Boots Charitable Trust funding helps our partners reduce trauma in UK communities

Boots Charitable Trust funding helps our partners reduce trauma in UK communities

With unprecedented levels of trauma affecting individuals and communities across the country, knowledge of trauma treatment and preventative trauma-informed care has never been more critical. 

To this end, thanks to funding from the Boots Charitable Trust, we have developed educational resources with open access to UK organisations working with victims of collective violence.

All of the resources are based on clinical evidence of factors most likely to promote personal growth and improve resilience. In clinical terms, this is called Adversity Activated Development (AAD).

Our findings have been turned into a series of practical tools for frontline organisations, entitled Navigating Everyday Challenges with Simple Steps. They contain evidence-based examples and ideas that people can do for themselves and each other, centred around 14 different areas of personal and community life. These include hope, communication, altruism and feeling safe.

TTI CEO Quen Geuter said: “We wanted to share findings with our partner organisations so they would know what actions they could practice before anything difficult happened, as well as what could help them to stay steady through the daily challenges they encounter.

“We hope individuals and organisations find these strategies helpful in caring for their own well-being, as well as supporting their teams and communities.”

You can view Navigating Everyday Challenges with Simple Steps here. 

Training modules

The Boots Charitable Fund grant also went towards the development of five new trauma training modules for partners working with survivors of collective violence. Topics included how to recognise and respond to trauma, as well as ways to prevent burnout and compassion fatigue.

The modules have since been delivered in 33 sessions to 674 staff and volunteers in 30 refugee, migrant, and human rights organisations; this was a 130 per cent increase in our training provision from the previous 12 months.

In post-training surveys, 95 per cent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that TTI support had greatly helped their organisation, while 80 per cent said they have improved knowledge of trauma because of our sessions. In addition, 86 per cent of partners said they strongly agree/agree that we helped them better support people with lived experience of trauma or violence.

Open access resources

These resources, which can be found on our Resource Hub, have been shared with 40 TTI partners, reaching over 1,270 staff and volunteers. Training can be accessed by reaching out to the TTI team via projects@tt-intl.org, with more information available here. 

Quen added: “A huge thank you to Boots Charitable Trust for this generous grant which has already had a wide-reaching impact on our partners. The training and resources created with the funding will continue to benefit other organisations for many years to come.”