Introduction: The Mapping Project

Over the past several years, New Orleans has seen tremendous upgrowth in publicly, privately, and federally funded initiatives to support trauma-informed school-based training, behavioral health services, research, and educational advocacy. Although the upgrowth is relatively recent, Hurricane Katrina figured prominently throughout the interviews. The failure of the levee system during Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the disaster was repeatedly referenced during the interviews. The disaster was an instigating event for many organizations to form or shift focus to fill in gaps incare created or revealed by the disaster.

During the 2022 – 2023 school year, 79 public schools and # educators served over 47,968 children. Though schools have worked tirelessly to support children and families during COVID, the young people of the Crescent City are still experiencing significant challenges that impede their ability to be present, learn, and grow at school. Several organizations are answering the call for assistance in caring for youth and adults in our schools through direct services, staff education, and educational advocacy.

With funding from Baptist Community Ministries, the Coalition for Compassionate Schools conducted a mapping project to identify trauma-informed school-based initiatives in the areas of training, service delivery, research, and educational policy. The project provides an analysis of the current landscape of existing trauma-informed services available to New Orleans Public Schools, especially mental and behavioral health supports. Many of our community stakeholders cited these areas as a key to the success and resilience for educators and students. Future analyses will provide information on redundancies and gaps in the collective work of the various organizations, common facilitators and barriers in their work, and the impact of their work.

Project Goals:

The goals of the mapping project were to:

Identify organizations focused on:
- Building the capacity of schools to adopt trauma-informed policies and practices through training, research, and/or advocacy.
- Providing trauma-informed services to promote well-being and address mental and behavioral health concerns among students and educators.
Clarify the nature of the work of each organization, including their constituencies and priorities.
Identify redundancies and gaps in the collective work of the various organizations.
Identify common facilitators and barriers in their work.
Generate a shared set of impact indicators.

Organizations were selected for participation if they:

Had an explicit focus on trauma-informed and/or healing centered training, research, advocacy, or service delivery.
Were co-located or directly relevant to K -12 schools.
Focused on students, families, and/or educational workforce.

In this, our first attempt to map school-based, trauma-informed and healing-centered organizations, we have undoubtedly overlooked some organizations doing great work. We acknowledge that our inclusion criteria were not always easily discernible, and we are committed to improving our ability to identify relevant organizations and programs to include in future mapping efforts. We used what is referred to as snowball sampling for this project, where we asked known trauma-informed organizations to identify other organizations and programs that should be included in the mapping project. Snowball sampling is a relationship-based sampling method that is well-suited to the decentralized nature of New Orleans public schools. In the absence of a central source of information on school-community partnerships, the organizations themselves are a good source of information. However, the potentially competitive and siloed context of a decentralized system also makes snowball sampling an imperfect method because organizations may not be aware of other organizations doing similar work.

We would love your help in growing our list of organizations and programs.

Organizations

Ace Educator Program
New Orleans Children and Youth
Planning Board
Overcoming Racism
Akoben
Institute of Women and Ethnic
Studies
PLAAY @ Center for Resilience
Beloved Community
Jewish Family Services
Project Fleur de lis
Brothers Empowered to Teach
LA Center for Childrenâ€™s Rights
Project Peaceful Warriors
Childrenâ€™s Bureau of New Orleans
Louisiana Public Health Institute
Special Education Leadership
Fellowship
Center for Evidence Based Practice
NOLA Public Schools
Training Grounds
Center for Resilience
Navigate NOLA
Trauma and Grief Center
Center for Restorative Approaches
NOLA Youth Alliance
Up2Us Sports
Center for Youth Equity

Definitions

Trauma-Informed
Principles

Safety

Throughout the organization, staff and the people they serve, whether children or adults, feel physically and psychologically safe; the physical setting is safe and interpersonal interactions promote a sense of safety. Understanding safety as defined by those served is a high priority.

Transparency & trustworthiness

Organizational operations and decisions are conducted with transparency with the goal of building and maintaining trust with clients and family members, among staff, and others involved in the organization.

Peer Support

Peer support and mutual self-help are key vehicles for establishing safety and hope, building trust, enhancing collaboration, and utilizing their stories and lived experience to promote recovery and healing. The term “Peers” in the case of children may be family members of children who have experienced traumatic events and are key caregivers in their recovery.

Collaboration & Mutuality

Importance is placed on partnering and the leveling of power differences demonstrating that healing happens in relationships and in the meaningful sharing of power and decision-making. The organization recognizes that everyone has a role to play in a trauma-informed approach.

Empowerment, voice & choice

Throughout the organization, individualsâ€™ strengths and experiences are recognized and built upon. The organization fosters a belief in the primacy of the people served, in resilience, and in the ability of individuals, organizations, and communities to heal and promote recovery from trauma. Organizations understand the importance of power differentials and ways in which clients, historically, have been diminished in voice and choice and are often recipients of coercive treatment.

