Evaluating Trauma-Informed Care Practices in an Interdisciplinary Homeless Service Collaboration

ABSTRACT

There are various barriers and challenges when delivering appropriate and evidence-based practices, such as trauma-informed care, within homeless service agencies. There is a need for coordinated, comprehensive, and trauma informed services for individuals experiencing homelessness or those at risk for homelessness.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the cooperative efforts of a cross-sector collaboration of social service providers who have come together to address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness or those at risk of homelessness.

Method

The trauma-informed care framework was utilized as a method for evaluating and assessing the uniformity and baseline of service delivery across the providers. The staff of the four organizations involved with the project: a large behavioral health organization, a HIV/AIDS support service organization, a medical clinic, and a housing service organization were all given an online survey measuring the degree to which they were utilizing trauma-informed care practices.

Results

There were statistically significant differences found between organizations for several areas in the trauma-informed care. Regarding overall trauma-informed care practices, the domain rated highest among the organizations was assessing and planning services, while consumer involvement received the lowest ratings.

Discussion

These findings present the opportunity for several future recommendations, as well as provide implications for social work practice, research, policy, and education.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma-informed care
• homeless services
• evaluation
• collaboration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.