Trauma-Informed Care
Creating supports rooted in safety, trust, and healing
Trauma can have a lasting impact on a person’s sense of safety, trust, and well-being. For people with disabilities, those experiences are too often overlooked or minimized, even though they can continue to shape daily life long after the trauma occurred.
At the BHN Alliance, we recognize that understanding a person’s past experiences is essential to providing meaningful support. That is why we adopted a Trauma-Informed Care approach in 2016, an effort led by then-Director of Community Supports Darlene Pempek, whose work with families revealed that moments of crisis often had deeper roots that needed to be understood with compassion and care.
How we put it into practice
Trauma-Informed Care requires a system-wide understanding of trauma. From the beginning, the three county boards in the Alliance supported this approach so services would reflect how past trauma can affect children and adults in everyday life.
A core implementation team was formed to help bring this work to life: Darlene Pempek, Adam Nicholoff, Corianne Sanders, and Pamela McCort. Team members attended trauma-informed care training and brought practical strategies back to staff who coordinate supports.
This work helped staff better recognize when past trauma was affecting a person’s current needs. With that understanding, supports could be adjusted in ways that were more effective, more compassionate, and more likely to help the person feel safe enough to heal and thrive.
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Build understanding of how trauma affects people over time
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Strengthen staff knowledge through training and shared strategies
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Support people in ways that promote safety, trust, and healing
Learn more
To learn more about our Trauma-Informed approach to supports, contact Director of Community Supports Amanda Tharp at 740-695-7433, ext. 356. You can also visit the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities resource page: Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) | Department of Developmental Disabilities.