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Dr Rebecca Hamer

Multidimensional Trauma

and

Rotherham’s Trauma-Informed Community

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The Origins and Roots

CRESR and The Trauma and Resilience Service

Exclusion and problematisation

Criminalisation

Problematic Substance Use

Survival/Street sex work

Trauma

I will attempt to summarise the journey that has bought me here today, presenting about a fellowship exploring a new model of trauma and doing this alongside pioneering work being done in Rotherham to address the impact of pervasive, chronic trauma throughout a community.

My PhD gave voice to 23 women with histories of street sex working and addiction, and came from an unease with the medicalisation and moralisation of these women, who I knew from professional experience, had often experienced and continued to experience horrific violence and exclusion. Alongside this, I was introduced to Rotherham’s Trauma and Resilience Service to provide an independent evaluation.

This was very much a process of learning while evaluating, and as my PhD developed, so did my understanding of trauma, trauma-informed approaches and the importance of this. In short, I became trauma-informed while my research did also, due to the immersive and in-depth experience of evaluating the TRS alongside my PhD.

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The Trauma and Resilience Service

Systems Change

Training, supervision, consultation and network building

Safety and Stabilisation above all

Recognising and Responding to trauma responses

Eve: ‘the best thing I’ve ever done because it’s helped me to understand why I make the choices I make, why I do or why I’ve done what I’ve done for a long time and it helps me now to understand there are things now that have a historical context.’

Naomi: fight, flight of freeze, understanding all of that, understanding why I couldn’t fight. And I understand why I froze. I felt guilty for not fighting back and not having the courage to speak up sooner than I did. So just understanding that and why I couldn’t at the time, you know, it’s my body’s way of coping.’

Gemma “The way she delivered it, I didn’t have to go back into my childhood or my past because it were the way she explained it to me, you can tell people what you want to tell them. You don’t have to expose yourself.”

Cassie: “She made me feel like I was somebody... At the start of the conversation, she makes you feel like you’re something when you’re actually feeling degraded, dirty, neglected, ashamed, embarrassed. She actually lifts that a bit and it takes (ignore my language) a lot of balls for someone to do that job…for someone to make you feel like you’re something when you’ve lived with this for 20/30 years, and to make you feel that you can achieve things.”

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Multidimensional Trauma

Community Trauma

Individual Trauma

Systemic Trauma

We are all well aware of the historical and ongoing trauma caused by the widespread CSE across Rotherham and, within that, the systemic failings and impact on a community that is already battling embedded inequality and deprivation. My work with the TRS has demonstrated the transformative impact of their work with a range of sectors in terms of changing systemic understandings of and ability to respond to trauma, and most recently and encouragingly, in the lives of survivors themselves.

The parallels between the women I spoke to for my PhD and the Rotherham survivors were stark, in the repeated individual experiences of trauma but also in their histories of systemic mistreatment; women were misunderstood as aggressive, chaotic or disinterested rather than recognised as exhibiting symptoms of trauma. The communities they grew up in can also be described as bearing the signs of trauma; of intergenerational, place-based trauma alongside poverty and exclusion, manifesting in inequality of opportunity and social dislocation. It is this constellation of individual, community and systemic trauma that I term Multidimensional Trauma. It is this multidimensional trauma that is prevalent in the lives of women who have survived CSE but also other polyvictimisation and traumas, and who may often be struggling in multiple services, with addiction, criminality and difficulties with relationships and parenting, their physical and mental health.

However, as Sherry’s research attests, where there is chronic, multidimensional trauma, there can also be recovery and hope.

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Survivor Case Studies

Trauma-Informed Research Design

Trusted professionals as gatekeepers and experts

Stages of consent

Highlighting strengths and progress

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Understanding survivors’ journeys

Interviews with survivors- 7 survivors

Interviews with 13 members of the

Trauma-Informed professional network

Onto the fellowship itself, and the idea of the Trauma Informed Community: this research aims to demonstrate the presence of trauma in Rotherham at individual, systemic and community levels and use this baseline to explore the impact of the TRS model upon these. This will include use of data to profile and monitor changes in individual, systemic and community trauma.

Survivor interviews will be conducted in partnership with the voluntary sector who are supported by the TRS and I am able to draw on my knowledge of conducting ethical, safe and empowering research with survivors. These will avoid discussing the traumatic events and focus on experiences in services, how these may have been challenging, examples of best practice and how they could be improved. This will highlight sectors and areas where the TRS model can provide support to improve the overall experience of survivors and the permeation of TIP throughout Rotherham.

I would like to speak to a range of professionals but will be starting by speaking with those who have received support in trauma informed practice, focusing on how this has changed their understanding of survivors, their ways of working and the impact that they have seen upon survivors.

The PAG will bring together senior academics and practitioners, as yet unidentified, to steer and advise on the fellowship.

Part of the fellowship outcomes and a key means by which to bridge the gap between research and practice in the field of trauma is the Trauma Informed Research Group which currently brings together practitioners and academics to guide the project and incorporate a trauma-informed perspective through all our work.

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The Principles of Trauma-Informed Care�

Safety

Trust

Choice and Control

Empowerment

|Travelling Through Trauma was the final TRS Evaluation and by 2022, it was possible to speak to survivors themselves as they were supported and empowered by a trauma-informed professional network. They were also reaping the benefits of this and in a position to benefit from taking part in research.

Survivors talked about the positive impact in their lives of trauma-informed stabilisation sessions and counselling, though behind the scenes of this there has been a huge amount of systems change, skill development and relationship building among services.

Grounding and stabilisation techniques help survivors manage their often overwhelming and debilitating trauma symptoms. Trauma informed counselling to help them understand their histories and responses, remove blame and increase self understanding and compassion

In interviewing survivors about their experiences with the TRS partnered services and how this had supported them, it became apparent that the impact was far reaching.

I would like to let some quotes from survivors illustrate how trauma-informed systems change can redress the experience of multidimensional trauma.

Emma: “Before, when I would have bad days I wouldn’t be able to do anything, like I would be in bed for days totally unresponsive but now I can look at what I can do, like if you’re having a bad day focus on what you can get done and do that so now I can get up and get the kids fed and to school, the important things.”

Keira: “For me one of the things that’s changed is I was never able to say no to anyone. …now I feel like I'm able to have that voice and my voice is important too.”

Naomi: “I’ve just done my degree too, with COVID and all the Stovewood stuff going on, I’m really proud of myself, at my age as well.”

Cassie: “At times when I was self-harming, I was slashing my legs, I was feeling suicidal, she actually made me laugh on the phone call that we had! Because we interacted on the phone with each other and she actually made me laugh which was a big relief because there were times, well years, where I felt I couldn’t laugh or smile…I’ve got three children and if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here now, for definite. I wouldn’t be here.”

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Individual Safety