“For There Is Always Light…BE it”

And what does Amanda Gorman’s poem have to do with trauma-informed/trauma responsive care? Thinking about behaviors that point to someone who is not okay…perhaps, just perhaps the 6 year old who brings a gun to school and shoots their teacher is NOT okay…were their red flags before the shooting, and did any school personnel respond to the “flags”? What do we need besides better security measures? We need to be the giver of the help; not just a catalyst to refer someone for help…we need to indeed, be “brave enough to Be it”. We need to connect with the child, teen, adult, work mate, family who aren’t okay. If we have a realization about trauma (i.e. an understanding), if we can recognize the signs, if we can respond to the signs, and if we can resist retraumatizing, WE can be the “help”. See something, DO something…don’t refer out; connect.

I started this a week or so ago, when the article was in the paper about the 6 year old who shot his teacher and it does seem like this was a child, like all children, who should have been seen and heard and responded to AND given the services he needed.  What has been learned since is that he is a special needs student, with an “acute disability. It seems that he had an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) and it was his parents providing the one on one school aide.  His parents weren’t with him the day he shot his teacher, who took up the slack, who became his one on one from the moment he entered school by himself?   If we wear a trauma informed/trauma responsive lens, we are always aware of the possibilities of someone NOT being okay and needing to connect.

About Author

Elaine Spicer

I have been a social worker for 31 years. My work has been with families and children first in the area of Child Protective Services and then as a therapist working with the same population. I have worked with divorcing and divorced parents teaching co-parenting techniques, supervised therapists and have been a social worker for emotionally challenged children and adolescents in an inner city school system. About 7 years ago I was introduced to the work of Bryan Post and, as a friend and colleague said at the time…I went Post-al. All of my previous assumptions and indeed my work using behavioral interventions, got pushed aside. And along came the realization that none of the interventions, meant to change behaviors, had anything in common with helping children heal from the trauma they had experienced. My best work these days is as a coach/consultant for parents, other caregivers, and teachers. The services I provide are parent education, coaching, consulting and supervising. I am the mother of five adult children and grandmother to five. I am both a bio mom and an adoptive mom.

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