Research on Trauma Informed Care
What the Research Tells Us About Implementing Trauma Informed Care (TIC)
What the Research Tells Us About Implementing Trauma Informed Care (TIC)Trauma informed care is widely accepted as best practice; however, the evidence base is still accumulating. Researchers and practitioners are working to learn more about the essential ingredients of TIC so that implementation efforts can be informed, measurement tools can be created, and outcomes can be tested. Because TIC is specific and unique to settings and circumstances, it will be important to capture this variability, addressing the questions: What works for whom in what circumstances, and why?
Research Papers
The following peer-reviewed papers have been written by Trauma Informed Oregon staff or collaborators.
- The Trauma-Informed Climate Scale-10 (TICS-10): A Reduced Measure of Staff Perceptions of the Service Environment
- Trauma-Informed Nursing Practice
- Knowledge, Principal Support, Self-Efficacy, and Beliefs Predict Commitment to Trauma-Informed Care
- Implementing Trauma-Informed Care: Recommendations on the Process
Research Notes
Research Notes provide an avenue for Trauma Informed Oregon to share our general thoughts and opinions related to trauma informed care research and evaluation, or to share specific findings that are not summarized in a formal paper or report.
Evaluation Statement
Research and evaluation at TIO prioritizes antiracist practices and perspectives and uses CLAS standards to work toward diversity, equity, and inclusion.
TIO is committed building and disseminating knowledge related to:
The implementation of trauma informed policies, practices, and procedures that reflect CLAS standards, including:
- The conditions that support implementation in different service systems.
- The conditions that may present barriers to implementation in different service systems.
- Benchmarks by which programs, organizations, and systems can track progress and hold themselves and one another accountable for ongoing implementation efforts.
Strategies for evaluating the impact of trauma informed care in programs, organizations, systems. This includes:
- Metrics to assess the level of TIC achieved in programs/organizations/systems.
- Metrics to assess change in workforce experiences and behaviors.
- Procedures to assess changes in experience of service recipients (how they feel)
- Metrics to assess change in short- and long-term outcomes for service recipients.
- Metrics to assess impact on organizations.
Evaluations from Sites Implementing TIC
Trauma Informed Oregon works with organizations to implement trauma informed care. This offers an opportunity to evaluate various aspects of the implementation process. The following full reports or summary of findings are offered, with permission from the contracting organizations, as a way to further our collective TIC learning and implementation efforts.
- Implementing TIC throughout an organization is an agency wide effort. Read about a youth service agency's experience.
- Staff knowledge, buy-in and commitment are important when implementing TIC. Read what one human service organization learned about this.
- Using TIO's Standards of Practice is one way to assess TIC implementation. Learn about one health care center's use of the Standards to inform their process.
- Learn about a behavioral health center's effort to implement TIC including their process, challenges, and results.
- A rural health care clinic learns that TIC implementation takes time, patience, and commitment. Read more about their experience implementing TIC.