How will Leeds become a trauma-informed city?

The Compassionate Leeds Strategy document sets out a strategic vision agreed upon by all the key partners who commission, provide and support services for babies, children, young people and families in Leeds.

This strategy will help leaders in Leeds to hold themselves and others to account for delivering the vision for Leeds to become a trauma-informed city, with the expectation that it will take time and sustained effort and motivation to embed this approach.

Strong Foundations: Within the children’s partnership in Leeds, many different teams, services, schools and organisations have already begun their journey towards becoming trauma-informed and there is already lots of strong practice and great work to build on. This Hub will be a place to share learning and spotlight success and progress across all sectors and organisations.

Watch the video below to hear from professionals in Leeds about their experience being trauma-informed.

Compassionate Leeds Programme Team

The Compassionate Leeds Programme Team now has a full complement of staff, who are strongly linked into health, education, social care and the third sector. The team is working closely with existing services to support the implementation of the Compassionate Leeds strategy.

The team is helping services, teams and individuals, from across the multi-agency partnership of support for children, young people and families, on their trauma-informed journey. Through sharing information, facilitating reflection and cultivating curiosity, the team help others to weave trauma informed approaches into their ways of thinking, doing and being, whether that is as practitioners, operational managers or strategic leaders.

The team has a particular focus on working with services that support young people who have multiple interacting and intersecting needs, often reflecting the impact of developmental trauma. The team have begun to work with representatives from across the system to develop shared and more coherent ways of meeting the complex challenge of understanding and supporting young people experiencing the impact of trauma. The team’s work is underpinned by trauma-informed psychological models including Attachment Regulation Competency (ARC) and Adaptive Mentalisation Based Integrative Teams (AMBIT).

Compassionate Leeds Community of Practice:

The Compassionate Leeds Community of Practice is for anyone who works within the partnership of services and support for children, young people, their families and carers in Leeds, whether that is within health, education, social care or the third sector. If you are interested in participating in the community of practice, please email: itipcommunityofpractice@leeds.gov.uk

Over 200 people signed up to two launch events in September 2024. As well as thinking together about what participants want from the Community of Practice, there were well-received sessions focused on trauma-informed staff wellbeing led by Megan Corcoran, a trauma-informed practice facilitator and director of the Wagtail Institute in Melbourne, Australia.  You can view a recording of the online launch event here.

Following the launch events, a smaller group has distilled 3 objectives for the Community of Practice:

• DEVELOP: Within our community of practice, participants will deepen their understanding and application of trauma informed practice and take away tangible ways to embed it in their work by sharing learning, ideas and stories of success, and by reflecting with people who are doing similar work.
• CONNECT: Within our community of practice, participants, from across the partnership of support for children and families, will collectively support and build relationships with one another, and create new ways of thinking and shared language around trauma informed practice.
• INFLUENCE: As a community of practice, participants will cultivate curiosity around trauma informed approaches in our work with children and young people and we will become a voice of influence around individual, organisational and system level change as part of the development of the Compassionate Leeds programme.

A small multi-agency planning group has been formed to convene the Compassionate Leeds Community of Practice sessions. The objective for this planning group is

• CONVENE: The planning group will nurture a community of practice in which all contributions are valuable, and we all learn from each other, wherever participants are at on the journey to becoming trauma informed. We will convene and hold positive and encouraging spaces for the CoP to develop and connect and maintain momentum on Leeds’s journey to becoming trauma informed.

Trauma Informed Communities: In 2022, Leeds Health and Care Partnership worked with Volition, Forum Central and Leeds Community Foundation to create the Trauma Informed Work in Communities Grant Programme to connect with communities, and work in partnership with stakeholders to learn from those with lived experience and build on existing assets within the community.

The programme recognises the transformative power that’s held within communities in building protective factors for children, young people and families who have experienced, or are at risk of experiencing, adversity. The focus of the funding was on Community Organisations working with children, young people and families to promote strong, healthy relationships and teach relationship and pro-social skills and to take a positive, asset-based, preventative approach. The organisations funded were not required to have a prior understanding of trauma or trauma-informed practice; yet, they recognised their organisation values align with the trauma-informed approaches of: awareness, sensitivity, compassion and empathy.

To find out more about Trauma Informed Communities and the community organisations funded, visit this website or read the below resources.

Support from Adult Services: Children and young people live with and are cared for by adults and quickly become adults and parents to our next generation of children. Partners in Leeds who work with adults are united in this ambition for Leeds to become a trauma-informed city and are also working on a range of projects to support this ambition such as a Charter for the whole city on trauma informed care.

Read more about this in the below document.

Support across West Yorkshire: Across the West Yorkshire region, there is a wider programme of trauma-informed change that is being co-ordinated by the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. This programme is called the Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Programme. As well as providing support to each place within the West Yorkshire region, they are also working on region-wide projects including with the West Yorkshire Police, with the Prison and Probation services and with midwifery services. Leeds is a key partner in this broader ambition for West Yorkshire to become trauma-informed by 2030.

What is trauma-informed practice?

Visit our page here to find out more.