3.1 Chapter Overview and Learning Objectives
Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals
STANDARD 15: Human service professionals must establish processes to identify client needs and assets, actively draw attention to them, and facilitate planning and advocacy at individual, community, and societal levels to address them (NOHS, 2024).
This chapter dives into trauma, trauma-informed practices, and trauma-informed care, a set of principles that can be applied in any organization or system to improve care for clients. Trauma-informed care relates to Ethical Standard 15: professionals can identify, address, and advocate for the needs of their clients. Identifying and effectively addressing trauma is crucial to the ability of providers to meet their clients’ needs. When engaging in trauma-informed practices, human service professionals also identify and call attention to their clients’ assets. More broadly, people working in human services can and should advocate for using trauma-informed care practices in organizations within their communities so that clients’ needs can more effectively be met.
This chapter also explores how working with people who have experienced trauma impacts human service professionals. Human service professionals are exposed to significant trauma during their work. Because of this, people within this profession need to have wellness and self-care practices. Just as human service professionals need to call attention to the needs of others, it’s also important that they have their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs met so they can be effective at helping others.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the different kinds of trauma and their impacts on people.
- Compare trauma-informed care and trauma-informed practices.
- Describe the origins and practical applications of restorative justice and restorative practice.
- Explain the complexity of resilience.
Key Terms
Key terms are important vocabulary for understanding the content of the chapters. They will be bolded and defined via an in-text glossary the first time they appear in the chapter.
Key terms for this chapter are:
- Acute trauma: a single traumatic incident
- Attachment theory: a theory that highlights how attachment patterns are developed beginning in the earliest stages of life
- Chronic trauma: a traumatic experience repeated over a period of time
- Complex trauma: a repeated traumatic experience inflicted by a caregiver
- Intergenerational trauma: a phenomenon in which the descendants of a person who has experienced a terrifying event show adverse emotional and behavioral reactions to the event that are similar to those of the person himself or herself
- Intersectionality: a perspective that recognizes that individuals are impacted differently based on characteristics such as social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and age, and that it is important to look at the intersections of these identities.
- Restorative Justice: It is a theory of justice that focuses on mediation and agreement rather than punishment. Participants must accept responsibility for harm and make restitution to those they have harmed. Indigenous people like the Maori have used this system successfully in their communities for generations. The major component is the community circle.
- Restorative Practice: an approach that helps to strengthen relationships, builds community, and prevents conflict. This can include community circles but also other approaches to relationship building and harm repair.
- Trauma: the result of an event, series of events, or set of circumstances experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening. Trauma has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
- Trauma-informed care: a collection of approaches that translate the science of the neurological and cognitive understanding of how trauma is processed in the brain into informed clinical practice for providing services that address the symptoms of trauma
- Trauma-specific practices: practices that directly treat the trauma that an individual has experienced and any co-occurring disorders that they developed as a result of this trauma
- Vicarious trauma: secondary traumatic stress, which is an occupational challenge for people working in the human services field due to their continuous exposure to victims of trauma and violence. This has also been called secondary trauma. The negative effects of this work can make providers feel as if the trauma of the people they are helping is happening to them or the people they love.
- Systemic Trauma: Beliefs, practices, and cultural norms that reinforce the oppression of marginalized communities.
- Resilience: the ability to bounce back from difficult times in life. Resilience comes from the lessons and skills we absorb as we grow up and as we face all of our difficulties, whatever they are. This includes safety nets and relationships within the community, not just with friends and family. Understanding BIPOC and other marginalized communities have a nuanced relationship with resilience so knowing
- Compassion fatigue: this has two main components: burnout and secondary traumatic stress
- Self-care: is defined as needs for overall well-being. It helps manage stress, reduce ailments, and foster positive emotions for a healthier life. Self-care can be viewed in nine domains: environment, physical, social, emotional, spiritual, personal/relationships, professional, financial, and community.
Licenses and Attributions
“Chapter Overview and Learning Objectives” by Alexandra Olsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Revised by Martha Ochoa-Leyva.
results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being
a collection of approaches that translate the science of the neurological and cognitive understanding of how trauma is processed in the brain into informed clinical practice for providing services that address the symptoms of trauma
a professional field focused on helping people solve their problems.
a paid career that involves education, formal training and/or a formal qualification.
action to preserve and improve one’s own physical and mental health.
an alternative approach to criminal justice that centers the survivor, taking into account what they need to experience healing. It also involves the participation of the perpetrator, requiring them to recognize the harm they did in the process of holding them accountable.