Building Resilience: The Transformative Power of Trauma-Informed Practices in Social Housing
Trauma, as defined by the UK Trauma Council, refers to an upsetting event that is so intense that it exceeds a person’s ability to cope. It can be experienced during childhood as an isolated incident or due to experiences of oppression, discrimination, or war. All these traumatic experiences can have long-term negative effects on a person’s social well-being, education, as well as their mental and physical health.
Housing associations can play a crucial role in mitigating the impact of trauma by adopting trauma-informed practices. The social housing sector, which frequently works with individuals who have gone through traumatic experiences, faces unique challenges in meeting the complex needs arising from such experiences. They are responsible for providing shelter and support to these individuals, who often have complex needs rooted in the trauma, including mental health issues, addiction, homelessness, and neurodiversity. These individuals may also struggle with self-regulation and emotional dysregulation, making it difficult for them to organise thier lives.
How can Trauma-Informed practice help Social Housing providers
Housing associations can better support their employees and tenants by adopting trauma-informed practices. Our trauma-informed training programme for Executives and Board members of housing associations will enable leadership teams to gain a deeper understanding of your tenants’ unique needs and develop strategies to create equitable access and support systems that align with the new standards and the tools to create environments that foster transparency, respect, and fairness in all tenant engagement.
Key Considerations Under the Consumer Standard 7.6 – SE1
This standard, in essence, is around understanding your tenants needs, including how we communicate with them. Trauma Informed practices will help you do both things:
- a) Understand the Diverse Needs of Tenants:
- Protected Characteristics: According to the Equality Act of 2010, tenants with protected characteristics must have their special needs acknowledged and met. This includes considerations related to age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
- Language Barriers: Recognise the impact of language barriers on tenants’ ability to access and engage with housing services. Implementing language-inclusive practices ensures effective communication and understanding.
- Additional Support Needs: Identify and respond to tenants with additional support needs, encompassing a range of challenges such as mental health concerns, neurodiversity, and other factors contributing to complex needs.
Approach to Trauma-Informed Practices
Incorporating trauma-informed practices into your organisation’s operations may seem difficult at first if you are not familiar with the term. However, housing associations can positively impact the resilience and well-being of their workforce and residents by implementing some simple steps, and then building on it into every aspect of their business operations. This implementation will improve staff retention, particularly in front-line services, and foster better relationships with residents through more effective engagement, ultimately leading to higher levels of tenant satisfaction. Here are some practical strategies that you can implement within your organisation.
What has happened to you, not what is wrong with you: Putting an emphasis on what has happened to tenants rather than what is wrong with them is essential to a strengths-based, recovery-oriented approach. It also fosters empathy, decency, and a better understanding of the unique challenges they face.
Staff training and assistance: It is crucial to give employees the skills and information they need to comprehend and deal with trauma. By going beyond the fundamentals and incorporating advice from Subject Matter Experts, training programmes can help employees gain a more nuanced understanding of the effects of trauma, and how it will manifest itself in the people staff deal with.
Fostering an Inquiry Culture: By providing internal forums for reflection and discussion, organisations encourage staff members to engage in reflective practice, which in turn encourages ongoing learning and development. Employees can evaluate their work practises critically as a result, increasing understand and supporting staff to deal with the traumas they face in their jobs.
Tips on daily operational management:
Here are some diversified strategies to incorporate trauma-informed principles into daily operations.
Make sure that the policies and procedures of the organisation are in line with trauma-informed practices, this includes creating guidelines that prioritise safety, trust, and choice.
Person-centred responsiveness is the understanding that there may be no one-size-fits-all solution and the customisation of interventions to meet the needs of everyone.
Managing Relationships: Promote good relations with residents, staff, and outside partners.
Evaluation of Results: Analyse and evaluate the results of interventions regularly. Using data, organisations can continuously enhance and improve their trauma-informed practices.
Creating a Trauma-Informed Physical Environment: When designing a space, it is important to take residents’ comfort, safety, and sensory experiences into account. It needs to be welcoming.
Where ever you are on this jourey we can support you.
If you would like to know more about Trauma Informed Leadership and how it can help your organisation we will be running triaining in 2024. Details can be found here.