6 Braiding Trauma-and-Violence Informed Care Practice Guidelines into Competenci
6 Braiding Trauma-and-Violence Informed Care Practice Guidelines into Competencies for Social Workers working in Rural and Remote Locations
Carrie LaVallie and Wanda Seidlikoski Yurach
Trauma-and-violence informed care (TVIC) guidelines and practice policies in human service work impress upon the need to include historical and cultural principles. A culturally comprehensive approach for TVIC is not available for many mental-health providers working in rural, remote, and northern locations in Canada, including social workers. Canada’s colonial legacy created experiences for Indigenous peoples that western[1]-based approaches/practices often overlook and/or cause traumatic triggering. Acknowledging the historical impact colonization has on Indigenous peoples’ health, and understanding the lingering effects of intergenerational trauma, provides key insights into the health and wellness of rural and remotely located Indigenous peoples. Being trauma-and-violence informed “is not about ‘treating’ trauma,” it is about focusing on enhancing safety, control, and resilience (Government of Canada, 2018, p. 3); acknowledging cultural contexts of understanding and healing; and in turn creating psychological safety for both the client and the provider. This chapter braids a trauma-and-violence informed framework and the Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Framework (Sasakamoose et al., 2017) with social-work practice competencies, creating a more comprehensive approach for social workers working with Indigenous populations in rural and remote communities.
Cultural understandings of healing engage figurative language to explain health concepts. Creating relationships with clients by reducing triggering communication and using a common language can create a trusting space for sharing. Braiding TVIC guidelines, Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Framework (ICRF), with social-work practice competencies, explores how we explain the same experiences through our beliefs and approaches that support healing. Current healing systems rely on dominant western perspectives; therefore, to create effective decolonized services, social workers need to incorporate treatment and intervention approaches that reflect the worldview of the client. Decolonization is the process of balancing population needs and countering western dominance. Decolonizing the dominant western perspective for trauma-and-violence informed care means prioritizing local understandings of health and harmonizing them with proven western-based methods, within the Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Framework. This chapter uses the metaphor of a braid to illustrate how social workers blend trauma-and-violence universal precautions that are culturally suitable into their practice. The first section introduces you to TVIC concepts and the second introduces you to the Indigenous cultural responsiveness theory. The third section explains how social workers can harmonize, blend, or braid these three approaches into