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square bulletTrauma Informed Oregon Happenings April

April 14, 2015

From Diane Yatchmenoff, Ph.D, Director, Trauma Informed Oregon

YOU are making Trauma Informed Oregon a Success

We’re pleased to report that our website and the newsletter are showing strong signs of interest and endorsement from the Collaborative. We’ve had 3,243 hits on the website this month alone, and the rate at which you are perusing the newsletter is 55% – double the industry standard. Thank you ALL so much for making the time for trauma informed care in your work and helping us stay connected with our partners around the state. Please keep the email suggestions, feedback and comments coming.  It’s the very best way for us to stay on track!!

Trauma Informed Oregon Goes on the Road

We’ve scheduled four open meetings and/or training events this spring to provide opportunities for partners and stakeholders all over the state to come together to talk about preventing or ameliorating the impact of adverse childhood experiences and creating a truly trauma informed system of care for children, adults and families in Oregon. Agendas will include an update from Trauma Informed Oregon (TIO) staff on our progress, plans and priorities as well as a chance for you to tell us what you’re doing and what you need.

Watch for separate invitations with registration information for each of these events. We’ve planned them to reach different parts of the state, but anyone is welcome to attend any or all of the sessions. The dates are:

Please visit the Events page to register for Bend and Grants Pass. Seaside and Pendleton invites will be out by the first week of May.

Post Your Progress on AROUND Oregon Soon

In order to make the TIO website as useful as possible, we want to include more information about what our partners around the state are doing to prevent adversity in childhood or to implement trauma informed care in their programs, organizations, systems, and cross-system or community work. We gathered information from some of you at our kickoff meeting in Salem last October, but now we need to expand. We think the best and most inclusive approach is to ask YOU to post a listing to our website with specific information about what you’re doing that others in the TIO Collaborative might like to know about.

We’re working on a format to make it as easy as possible to post, and we’ll be creating a web-based process that will automatically record this information in a searchable data base that will be available via the website. Watch for an invitation to participate, with a link to a form you can easily complete. We’re hoping to get this out to the entire Collaborative by the first of June.

Training Updates

Requests continue to come in from multiple system partners for training on approaches to address adversity in childhood and on trauma informed care. Since the last newsletter, our partners at Oregon Pediatric Society have conducted training or information sessions for primary healthcare providers  at Greenfield Health and the Young Child Wellness Council, with upcoming sessions at the Oregon Children’s Mental Health Conference (April 10), Bend (April 16), the Oregon Family Practice Annual Meeting (April 18) and the Children’s Clinic (April 29).

On the social work side, Department of Human Services (DHS) Child Welfare continues to be an active partner in systems change, with trainings for the Multnomah County ICWA Unit in February and Lane County staff in March. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) initiative also continues to partner with TIO for training and technical assistance, and the Multnomah County Department of Human Services sponsored an open training for cross-system partners in March. Attendees of the Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children conference in Jackson County in March also received training. Upcoming trainings this spring include events for partners in Bend, Coos County, Seaside, Clatsop County, the Multnomah County Judicial Services, the Homeless Youth Continuum, and Linn Benton DHS staff.

In many cases, training is the first a change process. Workgroups for trauma informed care are springing up in organizations and systems across the state; some are moving forward on their own. In other cases TIO staff or partners are providing consultation and technical assistance to facilitate planning and implementation.

A Framework for Trauma Informed Oregon

We get asked the question a lot: “What does Trauma Informed Oregon DO?” And sometimes we’re so busy ‘doing’ that we don’t take time to look at the bigger picture.

So we put our heads together on the Leadership Team, which represents important parts of the Collaborative, and came up with four broad areas where we hope that TIO will make a difference. Here’s what we think TIO is about:

Centralized Information and Resources. The website, the newsletter and other TIO activities are intended to make resources available and to disseminate important information about ACEs, trauma and trauma informed care that is accessible and useful to youth, families, adults with lived experience, providers, and system partners. As we are able to convey more about what it’s happening around the state, and by creating opportunities for partners to come together, we hope also to help build connections and community in this diverse yet unified network of committed stakeholders.

Training and Education. TIO provides foundational training in Adverse Childhood Experiences, the impact of trauma, and Trauma Informed Care, with modules geared for a wide range of audiences across multiple service systems, including primary healthcare. We also plan to make information available via the website about other trainers around the state who offer specialized expertise in important areas like neuroscience, vicarious trauma, the impact of historical trauma and oppression, etc. Along with training, we are assessing the availability of information about trauma in the curricula of degree and certificate programs for social workers, counselors, teachers, doctors, nurses, and others who interact on a daily basis with trauma survivors.

Implementation. Training and information provide the foundation for change, and many providers and systems are taking concrete steps to make their programs and practices more trauma informed. We are pleased to be developing tool kits and strategies, along with technical assistance, to support these efforts and to document their results.

Policy. Trauma Informed Oregon is not a policy-making entity, but we are able to bring the voice of stakeholders from all constituencies to our state partners at OHA, DHS, other agencies, and the legislature. Our hope over time is to make recommendations for policy and investment that will ensure a trauma informed system of care for all Oregonians.