Trauma-Informed Boards for Women S Shelters and Transition Houses : a Literature Review

Trauma-Informed Boards for Women’s Shelters and Transition Houses: A Literature Review

A board that is well equipped to guide an inclusive service model will:

- Possess and develop personal insight into the experiences of multiple communities

- Nurture a shared awareness of the impact of trauma and commit to inclusive service models

- Work supportively with staff and management to address challenges, concerns, and stigmas

- Understand and address the impact of trauma on staff and board members

The Dimensions and Types of Trauma

The Trauma Informed Practice Guide (2013), expands the understanding of trauma by identifying a number of dimensions, including magnitude, complexity, frequency, duration, and whether it occurs from an interpersonal or external source. These dimensions can be seen in the descriptions of the following five types of trauma:

Single incident trauma is related to an unexpected and overwhelming event such as an accident, natural disaster, a single episode of abuse or assault, sudden loss, or witnessing violence.

Complex or repetitive trauma is related to ongoing abuse, domestic violence, war, ongoing betrayal, often involving being trapped emotionally and/or physically.

Developmental trauma results from exposure to early ongoing or repetitive trauma (as infants, children and youth) involving neglect, abandonment, physical abuse or assault, sexual abuse or assault, emotional abuse, witnessing violence or death, and/or coercion or betrayal. This often occurs within the child’s care giving system and interferes with healthy attachment and development.

Intergenerational trauma describes the psychological or emotional effects that can be experienced by people who live with trauma survivors. Coping and adaptation patterns developed in response to trauma can be passed from one generation to the next.

Historical trauma is a cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations emanating from massive group trauma. These collective traumas are inflicted by a subjugating, dominant population. Examples of historical trauma include genocide, colonialism (for example, Indian hospitals and residential schools), slavery and war. Intergenerational trauma is an aspect of historical trauma.

Trauma-Informed Practices Can Reduce Barriers to VAW Shelters

“Many women with mental health and addiction issues who experience violence face very restricted access to shelters and transitional housing for abused women. This leaves them at substantial risk of homelessness and their needs unaddressed.” - YWCA Canada (2014), Saying Yes

The importance of trauma-informed practices

Academic research supports using trauma-informed practices in the VAW sector. Settings that offered “integrated services” (Cocozza, Jackson & Hennigan, 2005) and “a trauma-informed model” (Morrissey, Jackson & Ellis, 2005) to address trauma, mental health and substance use simultaneously showed better outcomes than organizations that did not.

Supporting Trauma-Informed Practice and Policy in Women’s Shelters

The Open Doors integrated service model for trauma-informed practice emphasizes a shift from top-down “rules-based” approach to a more case-by-case “grey area” in which staff are empowered to problem-solve with women to address their safety and needs. In order for this to work, a shift in organizational culture may be needed.

Elements of workplace culture:

- How work gets done

- How decision are made

- Communication within, between and among workplace units

(Hansen-Turton, 2013)

Effective trauma-informed shelters will foster lines of inquiry and communication among and between front-line staff and management to address women’s needs around mental health and substance use. This can include more problem-solving in team meetings and more responsive ways of keeping in touch when management is off-site, and ensuring that staff understand and embrace a trauma-informed approach.

Ultimately, staff resilience is greatest and stress and burn-out are lowest when programs are working and where outcomes are positive for the women being supported.

“(W)orkers who received more support from their coworkers, supervisors, and work teams demonstrated lower levels of secondary traumatic stress.” (Choi 2011)

Non-Profit Board Characteristics and Structures

There are four types of boards: Advisory, Non-Profit, Private and Public/Corporate. (Bouchard, 2015) Advisory committees are not full boards; they provide expertise and guidance but do not have fiduciary responsibility to manage organizational assets. Non-profit boards have fiduciary responsibility for organizations that are not for private gain, and are typically motivated by a desire to support a cause. They are typically uncompensated and directors may be expected to donate to or fundraise for the organization. Private boards govern businesses and may benefit from compensation. Public Corporate boards are answerable to shareholders and have a high level of legal responsibility as well as commensurate compensation.

