Introduction

Welcome to our compassionate learning community! Here we will be developing a TRauma-Informed Perspective, through a series of TRIPs.

We feel our TRIP Guidebook can be useful for anyone who is interested in expanding their knowledge of what a trauma-informed worker and organisational culture might look like. It also acts as a great resource on how to mitigate the impacts of vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout in individual, workplace, and educational contexts.

The entire TRIP Guidebook is a package that can be used in its entirety to help anyone entering a career supporting people living with the impacts of trauma. However, if there is a certain activity, video, or module that seems relevant to your work, each component could also be used individually to enhance or compliment curriculum related to working with trauma survivors and help students create habits for a sustainable career.

We also think instructors will find this material useful to help students who will be working with sensitive or trauma-related content/contexts in an educational setting. Students who are learning about the realities of many compassionate career pathways are at a higher risk of being exposed to vicarious trauma through their studies and/or placements (Curryer & Mawdesley, 2024; Nikischer, 2019). We invite anyone to use our TRIPs to mobilize this kind of knowledge with the hope that this material could help make a gentler world.

This space was made possible by the Wickerson Foundation Fund for Educational Leadership and Universal Design at Trent University with the aim to remove barriers to learning, which can be visible and invisible, and to promote authentic inclusion for all students. These guides were created by Beth Needham and were initially intended to serve as a complement to a course at Trent University, CRIM 4240Y – Applied Virtual Practicum in Criminology.

Though initially designed for this specific course, there are very few references to the course itself and/or course-specific material in each TRIP.

Thanks for your interest in learning more about developing a trauma-informed perspective.