Implementing a Trauma Responsive Perspective in Field Advising

Overview: Studies show that helping professionals often come to practice with trauma history and may be exposed as students. SW training programs must attend to these biopsychosocial reactions so students can develop lifelong self-care skills. Infusing the field education advising structure with a trauma informed perspective can begin that process.Proposal text: The understanding of trauma’s impact on the lives of children and developing adults has become more focused in recent years, including trauma’s prevalence within helping professionals. Drawing from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study from CDC- Kaiser Permanente in 1997, researchers have determined that 66-85% of college age youth reported traumatic exposures in their lives (Butler & Carello, 2014). In a study by Gilin and Kaufman (2015), social work students surveyed had higher rate of ACE than the general population. In 2021 NASW has also identified self-care as a crucial tenet of the profession’s values and ethics and introduced the “inclusion of self-care language to the Purpose and Ethical Principles sections of the Code. (https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics).

Given the high prevalence of trauma and its impact on clients, communities and systems within which social workers practice, as well as with practitioners themselves, our program established the Trauma Integration Initiative (TII). The TII was established to address the growing need for a trauma-trained work force in social work, focusing on three major areas within our school: curriculum, field education and student formation, and research with the goal to infuse trauma informed practices within the implicit and explicit curriculum.
As a Field team which manages over 500 placements per year, we recognized that a trauma informed/trauma responsive perspective would enhance the advising experience of our students, given the possibility of their own histories, as well as the exposure to trauma in their practicum. This presentation will outline the process followed to design and implement a model of Trauma Responsive Advising to a cohort of 60 advisors, over the course of a three-year project; planning and development in Year 1 with implementation in Years 2 and 3. We will also address implications of this project for expansion within the organizational culture of social work schools.
We delivered definitions and other foundational information, which allowed the presenters to broaden the cohort’s understanding of how a student’s lived experiences might present in their placement. There were monthly presentations over two semesters, containing didactic content and small group discussions, as well as additional readings. The six key principles put forth by SAMSHA (2017) grounded our expectations for the advisors in their work with students; these principles are safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; and cultural, historical and gender issues. We operationalized each of the principles as a guide to advisement and built out our culture of engagement and support.
By presenting at APM, we hope to offer an example of our efforts so they can be replicated and implemented by other schools/programs. As an interactive workshop, we would present our rationale for bringing this perspective to the educational roles within higher education, a snapshot of the materials presented, as well as feedback shared and practices developed by the advisor cohort.