Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed practice involves recognising traumatic experiences and their relationship to behavioural challenges within a person. By acknowledging the impact of trauma on people, front-line professionals and communities can start building a trauma-informed environment in the integration of care services.

What is Trauma-Informed Care?

Many people requiring care and support in behavioural care settings have a history of traumatic experiences. Some people are often unaware of the impact of trauma in their lives or tend to avoid and suppress the experience completely.

Trauma is not always easy to recognise. Behaviours that may be seen as aggression, fear, or challenging responses are often expressions of overwhelming emotional distress and a person reaching out for understanding and help.

On the other hand, care practitioners may not ask questions about a person’s history of trauma when beginning to work with an individual. This can further lead to challenges in finding the best proactive solutions to address trauma-related behaviours and issues. Sometimes, a person’s past experience of trauma may cause a barrier and distrust in the process of receiving care and support.

The trauma-informed approach is focused on shifting perspectives from ‘What happened to you?‘ rather than ‘What’s wrong with you?’, recognising that the challenging behaviours may be coping mechanisms resulting from adaptation and survival. 

Most importantly, trauma-informed care aims to promote healing, resilience and recovery in people, empowering them to trust in mental health services that can help them learn self-regulation and well-being skills.

Within our personalised trauma-informed care, we ask people: Who do you want to be?

What Is Trauma?

To understand trauma-informed care, we first need to answer the question, ‘What is trauma?’.

Trauma refers to the emotional impact of an event that feels overwhelming, threatening, or deeply upsetting. It may occur after experiencing a traumatic situation directly, witnessing it, or finding out that it happened to someone close.

Trauma can come from an event, series of events or circumstances that were emotionally or physically harmful or life-threatening, which has a lasting, pervasive impact on the person’s functioning and physical, mental, social, emotional or spiritual well-being.

The severity of traumatic stress is defined by several factors, including:

• Types of events and circumstances and the intensity of exposure
• Frequency of trauma exposure (once or repeatedly)
• Directly or indirectly experienced trauma
• Person’s age and development phase (child or adult)
• Individual resilience (a person’s way of reacting)
• Pre-existing mental health challenges
• Access to help and support

An experience becomes traumatic when it creates overwhelming feelings of fear, helplessness, terror, or distress that exceed a person’s ability to cope at that moment. The impact can continue long after the event, affecting emotional regulation, mental health, physical well-being, relationships, and daily life.

Awareness of the Prevalence of Trauma

In the UK, one in three adults report having experienced trauma at least once in their lifetime. Traumatic events involve experiences that have put the person or someone around them at risk of serious harm or death. Once witnessed, the body remembers the effects and impact of trauma and tends to react every time a person is exposed to a similar or a different type of trauma-related event.

Trauma can have an adverse and lasting negative effect on people’s health, leading to the development of serious physical and mental health conditions. The widespread impact of trauma can cause several signs and symptoms, including:

• Sensitivity to noise or touch
• Flashbacks and frequent nightmares
• Constant anticipation of something negative to happen
• Lack of focus and concentration
• Irritability
• Excessive precaution, anxiety, anger, shame or sadness

Trauma histories are common among people involved with the criminal justice system. Many have experienced adverse childhood experiences, abuse, neglect, violence, or other forms of significant distress. These experiences can influence behaviour, emotional regulation, mental health, and relationships, highlighting the importance of trauma-informed approaches within forensic mental health and community support services.

More than 80% of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, demonstrating the strong relationship between trauma and later involvement with justice and forensic services.

Most often, trauma manifests in ways that pose a challenge to societal norms of acceptable behaviour. Consequently, people tend to react rather than understand the reason behind a person’s behaviour that challenges. 

For that purpose, our brand Nurseline Community Services specialised in trauma, its impact, and recovery, has developed a comprehensive guide: Living with Trauma – How Does It Feel? Created for people who have experienced trauma, parents and families, carers, and professionals, the guide brings together practical information, real experiences, and a deeper understanding of how trauma can affect everyday life.