Cultural, historical & gender issues

The organization actively moves past cultural stereotypes and biases (e.g. based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, religion, gender- identity, geography, etc.); offers access to gender responsive services; leverages the healing value of traditional cultural connections; incorporates policies, protocols, and processes that are responsive to the racial, ethnic and cultural needs of individuals served; and recognizes and addresses historical trauma.

Please Note

This content is taken directly from guidance for trauma-informed systems developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. The full guidance can be found here: SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach | SAMHSA Publications and Digital Products

Healing-Centered Principles

Culture

The values and norms that connect us to a shared identity.

Agency

The individual and collective power to act, create and change personal conditions and external systems.

Relationships

The capacity to create, sustain and grow healthy connections with others.

Meaning

The profound discovery of who we are, why we are, and what purpose we were born to serve.

Aspirations

The capacity to imagine, set and accomplish goals for personal and collective livelihood and advancement. The exploration of possibilities for our lives and the process of accomplishing goals for personal and collective livelihood.

Healing-centered

Healing-centered engagement is a strength-based approach that advances a holistic view of healing and re-centers culture and identity as central features in wellbeing.

Please Note

This content is taken directly from Dr. Shawn Ginwright’s definition of healing-centered engagement found here: Our Process | Flourish Agenda

Tiers of System Supports

Universal / Tier 1

Programming or strategies available to all to promote positive school climate and student and staff wellness.

Targeted / Tier 2

Supplemental strategies to identify and address risk in students and staff.

Intensive / Tier 3

Individualized interventions for students and families.

Continuum of Services

Promotion

asset-based approaches that expand opportunities for prosocial engagement and skills.

Prevention

programs and services aimed at reducing the likelihood of a traumatic experience.

Intervention

sometimes referred to as secondary prevention, the goal with these programs and services is to soften the impact of traumatic experiences and provide tools and skills for healing.

Recovery

after a traumatic event, there is an opportunity to prevent the next trauma from occurring, this is the place of recovery, sometimes it blends back into prevention, since it is aimed at stopping violence/harm.

Related Services

outside of the promotion-intervention-recovery cycle, these are services that support a trauma-informed and/or healing-centered ecosystem.

Phase 1 Findings

In what ways did participating organizations see themselves as trauma-informed and/or healing centered?

TO CLEARLY SEE AND/OR APPRECIATE

SAMHSA: to realize the impact of trauma and understand potential paths to healing and recovery, we must have a foundational understanding about trauma and how it affects individuals, families,and communities.

The individual and collective nature of trauma, secondary traumatic stress, & their impacts on people’s brains, bodies, and behaviors.

The individual and collective nature of resilience and healing.

The intersection of systemic inequity and trauma, including racial trauma.

Our own place in traumatization as victims, survivors, and perpetuators of trauma.

When people understand the science of what happens to a person’s brain when they’ve experienced trauma, it gives [them] so much more patience to deal with [others] and to be much more trauma-informed.

-Training Grounds

“Taking an anti-racist approach to trauma-informed care… [means] that we are not pathologizing people for systemic circumstances…”

-Beloved

“Its… important to be intentional about this work… increasing awareness around how people’s behavior can traumatize young people.”

-LPHI

“I don’t think we talk enough about healing, honestly.”

-LCCR

TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF TRAUMA AND HEALING AS WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION

SAMHSA: to recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in students and staff.

The signs of trauma and secondary traumatic stress

The need for schools to respond

The signs of resilience and healing

“We have done a really, really bad job acknowledging the presence of trauma in our children…. We’ve missed it before on a host of different levels…Its our fault that… young people are carrying a weight that we did not release them from and isn’t theirs to carry.”

-CYPB

“If [schools] are not really examining how the service delivery approach is supporting kids or not doing it in a thoughtful way, more bodies is not always the answer.”

-Up2Us

“How do we encourage folks to become heroes of their own story? What we need to do is adopt more language of strengths, where we grow through what we go through.”

-Akoben

REPLY TO TRAUMA IN WORDS AND DEED WITH A THOUGHTFUL AND CONSIDERATE APPROACH

SAMHSA: to respond effectively, a system must apply acquired knowledge of trauma in the continuous design, implementation, and evaluation of operational policies, procedures, and practices thataim to provide a physically and psychologically safe environment.

Supporting emotional regulation for students and teachers

Focus on supportive relationships (recognition of mutuality, collaboration, peer support)

Strengths-based

Culture-bound (recognition of empowerment, voice, and choice) collective remembering as restoring culture and community building

“…an openness and a willingness and upright prioritization of… emotional behavioral learning that I don’t think many schools have the resources or time to [do]… You can teach kids as much algebra as you want. If they’re dissociated, they’re not going to get it.”

-Jewish Family Services

“It’s not telling [folks] how to interact, it’s telling them why different people may interact the way they do.”

