"Trauma Informed Care Meets Spiritual Care": A Workshop for Chaplains

Trauma-informed care refers to a growing body of knowledge, multiple sets of tools for practitioners, and an approach to providing care -- usually healthcare and social services. While it is a complex field, one of its primary aims involves helping practitioners to understand how client and patient trauma shape medical, psychological, and communal experience, and affect the provision of and outcomes associated with care. In the past 15 years, the trauma-informed care "movement" has generated thousands of publications, hundreds of conferences, workshops and webinars, and has gained strength internationally. Members of the U.S. Congress, the National Institute of Health, and most U.S. states have, in recent years -- all recognized the "trauma-informed" approach as a vital resource for helping practitioners to meet the needs of vulnerable populations, and for helping to solve major social problems. 

Despite the fact that "trauma-informed care" has become a familiar concept to many healthcare and social service providers, certain professions have been neglected, as information, training and supports have been disseminated. Chaplains -- working in hospitals, hospice facilities, prisons and jails, and other community settings -- have often been left entirely out of the conversation, and many are still unfamiliar with the "trauma-informed care" movement and the resources it can provide. This workshop, representing a collaboration between spiritual care providers and community and university educators, briefly introduces the field of trauma-informed care, and creates an initial space for dialogue about how trauma-informed care might reach and benefit chaplains and all of the communities served by spiritual care providers.