The guide is available to download here.

Additionally, Catalyst Care Group has developed trauma-informed care training for every employee in our organisation. The goal of the training is to raise awareness about the impact of trauma not solely for the people we support but also in the internal communications between colleagues and associates.

This has helped us understand that each one of us comes with our own inner struggles, and we need to choose acceptance and support rather than judgment and exclusion.

Re-Traumatisation

When witnessing a behaviour that challenges, people tend to react and stop the behaviour instantly. This is known as the default uninformed response to trauma. This pattern usually occurs in three steps:

1. React
2. Discipline
3. Call on compliance

However, accidentally and unintentionally, we can re-traumatise the people around us.

Re-traumatisation involves any circumstance, event or environment that reminds the individual of their trauma, whether literally or symbolically, that triggers difficult emotions and reactions related to the initial trauma. Every system and every level of care – individuals, staff, and organisation – can potentially cause re-traumatisation.

In most cases, re-traumatisation is inadvertent. At the same time, some obvious reactions can re-traumatise a person, such as the use of restrictive measures, and less noticeable triggers, such as sounds, smells or specific interactions, may cause people to re-traumatise.

Understanding re-traumatisation is extremely important as people who have experienced trauma multiple times are more likely to showcase exacerbated trauma-related signs, symptoms, and behaviours than people with a single trauma.

Types of Trauma

Trauma is not a single experience. It can develop in different ways throughout a person’s life, with each type having its own impact on emotional well-being, relationships, and daily life.

Acute Trauma

Results from a single distressing or traumatic event, such as an accident, assault, natural disaster, or sudden loss.

Chronic Trauma

Occurs when a person is exposed to ongoing or repeated traumatic experiences over a prolonged period, such as abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or bullying.

Complex Trauma

Develops through repeated or multiple traumatic experiences, often occurring during childhood or within important relationships. It can affect emotional regulation, relationships, self-esteem, and overall well-being.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs are potentially traumatic experiences that occur during childhood, including abuse, neglect, domestic violence, parental substance misuse, mental illness within the family, or parental separation. These experiences can have lasting effects on health, well-being, and life outcomes.

Vicarious Trauma

Vicarious trauma occurs when a person is repeatedly exposed to the traumatic experiences of others. It is commonly experienced by carers, support workers, healthcare professionals, emergency responders, and family members who regularly hear about or witness the effects of trauma.

System-Induced Trauma

System-induced trauma occurs when people experience distress, harm, or re-traumatisation through interactions with services, institutions, or systems that are intended to provide support. This may include repeated assessments, restrictive practices, exclusion, discrimination, not being listened to, or having limited choice and control over important decisions affecting their lives.

Impact of Trauma on People

Trauma can affect many areas of a person’s life, often influencing how they think, feel, respond to stress, and connect with others.

• Emotional well-being – increased anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, guilt, or emotional overwhelm.
• Physical health – sleep difficulties, fatigue, headaches, chronic pain, and other stress-related health concerns.
• Thinking and memory – difficulties with concentration, decision-making, memory, and processing information.
• Relationships and trust – challenges forming relationships, trusting others, or feeling safe around people.
• Behaviour and coping – withdrawal, avoidance, hypervigilance, emotional outbursts, or unhealthy coping strategies.
• Sense of safety and control – feeling constantly on alert, powerless, or struggling to feel secure in everyday situations.

A Trauma-Informed Care Approach

A trauma-informed approach is focused on understanding the person as a whole. When an individual experiences trauma, it impacts the person’s self-perception, perception of others and perception of the world. This perception directly impacts a person’s ability and willingness to use support services and gain trust in support workers and care practitioners.

As a house of brands, we implement trauma-informed care (TIC) as an organisational structure and support framework focused on understanding, recognising and responding to the effects of trauma. Our trauma-informed care approach is implemented both on individual and collective levels, emphasising the physical, psychological and emotional safety of the people we support and our team members.

With trauma-informed practices, we support people in rebuilding a sense of control and empowerment in their lives.

