“If it is not anti-racist…if it is not about justice and liberation, it is not trauma-informed”: Exploring the Intersections of Racial Justice and Trauma Informed Care

Trauma Informed Care (TIC), as it is predominantly conceptualized, realizes the widespread prevalence of trauma, recognizes the impact on people within systems/organizations, and responds by integrating this knowledge into how organizational policies and practices are developed and implemented to prevent and mitigate harm. Experiences of trauma encompass harm that happens interpersonally, in the community and environment, and harm caused by organizations, systems and society, as a result of systemic oppression and racism. Therefore, we cannot be successful at preventing and mitigating harm if we do not address the trauma of racism, interpersonally, communally and in society. And yet, racial justice work [including frameworks of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), anti-racist work, cultural humility, and healing work] and TIC have not been explicitly in conversation with one another in the field at large. This is particularly true in service areas that are gatekept by white dominant institutions within the fields of, for example, medicine, mental and behavioral health, early childhood and k-12 education, etc. Though “trauma informed care” and “racial equity” are often conflated by organizations, systems, and system actors, little has been done by most mainstream systems to understand or operationalize the intersections of this work.

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