In 2021, an opportunity arose to bid for funding from NHS England’s National Health and Justice Team, to develop a systems approach to enhancing support for vulnerable Children and Young People who have or may have experienced trauma or adversity and those at risk of encountering the Youth Justice System. Partners from across the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care System (formerly known as Humber, Coast and Vale) including Health, Local Authorities and the VCS worked together to develop this bid and ensure that its aims and implementation aligns with - and compliments - the broader transformation work already underway across the geography. Our bid was successful and ‘The Children and Young People’s Trauma Informed Care Programme’ is one of 12 Vanguards delivering this work across the country. This work will be a 10-year programme which commenced in 2022 with ringfenced funding for the programme from NHSE. The Programme sits within the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Collaborative in the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.
The model of the ‘The Children and Young People’s Trauma Informed Care Programme’ has two main aspects. One is delivering system change across the Partnership to develop and embed a consistent Trauma Informed approach across all partners working with vulnerable Children and Young People at risk of offending. The target cohort for years 1-3 are Children and Young People aged 10-19 who are at risk of becoming first time entrants or of reoffending in the Youth Justice System: The other is to test new interventions (known as Test and Learn sites) which divert young people from becoming first time entrants into the Youth Justice System.
We are delighted to be working in partnership with the Violence Prevention Partnership to deliver ARC Trauma Informed training to a number of stakeholders across the Humber region to maximise reach and support for Children and Young People who may have experienced trauma. By training and supporting professionals and listening to the voices of Children and Young People, together we want to prevent traumatic experiences from seeding challenges that lead young people into the Youth Justice System - or escalate their involvement with these processes. So far, we have trained 278 professionals through 9 2 x day training courses and 21 senior leaders across the ICS.
The Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) Framework is a flexible, components-based intervention developed for children and adolescents who have experienced complex trauma, along with their caregiving systems. ARC’s foundation is built upon four key areas of study: normative childhood development, traumatic stress, attachment, and risk and resilience. Drawing from these areas, ARC identifies important childhood skills and competencies which are routinely shown to be negatively affected by traumatic stress and by attachment disruptions, and which, when addressed predict a resilient outcome.
ARC is designed as both an individual-level clinical intervention, to be used in treatment settings for youth and families, and as an organisational framework, to be used in service systems to support trauma-informed care. The concepts identified by ARC may be applied to individuals from birth through young adulthood and have been effectively used with youth with a range of developmental and cognitive functioning levels, and with a wide range of symptom presentations. Caregiver goals are designed to translate across many different types of caregiving systems, including primary (i.e. biological, kin, and foster parents), milieu (i.e. residential, group home), and organisational (i.e. teachers, youth program providers) systems of care.
The aim of our training is to help and support organisations to progress through the 4 stages below and ultimately become fully Trauma Informed:
Trauma-Aware
- Individuals and the organisation at all levels understand trauma, its effects and that behaviour is the adaptation that children needed to survive.
Trauma-Sensitive
- Individuals and the organisation at all levels can operationalise some concepts of a Trauma-Informed approach.
Trauma-Responsive
- Individuals and the organisation recognise and respond to trauma, enabling changes in behaviour and strengthening resilience and protective factors.
Trauma-Informed
- The culture of the whole system, including all work practices and settings reflects a Trauma-Informed approach.
Roles of those that have been trained include: Pathway Leads, Youth Mentors, Therapists, Child Exploitation Intervention Teams and many more.
Some Organisations that have been trained include: Hull City Council, Hull Youth Justice, Humberside Police, Barnardos, the Shalom Youth Project and many more.
Children and Young People are often described as hard to reach or hard to engage when often it is the services and systems around the child and their family which are hard to access and engage with. The joint work of ‘The Children and Young People’s Trauma Informed Care Programme’ and the Violence Prevention Partnership will ensure that all services working with vulnerable Children and Young People at a universal, targeted and specialist level are able to provide a consistent Trauma Informed approach to the care they provide and ensure improved accessibility and support. It will also ensure that both strategically and operationally organisations are supported to become truly trauma Informed.
Click here for more details along with key Programme documents
Contact: Cat Jones - Programme Partnership Manager
Email: catherine.jones93@nhs.net
