Systemic trauma-informed case is based on identifying and interrupting historical, systemic and on-going social and ecological violence. Like individual trauma-informed care, this approach is based on choice and consent. However, unlike individual trauma-informed care, it focuses on the interruption of systemic trauma, which involves inviting people to sit with their complicity and implication in systemic harm.
Systemic trauma-informed care focuses on the collective trauma and impact of historical, systemic and on-going violence and of systems of unsustainability that characterize modern/colonial societies. It requires participants to be ready and willing to question their narratives about the world and about themselves, to examine their emotional responses to difficult issues and to evaluate and expand their capacity to build and repair relationships in accountable ways. This approach requires a level of readiness to engage critically with one’s worldviews and self-image, therefore it is not universally “inclusive” or applicable. The approach may have adverse effects for some populations, for example, neuroatypical and neurotypical people who require stable certainties about the world and about themselves may find this approach too unsettling, since it works with and through ambivalence, complexity, contradictions and paradoxes. It is crucial that participants are offered the opportunity to assess if this is the best time and context for them to engage in education informed by this approach so that they can grant or refuse consent.
Source: Comparing Trauma-Informed Approaches to Care and Education