Children and families who experience trauma often need specialized support to heal and build resilience. A new course at the University of Hawaiʻi at 惭ā苍辞补 is giving future social workers additional training to understand the effects of trauma and respond to complex family needs.
The is expanding its master of social work (MSW) curriculum this fall with Core Components and Skills for Trauma-Informed Practice. The new elective will help students examine the impacts of trauma, identify intervention objectives and develop skills to promote healing and resilience.
Students will work through realistic case studies reflecting situations they may encounter as social workers, strengthening clinical reasoning, critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving.
Course development and training
“This class teaches MSW students how to apply 12 common trauma-informed practice elements in the treatment of traumatized children and their families through a system-informed analysis—which looks at how larger social and historical factors can affect a person’s well-being, while considering the impacts of trauma, along with interventions,” said Francie Julien-Chinn, chair of the . “The opportunity to bring this class to the Thompson school allows for more students across the nation to be better informed on trauma-informed care with children and their families,”
Julien-Chinn participated in the initiative’s fifth Faculty Summer Institute in June in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where 20 faculty members from across the country received training on implementing the curriculum, while also learning from each other.
“I learned new strategies on how to work with children and families who have experienced trauma, as well as new approaches to teaching MSW students this content,” she said. “I am very excited to implement inquiry-based learning, where students take an active role by working through real-life situations, figuring out what they need to learn and finding that information themselves.”
The course was developed through the National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development (NITEWD), a national effort to expand trauma-informed education in social work programs.