Trauma-Informed Social Work: Emerging Pedagogy and Practices for Navigating Empowerment Among Trauma Survivors

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Trauma is an extreme stress associated with overwhelming experiences resulting in a lack of safety, power and freedom among the survivors. The individuals' lifetime exposure to traumatic events accounts between 70% to 80.7%. Consequently, Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) is promulgated in human service delivery to resist re-traumatisation and foster empowerment among trauma survivors. Social work professionals often experience vicarious and secondary trauma due to prolonged empathetic exposure to client's trauma narratives. Recently, the lack of self-care practice among the service providers has become public health burden. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate self-care as part of learning and practice in social work. METHOD: The authors find TIC framework to be emphasising on service seekers' care perspective which indirectly shadows the 'self-care' of service providers. Trauma-informed approach in educational and training curriculum at educational institutions are just emerging. As a result, in this editorial, authors propose Self-Care Based guidelines and framework making trauma-informed approach more accessible for budding social work professionals. DISCUSSION: In this article, the guidelines and framework (S-GPS) for Self-Care Based Trauma-Informed Social Work (TISW) pedagogy and practices are discussed. Firstly, the Self-Care domain addresses the essence of trauma-proofing social work practitioners by nurturing self-regulation, self-compassion, resilience and overall well-being. Secondly, the General Pedagogy domain addresses trauma and its impact through education and training with implications for self-care skill acquisition for service providers during field works. Thirdly, the Specific Practices domain targets redressal of highly challenging experiences and ethical issues encountered during social work practice by embodying self-care. Finally, the Ongoing Supervision domain emphasises on the essence of continued support and collaboration of individuals and organisations to foster learning and competency among the budding social work professionals whilst giving due consideration to Self-Care. CONCLUSIONS: The Self-Care Based TISW framework (S-GPS) lays foundation for embodying 'Self-Care is Social-Care' in education and training of budding social work professionals, wherein self-care acts as trauma (secondary and vicarious) buffer while efficiently engaging in empowerment of trauma survivors.

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