With supportive, effective, and sustainable structures in place, local mission-driven non-profits can focus their efforts on building a better community.
To mitigate the impact of systemic trauma, services include vicarious trauma workshops and organizational assessments of trauma-informed effectiveness.
Experiential workshops: vicarious trauma
Vicarious, or secondary, trauma refers to the nervous system dysregulation that can occur when someone is exposed to trauma(s) through working with traumatized populations. Vicarious trauma can have a significant impact on organizations, such as:
- Staff well-being: physical and psychological symptoms may lead to increased stress, burnout, and turnover.
- Organizational effectiveness: can negatively impact team cohesion, communication, and collaboration. Reduces the quality and timeliness of services provided.
- Organizational reputation: can negatively impact an organization’s reputation, deterring potential employees and referral/funding sources.
- Workplace culture: traumatic symptoms tend to a shift worldview, which can alter or damage fundamental beliefs relative to self, others, and systems.
Workshops include the following components: psychoeducation on vicarious trauma; self-regulation and co-regulation strategies; and cognitive and somatic processing experiences.
Organizational evaluation, with follow-up recommendations, of embedded trauma informed care principles into organizational policies, systems, and environment also available.
Change the systems, heal the people