Is your organization seeking to improve:

Awareness, Engagement, Resiliency, Retention, Healing, Growth?

Access Trauma-Informed Care Trainings:

  • 90-minute Informational Trainings (virtual and/or in-person)
  • Half and Full Day Facilitations
  • Ongoing Coaching Engagements

The training plunged our mentors into the realities that many of our learning partners have faced in their lives. It inspired us to stay positive, curious, and engaged. It also challenged us to be our best and most excellent selves as we support and encourage the learning partners who we mentor.

Merle, Windham Area Interfaith Ministry

The TiC training concepts of Customer Service and Team-building accentuated and put into practice our discussion of purpose regarding our mission and ongoing strategy. The material spoke to everyone present both personally and in their work to foster empathy for our members and our community.

Joanne Todd, President, Northeast Family Credit Union

Content provided us with the opportunity to think beyond our personal feelings and to focus on how to better meet the needs of our members.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

I truly enjoyed every second of it! Also, this morning I practiced affirmations on my way to work & overall it was a beautiful experience getting to meet wonderful new people. Thank you for providing that experience for me.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

The day was fun and engaging and I appreciated the fact that we were forced to interact as a group so people didn’t have the opportunity to be on their phones a lot.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

Interactive and engaging instead of sitting in our chairs for the better part of the day listening to an instructor talk.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

Content provided us with the opportunity to think beyond our personal feelings and to focus on how to better meet the needs of our members.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

The results were beyond our expectations and gave us all an opportunity to grow.

Staff Feedback, Northeast Family Federal Credit Union

The Trauma Informed Care training gave our staff insight into the difficulties our clients experience every day. It was extraordinarily eye-opening and helpful. We will continue to offer this training on a regular basis for our staff.

Avery Lenhart, Executive Director Windham Region No Freeze Project

Trauma-informed care (TiC) is an approach in the human service field that assumes that an individual is more likely than not to have experienced trauma either personally or vicariously. This paradigm recognizes the presence of trauma symptoms and acknowledges the maladaptive role trauma may play in an individual’s life: adversely affecting relationships, cognition, physical health, mental health, employability, as well as other critical life functions.

Access is an agency that is committed through its strategic framework to be trauma-informed. By doing so, our goals include training and coordinating with businesses, programs, and educators to join in this quest to establish a healthier, more inclusive, and understanding Windham community.

The work of the agency is necessarily intimate as we impact the core needs of under-resourced individuals, their families, and the communities that house them. Working in a more trauma-informed way has a multitude of benefits, not the least of which is being more successful and relational involvement with our customers, the promotion of healing and growth within our customers to improve psychological capacity so that resilience can develop (making daily challenges more manageable), and forming deeper bonds within our workplace: promoting retention of invaluable institutional knowledge and established customer/partner relationships. But mostly, doing this work is a moral imperative: we are all hurting, and new skills must be developed to prevent further communal harm.

TiC is a multi-tiered initiative with the lofty goal of bringing our community closer to being comprehensively trauma-informed and resilience-oriented. Funding from grants and CSBG Cares allowed us to continue the implementation, growth, and development of TiC.

Our mission to become trauma-informed includes supporting community organizations in becoming trauma-informed as well. The following organizations are existing partners in this process with other organizations joining soon:

  • The Northeast Family Federal Credit Union (NEFFCU)
  • The Willimantic Public Library
  • The Windham Area Interfaith Ministries (WAIM)
  • The No-Freeze Shelter

TiC Training is a systematic, holistic set of curricula designed to deepen the way organizations show up and validate the existence of internal and external stakeholders (customers, staff, leadership, community partners, etc.).

> Learn with 90-minute informational trainings

> Explore through Half and Day-long facilitations

Reduce Harm: By building awareness of personal needs around emotional and neurological safety, we are better able to understand and meet the needs of others with the aim of reducing intentional and unintentional harm

Increase Capacity: Increase skill sets and accountability to promote an inclusive culture, retain institutional knowledge, and improve organizational output

Spread Justice: Each of us needs and deserves equitable access to a fulfilling life. This work involves making sure that the needs of others receive 

Foster Inclusive Communities: Engage in culture organization through accountable compassion

Practice and Live the Platinum Rule: Treat others the way that THEY want to be treated

Building Capacity – TiC 100 (for decision makers)
Cultivate top-line employee engagement to support systems change leading to bottom-line optimization

Customer Service – TiC 101
Show up fully for all those you serve with kindness and grace starting with your most critical customer.

Team Building – TiC 102
Learn to hear, accept, and thoughtfully respond to the intellectual and energetic offerings of those with whom you interact.

Self-Care, Resiliency, and Systems Change -TiC 105 (in development)
Build awareness of stress responses and learn to reduce harm by advocating for change.  

Cultural Humility – TiC 110
Be curious, lean in, and engage about the cultural differences that surround and shape us. Pull back ‘the veil’ to explore dominant cultures and marginalized populations, and confront our own enemies of progress: tokenism, performative allyship, and imposter syndrome.

Ian Matthew Harrington, MBA, CHW, CRC/COC (he/they)
Specialist – Health Disparities, Access Community Action Agency

INTERNS:

  • Max Borst, CCSU, Community Psychology, M ‘22
  • Jenn Duncan, ECSU, Psychology ‘23
  • Beck Marcotte, UConn, Human Rights & Sociology, ‘22
  • Chloé Cooke, ECSU, Psychology, ‘22
  • Brayden Drobish, ECSU, Communications, ’23

PARTNERS:

  • Rashawn Hughes, Director of Training, Health Education Center
  • Jeff Smithson, Health Care Clown, Proponent of Play
  • Winky Gordon, MEd., OTR/L

National Suicide and Crisis Hotline: 988. (Veterans-press 1)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: (800) 799-7233

  • National Sexual Assault Hotline: (800) 656-4673
  • SAMHSA National Helpline: (800) 662-4357
  • Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

To learn more, or to find a psychologist near you for long-term support, go to https://www.apa.org/topics/crisis-hotlines

*Crisis hotlines do not charge for their services, nor do they bill your insurance.

The Principles of Trauma-Informed Care Principles:

SAFETY

Safety

Throughout the organization, patients and staff feel physically and psychologically safe.

SAFETY

Trustworthiness & Transparency

Decisions are made with transparency, and with the goal of building and maintaining trust

SAFETY

Peer Support

Individuals with shared experiences are integrated into the organization and viewed as integral to service delivery

SAFETY

Collaboration & Mutuality

Power differences – between staff and clients and among organizational staff – are leveled to support shared decision-making

SAFETY

Empowerment Voice & Choice

Patient and staff strengths are recognized, built on, and validated – this includes a belief in resilience and the ability to heal from trauma

SAFETY

Cultural Historical & Gender Issues

Biases and stereotypes (e.g. based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, geography) and historical trauma are recognized and addressed

RESOURCES

What is TiC - 1.2

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What is TiC - 1.1

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