Trauma-informed approaches:a critical overview of what they offer to social work and social care

Key points• Past experience can have an impact on present-day functioning (although the nature of this connection is rarely direct or inevitable). Increasingly, this relationship between past and present is understood through a lens of trauma.• The concept of trauma has become a major driver of Scottish public policy, with Scottish Government guidance stating that all social care and related practice should be understood and responded to through a trauma lens.• Although it has become such a dominant feature of policy, professional practice and everyday talk, the concept of trauma remains ill-defined.• Trauma-informed (TI) care offers little that any model of good social care should offer, and the evidence base for trauma-informed practice is, at best, inconclusive.• There is a risk that a predominant focus on trauma may construct the kind of psychological conditions it professes to respond to.• Social workers and social care workers need to demonstrate a sensitive appreciation of the possible impact of past experience on individuals, which requires a broad range of knowledge and dispositions. A primary focus on trauma in service delivery can limit alternative ways of thinking and practising