This past fall, Rubicon held training workshops for staff on trauma-informed care, a core competency that staff is expected to demonstrate in their interactions with participants and one another. The training took place over several weeks and included time for reflection, small group discussions, and grounding exercises, among other activities.
For this year’s workshop, Rubicon’s Wellness Manager and SAMHWORKS Mental Health Clinician Marcia Miller co-facilitated alongside Kate Wadsworth, LCSW from Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. Miller says it’s important to recognize how trauma affects individuals’ interactions with one another and with Rubicon’s services. “We’ve all experienced some type of trauma, even if we don’t think of it as ‘trauma,’” Miller says. “I think about the population we serve, and we don’t know what they’ve experienced before they walk through our doors. It might be systemic trauma from incarceration, poverty, or racism, but everyone who comes through Rubicon doors at some time in their life has been impacted by trauma.”
All staff is expected to participate in the workshops, regardless of their title, tenure, or if they work directly with participants. The training is intended to equip staff with the tools to recognize trauma, stay grounded in overwhelming situations, identify resources that can help those experiencing or reliving traumatic experiences, and use trauma-informed care strategies to identify and support certain difficult situations. In addition to informing how staff engages with participants, staff is encouraged to use their trauma-informed care training to support one another if they notice a change in a coworker’s demeanor or ability to manage their usual workload, which could be stemming from vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and/or secondary traumatic stress.
Staff input has also been an important part of how Rubicon’s trauma-informed care training has evolved over the years. The most recent training was broken down into shorter sessions over multiple days, and more space was given for grounding exercises and debriefing, among other changes made to support staff’s ability to process the information.
Ron Colvin, Learning and Development Specialist for Rubicon Programs, collected staff feedback about the workshops to inform how the next trauma-informed care series will be presented. This year’s feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with nearly 98 percent of participants saying that the training was either good or excellent and 100 percent saying they would recommend the training to colleagues.
“I believe the training was a success,” Colvin says. “The training helped staff recognize trauma and put them in a better position to understand it. Even those who do not work directly with the public discussed the benefit of the training from the standpoint that they know it would help them with their own lives and work with each other.”
Trauma-informed care training has been offered at Rubicon for five years. Many employees continue to attend the workshops each time they are offered to refresh their skills and learn new ones, as best practices around working with people experiencing trauma are regularly updated and shifting.
“Several employees who felt they already knew about trauma mentioned that the training helped them learn new material and reflect on what they already knew,” Colvin says. “I know that this training will help us at Rubicon better serve our participants, work with each other, and even help us in our own lives.”
Miller agrees that the training is beneficial to staff, regardless of whether they work directly with participants, and she sees Rubicon as a leader in the trauma-informed care space. “Based on my experience in this field, Rubicon is ahead of the game by having all staff participate,” Miller says. “Rubicon thinks about staff and how staff is impacted by trauma. That’s something we can appreciate.”