2017/01/22 by Jill Levenson, Jill S. Levenson · 2 citations
Health Professions · Psychology · #Child Abuse and Trauma #Homelessness and Social Issues #Migration, Health and Trauma
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/sw/swx001
crossref issued 2017/01/22 · crossref published 2017/01/22 · crossref published-online 2017/01/22 · openalex publication_date 2017/01/22 · crossref created 2017/01/24 · crossref deposited 2019/09/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Social workers frequently encounter clients with a history of trauma. Trauma-informed care is a way of providing services by which social workers recognize the prevalence of early adversity in the lives of clients, view presenting problems as symptoms of maladaptive coping, and understand how early trauma shapes a client's fundamental beliefs about the world and affects his or her psychosocial functioning across the life span. Trauma-informed social work incorporates core principles of safety, trust, collaboration, choice, and empowerment and delivers services in a manner that avoids inadvertently repeating unhealthy interpersonal dynamics in the helping relationship. Trauma-informed social work can be integrated into all sorts of existing models of evidence-based services across populations and agency settings, can strengthen the therapeutic alliance, and facilitates posttraumatic growth.