or reducing this risk. The single most common contributing factor to children developing resilience is having at least one positive and stable relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver or other adult. Other sources of resilience can come from communities, cultural connections, opportunities to build self-regulatory and adaptive skills and believing you have the opportunity and ability to influence your own life course.

Our aim is:

For our whole school community (staff, parents, governors, local community) to understand how adversity and trauma can impact people and how we can work together to support all those who are affected making sure people get the right support at the right time in the right ways and the difference it can make to people’s lives.