Non-Profit boards as a whole tend to be larger, more connected to the field, more altruistically motivated, more female, and slightly less racially diverse than corporate boards. (Russell Reynolds Associates, 2016) A recent study of over 200 Canadian non-profits showed that over 90% of board chairs and the executive directors hired by boards are white. (Bradshaw, Fredette, Sukornyk, 2009)

There are three main roles that Canadian non-profit boards fill: (Bradshaw 2007)

First, governance roles relate to mandatory legal functions of managing, hiring, and financial review.

Second, interpretive roles relate to the way that Boards create and manage meaning by shaping the shared understandings and terms of reference for how an organization works. This is where a lot of values and principles are transformed into practices and outcomes.

Finally, political roles recognizes the role of boards in allocation of power, influence and responsibility as the organization grows and the context changes.

The importance of diversity in inclusive trauma-informed boards:

An ideal trauma-informed board will understand the strengths and needs of intersectional groups who are disproportionately affected by trauma.

Trauma is not distributed evenly across society. It disproportionately affects those who are marginalized, as they are more vulnerable to traumatic events, less able to access resources, justice and support to recover, and more likely to experience negative responses. Colonialism is increasingly being understood as a form of complex intergenerational trauma. (Haskell and Randall, 2009) “..(P)erceived discrimination, race-related verbal assault and racial stigmatization have been linked to PTSD” (Roberts, Gilman, Breslau, Breslau, & Koenen, 2011). Trauma is correlated with disability and LGBTQ communities as well. And of course, women’s trauma is different from men’s trauma.

Ideally, the demographics of a board reflect the demographics of the people served by the shelter or transition house. (Maytree 2011) This can include mental health, race, (dis)ability, gender identity, and orientation. If your board already has this diversity, congratulations! You are ahead of the curve. Most non-profit boards have work to do in this regard. Maytree has developed a bilingual Diversity in Governance toolkit for Canadian non-profits that can help.

Next Steps

There is little literature as yet that link a trauma informed approach to an analysis of board roles and responsibilities. This literature review and the workshop associated with it are attempts to begin that conversation.

References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3097040/

Roberts, A. L., Gilman, S. E., Breslau, J., Breslau, N., & Koenen, K. C. (2011). Race/ethnic differences in exposure to traumatic events, development of post-traumatic stress disorder, and treatment-seeking for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States. Psychological Medicine, 41(1), 71–83.

Bradshaw, Patricia ; Fredette, Christopher and Sukornyk, Lindsay (2009) A Call to Action: Diversity on Canadian Not-For-Profit Boards. York University

Haskell, Lori and Randall, Melanie, (2009) Disrupted Attachments: A Social Context Complex Trauma Framework and the Lives of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Journal of Aboriginal Health, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 48-99, November 2009.

Daniel R. Morrison (2012). Intersections of Disability Studies and Critical Trauma Studies: A Provocation, Disability Studies Quarterly Vol 32, No 2

O’Brien, K., Katz, E., Starkey-Taylor, S., Johnstone, T., Cohen, R., Hansen-Turton, T., ... & Benoit, R. (2013). Reshaping Organizations Through Culture and Strategy. Making Strategy Count in the Health and Human Services Sector: Lessons Learned from 20 Organizations and Chief Strategy Officers, 71. Chapter 5

Ga-Young Choi (2011) Organizational Impacts on the Secondary Traumatic Stress of Social Workers Assisting Family Violence or Sexual Assault Survivors. Administration in Social Work, Volume 35, 2011- Issue 3

http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2439&context=etd

Lyons, Bridget (2004) Motivations, roles, characteristics, and power: women volunteer leaders on nonprofit boards of directors. Doctoral Dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University

Bradshaw, Patricia (2007) Non-profit Governance Models: Problems and Prospects. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Volume 12(3), 2007, article 5.

(Grey Literature)

Russell Reynolds Associates (2016) Who sits at the boardroom table? A look inside nonprofit boards

Bouchard, Johanne (2015) Four Types of Boards, Blog post

Diversity in Governance - A TOOLKIT for Nonprofit Boards. Maytree Foundation 2011