The Four R’s of Trauma-Informed Practice

Trauma-informed practice is based on the four R’s, including:

• Realise- understanding the impact of trauma on individuals, families, groups, organisations and communities
• Recognise- knowing the signs and symptoms of trauma
• Respond- implementing the principles of trauma-informed approach in all practices
• Resist re-traumatisation- identifying and preventing potential triggers and actions that might evoke painful memories, such as the use of restraint or restrictive practices

Key Principles of Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed care is based on a set of core values or principles that create a framework for healthcare providers to recognise trauma and reduce the risk of re-traumatisation. The following lines describe the five main principles of trauma-informed care we are committed to implementing when providing care and support services to people with complex care needs.

Safety

Catalyst Care Group is dedicated to creating and nurturing a safe environment where the team and the people they serve feel psychologically and physically safe. Promoting a sense of security and safety is paramount in every interaction and physical setting that people are part of.

Trustworthiness

Trusting relationships and transparent communication are the keys to building a culture of confidence, stability and support among teams, the people we work with, and their families.

Collaboration

Effective collaboration is based on mutual power-sharing and decision-making in providing care and support, as well as among team interactions across the organisation. Giving power to people’s voices provides a sense of meaning and helps them build confidence, self-esteem and motivation to participate actively in the support processes.

Empowerment

We develop skills and create capable environments that allow people to feel valued and respected, encouraging them to thrive and become the best versions of themselves.

Choice

Catalyst Care Group strives to enhance choice for its team members, care recipients, and their family members while acknowledging that each person’s experience is different and calling for a unique and personalised approach.

Goals of Trauma Informed Care

The trauma-informed practice aims to build an environment of empathy, compassion and mutual understanding. This involves changing how we see people and how people see us, an approach that focuses on people’s skills, strengths and experiences rather than perceived weaknesses.

At the very core of the trauma-informed approach lies building trauma-informed systems based on partnerships and collaborations instead of judgment and discrimination. At Catalyst Care Group, a trauma-informed care approach allows us to:

• Relate with people, understand and validate their experiences and reality
• Build self-awareness and reflect on our beliefs, attitudes and prejudices
• Regain a sense of safety, confidence and dignity
• Restore hope and resilience

Trauma-Informed Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)

Trauma-Informed PBS combines Positive Behaviour Support with an understanding of how trauma can affect emotions, behaviour, communication, relationships, and a person’s sense of safety. It focuses on reducing distress, improving quality of life, and supporting people in ways that feel safe, consistent, and respectful.

Trauma-Informed PBS looks at the reasons behind distress, including trauma, anxiety, sensory overwhelm, communication difficulties, and past experiences. The focus is on prevention, understanding, emotional safety, and proactive support rather than control or punishment.

Trauma-Informed PBS can support autistic people, people with learning disabilities, mental health needs, forensic histories, communication difficulties, or people who have experienced trauma, repeated placement breakdowns, restrictive interventions, or long periods in inpatient settings.

We are a Trauma-Informed Organisation

At Catalyst Care Group, trauma-informed care is embedded throughout our support because many people have experienced significant trauma, including unstable environments, restrictive practices, loss of choice and control, placement breakdowns, or extended stays in institutional settings. Understanding these experiences helps teams recognise the reasons behind distress, identify potential triggers, and respond in ways that promote safety, dignity, and trust.

Using trauma-informed and Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), behavioural understanding is combined with therapeutic approaches to provide more personalised and proactive support. Rather than focusing solely on behaviour, attention is given to a person’s life experiences, current sources of distress, and the factors within their environment, communication, routines, and relationships that may influence their well-being. Support is tailored around each person’s strengths, experiences, and aspirations, while working towards greater stability and fewer restrictions.

For people with complex needs, Catalyst Care Group delivers trauma-informed, multidisciplinary support that helps reduce distress, increase stability, and support meaningful long-term outcomes in everyday life.

For more information, please check our impact in the real-life stories or get in touch with our managers.