Online resource helps young people recover from trauma of care and custody systems

• Charity develops digital toolkit for practitioners and young people to understand trauma and how to reduce its impact

• The toolkit includes a guide to the Trauma Recovery Model and accessible training on trauma-informed working

• Feedback from practitioners and young people has been positive with the toolkit accessed more than 800 times

ACTION

A digital toolkit centred around a trauma-informed approach is being used to better support those working with care- and custody-experienced young people.

Informing Futures was launched as a suite of free resources almost two years ago by charity 1625 Independent People having previously been awarded National Lottery funding.

The charity says the website is a legacy that shares learning gathered from its Future 4 Me project which worked with groups of vulnerable 16- to 25-year-olds in Bristol and the South West from 2012 to 2019.

Both initiatives recognise that care- and custody-experienced young people are more likely to be disadvantaged across a range of issues such as mental and physical health as well as educational attainment. This in turn affects the way in which they access support services and interact with professionals and other sections of society.

Clare Birch, the charity’s service manager who led on developing the toolkit, says the findings from Future 4 Me showed that many services were not adequately supporting homeless young people, particularly those leaving care.

“They were really falling through the gaps and were unable to access services in a way that was helpful to them,” she explains.

She says the project was later extended to focus on young care and custody leavers after the charity identified how they were being particularly disadvantaged.

“The thing many of them have in common is that they have experienced trauma,” says Birch. “If they’ve ended up in care or custody between the ages of 16 and 25, there’s always been a history of adverse childhood experiences.”

The website has been intentionally designed to be accessed free of charge, with no requirement for users to login or share personal details. The decision to launch in this way means that it offers universal access with the potential for resources to be shared as widely as possible, explains Birch.

“We wanted it to be a resource that anybody – an employer, health visitor or GP – could look at and learn something about better ways to engage with young people who have experienced trauma,” she adds.

The charity rejected the idea of running two versions of the toolkit: an expert website for practitioners and a more simplified version for members of the public. This was a key decision influenced by feedback from young people, says Birch.

“Care and custody leavers told us how difficult it is to keep repeating their story to people in order to be understood,” she adds.

“That could be everybody from education to healthcare providers – literally everywhere you go in the system in order for people to understand it might be hard for you to get to your appointments.”

Despite delays caused by the onset of the pandemic, the toolkit eventually went live at the end of December 2020 after a phased launch to the charity’s partners and stakeholders.

The website is broken down into five sections: psychologically informed environments, co-produced resources, supporting positive mental health, trauma-informed working and integrated working.

Each section offers a range of different resources such as Powerpoint presentations, training modules, self-assessment tools, quizzes and short films.

Birch says there was a clear intention behind the design of certain sections of the website.

“Within our co-produced resources section, the modules were intentionally designed to offer bite-sized training which an individual could read through themselves or take to a team meeting and share with colleagues,” she says.

Topics such as trauma-informed working are broken down into 27 slides covering areas such as an introduction to trauma, how it affects young people, adverse childhood experiences and a guide to the Trauma Recovery Model.

The charity says its training on trauma-informed working includes interactive elements of discussion and group exercises that encourage participants to apply their learning.

“There’s notes on every slide which means you don’t have to be an expert in the subject to deliver the training yourself – it walks you through it stage by stage,” adds Birch.

A tinted box provides a brief description of the training module including an estimated timeframe in which it could be delivered to a group, as well as a recommended point in which to factor in a break.

Suggestions for further reading that include useful links are also listed at the end of each module.

Young people were closely involved in shaping the content for this section, explains Birch.

They helped to produce a short film, In The Lead, in which young people with experience of care and custody share their experiences of receiving quality support. “But throughout it was important for us to showcase their voices which is why you’ll see quotes from young people in as many places as possible on the website,” Birch says.

The toolkit’s section on psychologically informed environments (PIEs) provides users with an introduction to the charity’s own approach to delivering a PIE as well as resources for organisations to expand their own PIE.

Further sub-sections cover areas such as the benefits of reflective practice, including tips on setting up a reflective practice structure.

“It’s quite a diverse set of resources,” Birch reflects. “We’ve tried to make sure the thread of learning to work in a psychologically informed way goes through everything that we do.

“We’ve shared a lot of our organisational resources about how we embedded that in our work which is another strand for any organisation wanting to think about how they can be more trauma informed.”

There are also links to independent evaluations, reports and guidance which have been included for funders and commissioners to help them inform service design and commissioning.

“We’ve included reports about different accommodation pilots we’ve done, for example, and written up some of our findings about how to be trauma informed as an accommodation provider,” she adds.

IMPACT

Since January 2022, the toolkit has been accessed by 864 users with the most viewed pages featuring information on trauma-informed working, including the Trauma Recovery Model, and psychologically informed environments.

While the charity says it is aware of certain key partners that are using the toolkit, it is unable to analyse in detail which users are engaging with the website.

“We know that quite a high percentage of new people are still visiting the website,” explains Birch.

“However, the downside of not having gone down the route of asking users to log in, is that we do not have detailed insight into who is using the toolkit.

“That’s the price we were willing to pay to make it more accessible.”

Feedback left by external practitioners at the launch of the toolkit in 2020 praised the resource for its “great understanding” of the strengths and needs of young people.

One user of the website said it was “totally intuitive, easy to navigate and full of the most useful tools that not only will benefit those working with care leavers but also others with complex needs”.

• Read more in CYP Now's Trauma-Informed Services Special Report