Trauma Responsive Greater Manchester VCFSE Workshop

Adversity and trauma can impact on all aspects of a person’s life, often affecting a person’s ability to engage fully in society. People’s behaviour can be displayed as distressed, challenging, or sometimes withdrawn. There are a wide range of behaviours due to adversity and trauma. Such behaviour often impacts on relationships, engagement, employment, and can affect a person’s ability to contribute positively to society. However, this negative response is not inevitable and there can be support for people with such adversity and trauma and also, both are preventable. The way systems, staff and communities respond can have protective and positive effects. By working together we can prevent adversity and trauma from happening.

In 2019 Greater Manchester Reform Board set an ambitious plan to become an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and Trauma Responsive system. Since then, a paradigm shift is starting to happen across the city region to ensure:

• A coordinated population approach to reduce children, families and individuals’ exposure to ACEs and Trauma.
• A focus on responding to children and adults who have been impacted by ACEs and Trauma to mitigate the consequences of ACEs and Trauma.

Dr Paul Wallis, Debbie Blackburn and Professor Helen Lowey are joint Executive Leads. Together, they ensure governance, accountability and implementation across the system and have worked with system leaders and local communities to enable change.

Greater Manchester is on its journey to become an ACE and trauma-responsive city region by promoting a shared understanding of the concept of trauma-responsive care, support and approaches. Partners are building on the widespread work of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and people with lived experience.

Over the past few years, small amounts of grant funding were provided to the VCSE to help develop and evolve a trauma responsive thinking, focussing on ACEs and Trauma within the community and to respond to what the community needs and their assets:

• Back on Track
• Beyond Barriers
• Big Life Group
• Contact Theatre Manchester
• Early Break
• Greater Manchester Together
• Wigan Borough Armed Forces HQ CIC
• Dias
• Nestac
• Rochdale Connections Trust
• Survivors Manchester

Purpose
The purpose of this workshop is to build on the work and to listen to the voices of our communities through our VCSE in relation to being ACE and trauma responsive.

We are looking to work together to hear what it means for our communities to be trauma responsive and to understand what changes the public sector has to make and support within communities to enable this to happen.

We therefore want people to come together to help determine the big priorities for our communities in relation to being ACE and Trauma responsive and, to enable us to focus resources in the areas that matter most to people.

Our intention is to consider one, or a small number of priorities and work out the best way to support their implementation via the VCSE.

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