-Training Grounds

“Can we take a step back as adults and see how well these kids can take the lead… be their own experts? When we step back, we continue to support and… care for and we do it in a way that is culturally responsive, meeting kids where they’re at.”

-PLAAY

“We fully believe in storytelling as a healing process, not just telling your story, but having your story be heard. And also listening to the stories of your peers and even the adults in the room.”

-PLAAY

AND PROMOTE HEALING

There can be an institutional inertia to simply continue with the practices and policies that are in place, but when we realize that those practices have caused harm, we are obligated to change thethinking and doing that got us here in the first place, swimming upstream until the current shifts with us.

SAMHSA: beyond individual interactions, resisting retraumatization requires changes in organizational policies and practices.

Dismantling systems that create and maintain trauma (e.g. exclusionary discipline)

Creating new systems that allow children and educators to thrive, including creating the conditions for organizations to adopt healing-centered, trauma-informed approaches, policies, and practices.

An interrogation of doing things â€œthe way theyâ€™ve always been done,â€ and a tendency toward innovation.

Expanding beyond individual organizations to the networks of youth-serving organizations in the community.

“We keep throwing individualized supports at systemic problems. We need to treat it like, how do we change our system… to meet the needs of these kids instead of how do we change this individual kid to meet the needs of our system? That playbook has been done all the way through and it has never worked.”

-Beloved

“I have had the pleasure in New Orleans public schools to work with some extremely thoughtful, talented, committed, hopeful people in very broken systems. And you can have the right people in the room but if the system is broken, then you’re likely not going to get the results that you’re desiringâ€¦ I personally believe that the training is inconsequential if it’s not aligned with the revision of system structures, practices policy.”

-Overcoming Racism

“So we live in a burden society where we want right now to care about our carjackings, right, so we need that to stop. But we don’t understand that if we don’t do something with the two month old, let’s add that crime scene… it’s as if we live in a society where you can’t do two things at the same time.”

-Navigate NOLA

“Okay, we understand what it means to be trauma informed in the school, but like, what does it mean to be trauma informed when families are going through the Municipal Court… how do those practices translate into the other spaces where our students and families have touchpoints across the city?”

-NOLAPS

The map

Professional
Resources

The following table maps organizations providing System Supportsfor trauma-informed practices in schools. System Supports are resources that build the capacity of schools by increasingawareness and skills through professional development and advocacy, fostering installation and adoption, and strengthening research-practice loop.

â€œFor the educator or for school personnel or partners, it’s looking at building their capacity to understand how trauma shows up, and then how also they can create context where there is morecompassion and safety for young people.â€œ– IWES

trauma-informed practices restorative practices racial equity mtss components

Trauma-Informed Practices

universal supports

Trauma-informed practices

Organizations:

ACES Educators, Akoben, Beloved, CCS, IWES, Navigate NOLA, SELF, TAG Center

Brain development

Organizations:

ACES Educators, CCS, IWES, Training Grounds

Trauma, coping, & resilience

Organizations:

ACES Educators, CCS, Jewish Family Services, TAG Center

Handle with Care program to facilitate referrals for students who may need services

Organizations:

TAG Center

Yoga & mindfulness

Organizations:

Project Peaceful Warriors

Trauma-informed practices in the context of MTSS

Organizations:

SELF, CBNO

selective supports

Training & support for needs assessment, policy and practice review

Organizations:

CCS

Training in trauma- and grief-informed risk screening and assessment

Organizations:

TAG Center

Training & consultation in specific skills (e.g., safe & supportive classrooms; teacher emotional reg; relationships)

Organizations:

CCS

Training to use the parent-child relationship as a space for healing

Organizations:

ACE Educators

Adolescent mental health first aid training

Organizations:

LPHI

Trauma-informed suicide risk assessment and safety planning training for mental health professionals

Organizations:

PFDL

targeted supports

Training for school mental health professionals in trauma-focused evidence-based treatments

Organizations:

CBNO, PFDL, Center for Evidence to Practice, TAG Center

Trauma-informed practices

Organizations:

ACES Educators, Akoben, Beloved, CCS, IWES, Navigate NOLA, SELF, TAG Center

Training for installing trauma-informed

Organizations:

MTSS, SELF, CBNO

research

Research on the implementation of trauma-informed schools

Organizations:

CCS

Study of treatment effectiveness (Trauma and Grief Component Therapy) across school districts

Organizations:

TAG Center

advocacy

Policy advocacy

Organizations:

ACES Educators

Sad not Bad campaign

Organizations:

IWES

Working to shift the narrative around opportunity youth

Organizations:

NOYA

Trauma as a result of community disconnection

Organizations:

NOYA

Whole Health Louisiana Steering Committee

Organizations:

CCS, CYPB, Workgroup, Beloved

Restorative Practices

universal supports

Basics of restorative practices

Organizations: