Posted on: July 7, 2021
Alie Huxta, Associate Director of Partnerships and Strategic Planning (Building Wealth and Health Networks)
Trauma-informed care is increasingly becoming a priority for organizations across the country who understand that “what happened” to their clients is just as important as the behaviors they exhibit in the here and now. . While there is still much work to be done, this is important progress in treating our clients and customers with the dignity they deserve.
Taking this work further, organizations can address the collective trauma of their staff and clients by creating collective healing spaces that resist re-traumatization and hold themselves and organizations accountable for the harm caused. need to be addressed.
What is collective trauma?
Collective trauma is a series of harmful or life-threatening events experienced by a group of people that has a lasting negative impact on their mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual health. is. It could be a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or forest fire, or a political injustice, such as genocide, police brutality, or Native American boarding schools. Collective healing in these contexts is a cultural, political, social, and physical process that acknowledges wrongdoing and hardship, begins a positive process of taking responsibility, restoring resources, and repairing harm. is.
Building a wealth and health network
The Center for Building Communities Free of Hunger (Network) has been carrying out this work within the welfare system for the past six years. The Network is a trauma-informed, healing-centered financial literacy program that integrates emotional and peer support to promote self-efficacy and resilience in traditionally under-resourced communities.
Identifying oppression and discrimination
The network addresses collective trauma by first educating its staff and members (program participants) about the very localized and specific forms of oppression and discrimination experienced by its members. As we work with primarily Black women in North and West Philadelphia, we learn about the federally sponsored redlining and racial housing discrimination that created the region’s status quo from the 1920s to today. A newly rural population in south-central Pennsylvania examines how the opioid crisis has impacted their communities. We are learning about how pharmaceutical companies caused the crisis and plan to create lessons based on this content.
This approach helps members understand and understand that neighborhoods and communities are the way they are because of discriminatory policies, not necessarily the fault of individuals within the community. Helpful. This allows them to take a lot of responsibility off of themselves and use that energy to empower themselves and move towards collective change.
demand accountability
Once we identify collective trauma, we must hold them (including ourselves) accountable for causing that harm in the first place. This network focuses on empowering individuals and communities to initiate change themselves. This is also done by holding leaders and organizations accountable for the current and historical harms they have caused. To us, this looks like something that requires changes in welfare services and systems at local and national levels. Once members complete a networking class, they are invited to join the Network Advisory Council (NAC). NAC is an organization that advocates for changes to the cash welfare system known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other public benefits. NAC members and their leadership teams speak directly to legislators, the Department of Human Services and others about the changes needed to make the welfare system work for families.
Just last year, the NAC convened a panel to meet with the USDA to request changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/Food Stamps). They advocated increasing the monthly TANF amount, which has remained unchanged since 1990, as part of a campaign to meet needs across the state. They also spoke at the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Association conference about why TANF is particularly traumatic for Black families. They believe that years of criminalizing recipients and stigmatizing their participation with racist and false images of welfare queens are a major source of collective trauma. accused of being.
Other ways to demonstrate responsibility for collective trauma include:
- Apologize
- continue to educate yourself
- providing compensation
- Change policies to reduce future harm and trauma
- Repair and restore resources in affected communities
Reflect and educate yourself
One of the ways we take responsibility for addressing harm and resisting re-traumatization is through our own reflection and education. Our staff assesses how their identity, power, and privilege are perceived by network members based on age, race, gender, sexuality, religion, education, region of residence, and more. They are thinking about how to create space to openly discuss these dynamics. Staff examines what biases, challenges, and commonalities exist within these identity and power differences.
For example, as a white woman in a room with all the members of the Black Women’s Network, I ask myself: “What are your past experiences with white female social workers?” What are the historical and political relationships between white female social workers and black women receiving TANF? ” Asking these questions makes my very existence more important to black women who have only ever interacted with white women through state-mandated programs and institutions that perpetuate images of “white saviors” and anti-blackness. I now have a better understanding of what can be a trigger. . Based on past experiences with institutionalized racism, you may be able to better understand why you are not trusted.
Through this self-exploration, our staff positions our classrooms to have tough conversations about race, class, gender, political oppression, and economic inequality. It always comes up when discussing the political and social context of members’ neighborhoods and lives.
Creating a healing space
Finally, we intentionally create healing spaces for people to talk about the collective traumas they experience by building nourishing spaces for peer support and mutual care. In class, we will talk about what collective healing looks like on a larger level and how we can activate this in our communities. Collective healing not only looks like it holds leaders accountable, but also allows members to see that their communities are already vibrant and full of creativity and resilience, elevating the healing that is happening there. It also happens when we talk about. When discussing trauma, we often forget to honor and name how far people have come.
Through celebration, focusing on joy, and creating a space where members see each other as sources of support rather than staff in the room, members continue the collective healing that they have participated in for generations. .
- Healing from collective trauma takes many forms, including:
- Engage in creative activities such as poetry, visual art, music, etc.
- Build a system of autonomous support and mutual aid
- Sharing the wisdom and stories of elders
- accept the idea of hope
- Fostering intergenerational resilience
- Celebrate a vibrant community
