Implementing trauma-informed care: experts by experience perspective
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Implementing trauma-informed care: what is it like for experts by experience?
IRAS ID
325470
Contact name
Alex Turner
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 1 days
Research summary
Trauma-informed care (TIC) is an organisational change process which recognises that the experience of trauma is common among people who access services (mental health, drug & alcohol, homelessness charities) and is focused on preventing the re-traumatisation of people who use these services (Harris & Fallot, 2001).
A trauma-informed service understands the impact of trauma and is responsive to individuals’ respective needs by embedding this knowledge within the organisations policies, procedures and practices (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration; SAMHSA, 2014).
People with direct experience of mental health services, either as a service user themselves or as a carer for someone else, are commonly known as experts by experience. Experts by experience are increasingly employed to work in collaboration with services on service development.
Collaboration is also one of the key principles of TIC (Harris & Fallot, 2001; Sweeney & Taggart, 2018) and experts by experience and staff are working together to implement TIC, by designing, delivering and evaluating trauma-informed services (Thirkle et al, 2022).
Research which has explored staff members' experience of implementing TIC suggests it is complicated. Some studies report that being involved in TIC changes had a positive impact on relationships (Chandler, 2008) and others reporting that TIC elicited strong, difficult emotions (Sweeney et al, 2016).
However, no research in the UK has explored experts by experience's perspective of implementing TIC, despite this group being a key part of the workforce.
This study aims to address this gap in the literature by exploring how experts by experience find implementing TIC within services in the UK.
Experts by experience who have supported services to implement TIC will be invited to undertake a semi-structured interview. The results will be analysed via thematic analysis to identify reoccurring patterns and important themes.
The findings could have important implications for how TIC is implemented in UK services going forward.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/EM/0087
Date of REC Opinion
28 Apr 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion