WITHDRAWN: Building a Trauma Informed Community: Strategies and Lessons Learned from a University-Community Partnership

In the summer of 2017, nearly 200 community members, leaders and service providers came together for a two-day summit on trauma and toxic stress designed to increase readiness for long-term sustainable community change regarding implementation of trauma informed care across multiple systems. This workshop's objectives are (1) explain the local context which gave rise to this community-wide, multi-stakeholder two-day summit to better understand trauma; (2) create an experiential learning environment where participants are invited to engage in strategies employed in facilitation of community-wide, cross-sector summits from a collective impact framework; and (3) evaluate our community's approach, accomplishments, lessons learned and remaining challenges in the journey to becoming a trauma informed community. Workshop panelists are university faculty and staff, and experienced community stakeholders, including a juvenile court judge and the executive director of Family Connection-Communities in Schools, the backbone organization instrumental in this partnership.

First, this workshop describes our university-community partnership and our common purpose of establishing a community-wide, cross-sector approach to addressing trauma (i) with a common language, experience, purpose, and vision of individual, family & community healing; (ii) where all children feel safe; (iii) that creates policies & practices supporting effective assessment & intervention; and (iv) operates from central guiding principles incorporating developmentally appropriate, strengths-based, culturally responsive approaches.

Next, an overview of the collective impact framework and consensus-building methodology is presented to illustrate our process for increasing readiness for long-term, sustainable, cross-sector community change regarding trauma, toxic stress and implementation of trauma-informed care. Then, workshop attendees will be invited to experience and apply the strategies and skills employed. Specifically, this portion of the workshop will be modeled after and parallel the facilitation methods of our summit, which was organized using collective impact and consensus building methods. Attendees will be invited to participate in small group discussions centering around building a trauma informed nation: 1) Common Understanding: What do you see as the individual, interpersonal and community level impact of trauma in the United States? What are some strengths and challenges in addressing trauma with knowledge, support and services? 2) Common Vision: After being guided through a visioning exercise, attendees will be asked to brainstorm on post it notes the steps they believe we need to take to move our nation from where it currently is to where we envision it to be. Using a technology of participation model, attendees will be asked to group responses into common themes. Based on these common themes, a list of goals will be generated. 3) Common Strategy: Using a world cafe model, attendees will be asked to identify steps needed to reach the goals generated from the previous session in the first round.

Lastly, panelists will discuss results and key themes from the evaluation as well as accomplishments, challenges, lessons learned. This workshop will conclude with an interactive discussion about implications and next steps for culturally-responsive, trauma-informed, and community-centered social work research, practice and policy that works to end gender based, family and community violence.