Healing Families, Helping Systems: A Trauma-Informed Practice Guide for Working with Children, Youth and Families
This guide is concerned with advancing understanding and action about trauma informed approaches that support program and service delivery for/with children, youth and families. This guide is the result of a project of the Ministry of Children and Family Development in British Columbia with the goals of identifying trauma-informed approaches, to raise awareness, and to increase capacity among service providers delivering child and youth services. View PDF
New Terrain: Tools to Integrate Trauma and Gender Informed Responses into Substance Use Practice and Policy
This toolkit provides information about trauma, gender, and sex informed programs, initiatives and projects to share in staff training, program planning and evaluation, and to assist in supporting these approaches in programs and organizations. It also includes specific tools to support practice and policy change. It is one of many publications created as part of the Trauma/Gender/Substance Use Project.
This resource has been made possible by a financial contribution from Health Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of Health Canada.
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Grounding Activities and Trauma-Informed Practice
Within trauma-informed organizations and systems, learning grounding activities can be important for clients and service providers alike. This handout offers 10 grounding activities that can be helpful for managing trauma responses.
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50 Trauma, Gender, and Substance Use Cards
These cut-out cards contain key points from the academic research literature on the intersections of trauma, gender, and sex and its role in substance use services and policies. They were developed for a workshop called “Becoming Trauma- and Gender-Informed” held at the Issues of Substance conference hosted by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction in November 2017.
English version French version
Trauma Informed Practice and the Opioid Crisis: A Discussion Guide for Health Care and Social Service Providers
This discussion guide is intended to stimulate further conversation on “becoming trauma-informed” and assist health care and social service providers in considering additional ways of addressing the opioid crisis in their particular context. It is one of many publications created as part of the Trauma/Gender/Substance Use Project.
This resource has been made possible by a financial contribution from Health Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of Health Canada.
English version French version
Building a Trauma Informed Aftercare Network in Saskatchewan
A summary of meetings at the Family Treatment Centre in Prince Albert to discuss what service providers know about aftercare for women who have completed treatment for substance use problems, and what opportunities exist for enhancing aftercare in a trauma-informed way.
It is one of several resources developed as part of the Trauma / Gender / Substance Use (TGS) project made possible by funding from Health Canada. The views in the guide do not necessarily represent the views of Health Canada.
English version French version
Trauma-Informed Approaches to Seclusion and Restraint Reduction
A discussion guide for service providers and program planners, this resource offers strategies to support organizational change. It includes reflective questions for examining current approaches to seclusion and restraint, determining current trends and impacts, and developing alternatives that are trauma informed.
It is one of several resources developed as part of the Trauma / Gender / Substance Use (TGS) project made possible by funding from Health Canada. The views in the guide do not necessarily represent the views of Health Canada.
View TGS Trauma-Informed Approaches to Seclusion and Restraint Reduction
Trauma-Informed Practice Resource List
Selection of trauma-informed treatment-related resources and curricula. Some focus solely on trauma-informed practices; others incorporate elements of both trauma-informed and trauma-specific approaches.
One of 3 resource lists on trauma, gender, and substance use made possible by funding from Health Canada. Revised May 2019.
View TGS Trauma-Informed Practice Resource list
Repairing the Holes in the Net: Research Summary
Repairing the Holes in the Net was a 2 year research and system change initiative to improve policy and practice related to care and support for northern women experiencing homelessness, mental health and substance use concerns.
In each of the capital cities of Canada’s three northern territories − Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Iqaluit − a group of researchers, health care and social service providers, community advocates, and policy makers met monthly to share, learn and collaborate.
This booklet describes how the project participants (who came from diverse government departments and service agencies and included sectors such as addictions, mental health, primary health care, justice, housing, police, income support, child protection, shelters and women’s advocacy) worked to find ways to understand the complexity of homelessness and make shifts in whole systems of service delivery.
View pdf RTN Summary_August 9 2015
What are the Effects of Trauma? – Infographic
This poster is designed to promote awareness of the effects of trauma in a user friendly way. Trauma awareness is one of the key principles of trauma-informed practice. This poster has been created in collaboration with the Knowledge Exchange Leads working in mental health and substance use system of care in BC. Many other types of services, in BC and beyond, working to be become trauma-informed have expressed interest in this poster, and all are welcome to use it.
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Trauma Informed Practice Guide
Emily Arthur, Amanda Seymour, Michelle Dartnall, Paula Beltgens, Nancy Poole, Diane Smylie, Naomi North, and Rose Schmidt. Initial draft authors: Cristine Urquhart and Fran Jasiura of Change Talk Associates. British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health; BC Ministry of Health, Mental Health and Substance Use Branch; and Vancouver Island Health Authority, Youth and Family Substance Use Services, 2013
The Trauma-Informed Practice (TIP) Guide was developed collaboratively to support the application of trauma-informed principles into practice and policy, by clinics, agencies and groups assisting clients with mental health and substance use concerns in British Columbia. View PDF
Research Summary: Integrating Tobacco Cessation Interventions Into Mental Health, Substance Use and Anti-Violence Services
British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 2011
Between April 2010 and March 2011, researchers at the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, in collaboration with community partners, conducted a study on the feasibility of integrating tobacco treatment and support within mental health, addictions and sexual violence services, in a gender informed way.
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Gendering the National Framework Series (Vol.1): Trauma-informed Approaches in Addictions Treatment
British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health (BCCEWH) in partnership with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) and the Universities of Saskatchewan and South Australia, 2010
This discussion guide explores coexisting trauma, mental health and substance use problems experienced by girls and women as well as trauma-informed and trauma-specific approaches. It provides: 1) background to the issues, 2) core approaches to providing multi-level support, 3) examples of Canadian promising practices in action.
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Demonstrating Progress: Innovations in Women’s Mental Health
Marina Morrow
British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 2003
This report describes four innovative mental health demonstration projects designed specifically for women with chronic and persistent mental health problems in four different communities in British Columbia.
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Mainstreaming Women’s Mental Health: Building a Canadian Strategy
Marina Morrow
British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 2003
Evidence shows that certain mental illnesses are more prevalent in women, that women utilize mental health services more frequently than men do, and that women would like a wider range of treatment and support options than is currently available. This report outlines the need for both provincial and national health strategies to address the issues distinct to women’s mental health.
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Reasonable Doubt The Use of Health Records in Legal Cases of Violence Against Women in Relationships
BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre and BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 2003
The purpose of this study was to undertake a preliminary examination of the use of health records in criminal and civil cases involving violence against women in relationships.
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Violence and Trauma in the Lives of Women with a Serious Mental Illness: Current Practices in Service Provision in British Columbia
Marina Morrow, 2002
This paper documents practice in five mental health care settings with respect to the provision of services to women diagnosed with mental illnesses who are survivors of trauma.
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In the Absence of Consent: Sexual Assault, Unconsciousness and Forensic Evidence
Patricia Lee
British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 2001
This background report serves to assist sexual assault services in British Columbia in developing informed and thoughtful policy on the complex issue of consent to collect forensic evidence from an unconscious patient/victim who has been sexually assaulted.
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Hearing Women’s Voices: Mental Health Care for Women
Marina Morrow with Monika Chappell
The British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, 1999
This multi-level study into the experience of mental health care for women in BC ranges in scope from the voices of consumers to policy makers and includes recommendations for change throughout the system.
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