This two-day interactive training provides the information and skills needed learn more about institutional trauma and to deliver effective redress processes including in the provision of a direct personal response.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has recommended that all institutions by and within which people were sexually abused should participate in a redress scheme. It is essential to the well- being of survivors that institutions which offer a direct personal response are informed by understanding of the redress process, child sexual abuse, the ground-breaking research related to Trauma-informed Practice, defence mechanisms, institutional dynamics, `parallel processes’, and the challenges of providing redress to those harmed by and within institutions.

Effective redress programs require all representatives involved in providing them, and all the policies and practices of participating institutions, to be trauma-informed. This is both to minimise de-stabilisation and re-traumatisation and to optimise healing.

The training facilitates the planning and provision of all elements of a direct personal response in order to optimise the meeting of survivor expectations. This includes the knowledge and skills to understand the impacts of trauma and to embed trauma-informed principles into every step of engagement. 

On completion of the training, participants will be better able to:

• Distinguish between types of trauma; why institutional trauma is `complex’ trauma
• Utilise knowledge of the prevalence and impacts of the complex trauma of institutional child sexual abuse to articulate the benefits of trauma-informed institutions
• Analyse the stress response and survivor coping strategies to better understand the challenges clients affected by institutional abuse experience in regulating their emotions and arousal
• Demonstrate knowledge of the principles and importance of trauma-informed practice in institutions in the context of institutional dynamics
• Define the trauma-informed principles & identify the multiple points at which they need to be embedded when planning for redress
• Demonstrate understanding of key tasks of redress - initial contact, crafting of apology & room set-up, appropriate conclusion of direct personal response/redress meetings
• Workshop steps for trauma-informed direct personal response/ redress
• Attune to individual & systemic dimensions of trauma-informed direct personal response/ redress

Who should attend?

All institutional personnel who will be involved, directly or indirectly, in the redress process, including in the provision of a direct personal response