Trauma knows no boundaries; it can be experienced by any individual at any time without regard to age, race, gender, or socioeconomic status. It’s estimated that 1 out of every 4 children have been exposed to trauma in some capacity, so it’s likely that you will be working with children and families that have experienced or are currently experiencing trauma. Exposure to trauma presents significant concerns for children during crucial developmental stages and can have an impact on their cognitive, social, physical, and emotional development. In this lesson, you will explore various types of trauma and how it may impact the children with whom you work.

Child care programs that prioritize educating staff on the impact of trauma for children, youth, and caregivers are called trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive programs. Typically, in trauma-informed programs, policies have been created to help children, youth, and staff who have experienced trauma to actively resist any further traumatization. These policies can have an impact on the entire program, and caregivers can further develop their own trauma-informed practices for their rooms. This lesson will help you identify what a trauma-informed program looks like and how elements of trauma-informed practices can be incorporated into your work.

In the first two lessons of this course, you learned about experiences that may be traumatic for young children, how to identify and respond to children that have experienced trauma, and how to create a more trauma-informed environment. In this lesson, you will learn how trauma can affect the program staff that interact with children who have experienced trauma, how to identify these important signs, and how to foster a more trauma-informed environment not only for children, but also for the staff in your program.

It is important to incorporate wellness and self-care into one’s daily routine, especially for caregivers and educators who work with children and youth who have experienced trauma. Throughout this course, the effects of acute and chronic trauma have been explored, including its signs and symptoms, program considerations, and experiences of those who interact with children and students affected by trauma. This lesson will focus on what staff members can do to alleviate some of the impact of trauma through wellness and self-care initiatives for themselves, their programs, and the families they serve.