Developing a Trauma Curious Mindset in ASC

The What Matters section now includes information about trauma-informed practice. Trauma-informed practice is closely aligned with the strength-based approach of What Matters. This way of working recognises that a person’s experience of trauma may influence their engagement with services and responsiveness to our interventions. While there is no shared agreement in Camden, or more widely across the social care sector about how to define and implement trauma-informed practice, we recognise the value of arriving at our approach as a collective.

Developing a Trauma Curious Mindset in ASC - About the Project

As part of our continuous learning, we invited fifteen people from different service areas connected to practice to be involved in a series of in-person learning sessions between June and November 2025. We teamed up with Graham Music, and through formal teaching, group discussions, and 1-2-1 coaching, we explored trauma and its implications for practice.

Learning Aims:

“There are as many trauma presentations as there are people with trauma.” Josefin Wikstrom Prison Yoga Project.

Understand how trauma affects our work with people drawing on support, ourselves, our teams, and our services.
Build capacity to explore complex trauma and use our time together to think through difficult situations that often do not have simple answers.
Strengthen reflective practice through professional curiosity, using our enhanced knowledge to deepen reflection on our work.

Slides:

Session 1 Slides

Session 2 Slides

Session 3 Slides

Papers:

'Deprivation x3' - article

'Trauma, neglect and their effects' - article

'The body as the new royal road to the unconscious' - article

'Polyvagal Theory Chart of Trauma Response' - poster

'Autonomic dysregulation and the Window of Tolerance Model of the effects of complex emotional trauma' - article