About the UK Trauma Council

The UKTC will be an authoritative and independent voice on childhood trauma providing expert guidance in a complex field. We are working closely with communities, children and young people, and professionals through consultation and co-production to develop and disseminate accessible, trusted, evidence-based resources and guidance. In the first instance these will be focused on helping professionals support children and young people. Over time we intend to build a UK hub for learning, training and policy guidance. We aim to develop resources for young people themselves and their parents or carers. Through this work the UKTC aims to transform the quality of support available to children and young people who experience trauma.

Why we started

One in three young people is exposed to potentially traumatic events or experiences by the age of 18. [1] The experience of trauma, whether these are single incident events or the impact of childhood adversity and trauma, can have a potentially devastating impact on children’s development including their physical and mental health, their capacity to learn and their social engagement within their family or the wider community.

The long-term impact can also be significant into and throughout adulthood. These findings underline the importance of an informed and consistent response to childhood trauma that draws on the best use of current evidence and implementation expertise.

There is an overarching set of principles and body of evidence that informs the kind of response and support that can reduce the impact of traumatic events on children. There is also a recognition that the experiences of each child must be thought about in light of their own context.

Despite the profound impact that trauma can play across all aspects of a child’s development , there is currently no platform to facilitate collaboration and communication across individuals and organisations who hold expertise in this area.

This means that across the UK, knowledge and expertise is not always shared, learning is not used and there is no authoritative voice that can speak about all forms of trauma experienced by children and young people. The result is that there is:

• A lack of access: Availability of evidence-based resources and guidance across the country is patchy
• A lack of leverage: The benefits of sharing expertise, experience and knowledge across disciplines, sectors and geographical locations are not realised
• A lack of learning: There is no UK-wide platform to facilitate learning in the field of childhood trauma

For this reason, the Anna Freud Centre identified the need for evidence informed leadership through the UK Trauma Council. The Centre undertook a scoping exercise involving thousands of practitioners and leading academics. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and strongly in favour of establishing a UK-wide council. Thanks to funding from St. James’s Place Foundation, the Council was then established and subsequently was awarded funding from The National Lottery Community Fund – the largest funder of community activity in the UK. This will enable us to develop resources and guidance that can help families, schools and professionals; provide a hub for training, learning and policy guidance; and in future years convene a Young Person’s Trauma Council.

References

[1] Lewis, S. J., Arseneault, L., Caspi. A., Fisher, H. L., Matthews, T., Moffitt, T. E., … Danese, A. (2019). The epidemiology of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder in a representative cohort of young people in England and Wales. Lancet Psychiatry, 9, 247–56.

We will produce new resources as experience and evidence develops. These can be found on the resources page of the website. Resource topics will be based on the views of the Council (to reflect national priorities), feedback from our annual survey of professionals, and ongoing consultation with relevant target groups. Alongside our resources, we will provide bespoke trauma training for sectors identified by the Council.

We will connect with networks and organisations across the four nations to share learning and best practice, support regional initiatives, and develop the UKTC programme of work collaboratively.

We will share our learning from different groups across geographical locations, disciplines, and sectors on our website, for example in our Nation Updates. Engaging with work across the four nations will inform our policy and influencing work, as well as the development of our resources and guidance.

We will hold a conference every two years. These will bring together professionals from across the nations and provide an opportunity to share learning, network and present latest developments from the field.

We will provide the bridge between policy, research, and practice by producing regular communications with our network in the form of Research Round Ups and Research Practice Focus videos.

The UKTC will continue to develop its resources and capacity to support communities to better help children and young people in the event of a new major incident.

In the future, a Young Person’s Trauma Council will be established to sit alongside the UKTC. The Young Person’s Trauma Council is intended to be a key influence on the running and decisions taken by the UKTC.

The UKTC is committed to being an anti-racist body. We recognise that racial and ethnic factors including discrimination can play a causal and compounding role in the context of trauma. Through engaging organisations with expertise in these issues, we are exploring and planning how the Council can most effectively support the development of the evidence base in this vital area.

We are committed to ensuring all of our work actively engages and responds to the needs of people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse experiences. We will do this through consultation and co-production, by being open to challenge, and by being willing to change.

Through this programme of work, it is our aim that:

• Children, young people and families have timely access to high quality resources and evidence-based guidance following trauma.
• Schools, professionals and communities are supported to more effectively tackle the impact of trauma on children and young people.
• Local and national policy makers and commissioners are provided with access to research, evidence and guidance to inform the commissioning of services for children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Participation

Children, young people and families are at the heart of everything we do. The UKTC is working closely with the Anna Freud Centre’s Young Champions and Parent Champions to ensure their voices are paramount in all areas of our work.

The Young Champions are working closely with us to develop the Young Person’s Trauma Council.

We are working to:

• Create an initial framework to ensure the Young Person’s Trauma Council provides a safe space and is accessible to young people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, including those with previous experiences of trauma.
• Develop an engagement and recruitment plan to ensure representation from all four nations.
• Explore possible areas of future work for the Young Person’s Trauma Council.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the UKTC developed its first policy briefing. UKTC policy briefings are developed to inform and influence the most pressing policy areas related to trauma and children and young people. These areas are identified by Council members and/or the wider network of organisations and individuals engaged through the UKTC programme of work.

Download the briefing Beyond the pandemic: Strategic priorities for responding to childhood trauma (PDF)