The Race Equality Foundation has been commissioned by Barnardo’s SEEN to investigate the impact of racism, trauma and intergenerational trauma on the lives and experiences of Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic young people, children and families, and to assess whether trauma informed practice accounts for racism.
Trauma and racism can have a profound, negative, and lasting impact on a child’s development. If it goes unresolved it can be passed on to the next generation. Despite the fact that Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic young people are thought to be at a greater risk of experiencing trauma, due to a variety of structural factors, their particular experiences and needs have not always been at the centre of developing trauma informed research and care.
What is trauma?
Trauma is an emotional response to an event, series of events or set of circumstances that has caused physical, mental or life threatening harm and has resulted in negatively impacting an individual’s mental, physical and spiritual well-being. If trauma goes unresolved it can be passed onto the next generation, this is called intergenerational trauma.
What is racism?
Racism is the act of discriminating against someone based on their ethnicity. It is a process where systems, policies, actions, and attitudes create unequal and unfair opportunities and outcomes for people based on their ethnicity.
What is trauma informed practice?
Trauma informed practice is a way for services and practitioners to better engage with people seeking support and services. A trauma informed approach seeks to be universal by recognising the widespread impact of trauma as well as recognising that most people trying to access services and support will have experienced trauma. The aim is for services and practitioners to respond to this by engaging with service users in a way that reduces the risk of re-traumatisation. Trauma informed practice consists of the following principles: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, empowerment, cultural consideration (OHID, 2021) When properly implemented these should aid service users to feel heard, validated, respected. It is important to bear in mind that trauma informed practice should not replace trauma treatment or therapies but should be used alongside these to help mitigate the impact of trauma (EIF, 2022).
Project Outline
The first stage of this project involves establishing a co-production team made up of Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic children and young people between the ages of 14 and 25. This co-production group will explore the impact of trauma, definitions of trauma and racism, settings in which young people might experience racism and trauma, racism as trauma and the impact of intergenerational trauma for ethnic minoritised families and communities. We will also be producing a variety of co-designed creative outputs. Another aspect involves collecting UK-based evidence on the experiences of trauma, racism, and trauma-informed care among Black, Asian, and minoritised ethnic individuals and using the data collected as well as recommendations from the co-production group to produce a series of briefing papers which will explore these topics in more depth.
The second stage of this project is to identify voluntary organisations and services providing trauma-informed interventions, which work with Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic children, young people and their families. This includes evaluating our own Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities programme (SFSC) through the lens of trauma informed practice. We will also be collaborating with partner organisations in order to spotlight what good and inclusive trauma informed practice looks like for Black, Asian, and minoritised ethnic children and young people. We will use these evaluations and findings to produce a training programme aimed at frontline practitioners to help enhance their knowledge of trauma informed practice. This programme will specially look at how to meet the needs and experiences of minoritised ethnic individuals and communities.
Throughout this project we will be disseminating our work and findings to a wide ranging audience through conferences, blog posts and reports , to support the embedding of better trauma informed practice.
The project is taking place between: February 2023- August 2024
If you would like more information on the project, please contact: Muminah@racefound.org.uk
