Trauma-Informed Care
Build a Trauma-Informed Youth Service Sector
Illinois Collaboration on Youth (ICOY) supports a culture of safety, empowerment, and healing and we believe that understanding the signs, effects, and science of trauma is critical for effectively serving and supporting young people. This knowledge allows staff, volunteers, and consumers to recognize when a young person is experiencing trauma and respond in a trauma-informed way (which includes using a lens of cultural competency and historical trauma). Our trauma-Informed services include training and capacity-building for organizations and communities.
Strengthen Trauma-Informed Capacity
Since 2009, ICOY has provided technical assistance and training to youth service providers, clinicians, and community programs throughout Illinois. We have adopted a public health approach to our trauma-informed education and training to strengthen youth-serving organizations’ trauma-informed capacity, working directly with hundreds of agencies and communities to build and sustain trauma-informed policy, practice, and culture.
ICOY’s Trauma-Informed Capacity Building Includes:
- Implementation of the research-informed Capacity-Building Assessment of Trauma-Informed Care for Organizations (CBAT-O). This tool is a self-assessment for organizations to examine every level of organizational structure, from the board, leadership, program implementation and oversight, and operations, and analyze the systems established within the organization to assess if they are meeting standards of practice. This tool can be adapted to be utilized within a single program, the entire organization, and community collaboratives.
- Development of a trauma-informed action plan for organizations. From the results of the CBAT-O, the ICOY Trauma Specialist will analyze the results and provide the organization with a comprehensive report on the results of the assessment. The Trauma Specialist will then meet with the organizational leadership and/or trauma-informed implementation team, to review the results and develop an action plan specific to the needs of the organization that builds off of the strengths and supports areas of improvement.
- Achievement of the trauma-informed action plan. Building off the action plan, the ICOY Trauma Specialist will work directly to support the organization’s trauma-informed implementation team in fulfilling the action plan. This type of implementation support can take many forms from providing training, revision of policies and procedures, marketing, resources, coaching, etc.
- Completion of a post-CBAT-O. The entire capacity-building process typically takes organizations 9 to 12 months. At the end of services, ICOY typically provides a post-CBAT-O assessment to provide leadership and/or the trauma-informed implementation team an opportunity to see the areas of growth as an organization towards being trauma-informed.
ICOY provides a wide variety of trauma-informed trainings, both in-person and web-based. View the list of the most common trainings provided; however, additional trainings may be developed based on the need of the organization.
To learn more about becoming a part of ICOY’s trauma-informed capacity-building program, contact Director of Trauma Initiatives Jocelyn Vega.
Resources
ICOY also offers online trauma-informed training videos and other resources. We encourage agency staff (human resources personnel, supervisors, and administrators) to use these important training videos for staff orientation and ongoing staff training.
