TRAUMA-INFORMED STRATEGIES
Early childhood trauma has an impact on cognitive, emotional, and physical development. It can also affect expressive and receptive language development. Trauma significantly affects the way people respond to, process and remember events.
Therefore, people with backgrounds of complex trauma often present with diagnoses that can include intellectual disability, developmental delay, autism, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, ADHD or borderline personality disorder.
During the process of gathering evidence with someone who has experienced complex trauma, these are important considerations:
• Trauma impairs brain processing and integration and therefore restricts the capacity to: - respond to events in ways that are considered normal, for example, expected emotional responses of fear, shock or pain may be inhibited or atypical
- recall events in accurate sequence or detail
• Discussion of traumatic experiences can (re)activate instinctive “fight-flight-freeze” responses
• “Difficult” behaviour may be the product of coping mechanisms and attempted self-protection in light of prior adverse experiences and in response to perceived threats. Be alert for triggers; these are different for everyone.
• Complex trauma can create a culture of accepting abusive behaviours as normal. Therefore, a client’s concept of “consent” may be different from societal norms.
Strategies for getting a more accurate account
You can build rapport and create a trusted and calming environment by:
• using a soothing voice (deep tone, slow pace, soft voice)
• breathing deeply and slowly, even placing your hand on your abdomen to consciously deepen and slow your breathing
• using an open body posture and facial expression; keep your movements relaxed
• looking at ways to give the person some control over the process. See page 26 for strategies to create clarity and predictability.
Avoid questions that ask the client to interpret their feelings or opinions about what is right or wrong – instead, ask factual questions that do not ask the person to make a judgement.
For example:
• Do not ask questions such as “Were you scared?” Instead ask “How did your body react? Did your heart beat faster? Did you start sweating? Was it hard to breathe?”
• Do not ask whether the client consented or whether what happened was right or wrong. Instead ask “Describe what happened?” and “What happened next” to elicit details.
See also - page 22 for more about information processing - page 26 for information on sensory overload - page 30 for sequencing a chronologically accurate narrative
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