Safe Ships
Linda Robb, Social Work Consultant
Kate Black, Clinical Psychologist
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developing, supporting & understanding youth justice
Safe Ships: Aims
• To provide a forum to reflect on the
professional experience of bearing witness to
distressing and violent events
• To consider how supportive structures can
be implemented at individual, team and
organisational levels
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Safe Ships: Outline
• Rationale
• Risks within the professional role
• Safety within the professional role
(strategies and systems)
• Reflection and planning
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Safe Ships: Rationale
Vs
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Safe Ships: Rationale
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Safe Ships:
Professional Role
How well do we look after ourselves within
our professional role?
0
100
Abysmally
Amazingly
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Professional role: risks
• Emotions are contagious
• Those we work with can “hitch a ride home with
us” and become visitors to our non-work roles
“As helping professionals, our emotions are vulnerable
to provocation through infection with our clients’
feelings. Sometimes this is an advantage, helping us to
feel inside their worlds. At other times, it is not
advantageous to be infected by a client’s state....
Does the same tool that that facilitates our
understanding of our clients also threaten our wellbeing at times? The short answer is yes.”
Rothschild, 2006
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developing, supporting & understanding youth justice
Professional role
Thoughts,
beliefs
trigged
Feelings
WORKER
Bodily
response
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Thoughts,
beliefs
triggered
EVENT
YP
Feelings
Bodily
response
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Professional role: risks
Working directly with people that have experienced trauma can impact on our
emotions, our relationships and our view of the world:
Compassion fatigue - a general term applied to anyone who suffers as a result
of undertaking a helping role
Vicarious Traumatisation - negative changes in workers’ thoughts regarding
trust, safety, power, independence, self-esteem and intimacy as a result of
contact with traumatised clients.
Secondary Traumatisation -when workers start to experience symptoms of
PTSD, as a direct consequence of their engagement with traumatised clients
rather than a result of their own traumas.
Burnout - more general term referring to the emotional exhaustion,
demoralisation and feelings of ineffectiveness caused by demanding work
environments. This can vary from needing an extra day off work, to
experiencing a high degree of dysfunction with the professional role.
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Professional role
• How do we protect the safety of our
emotional, psychological and physical well
being when faced with upsetting and
frightening narratives on a frequent basis?
• How do we maintain and/or refuel our
empathy and compassion, especially when
working with young people who may present
high risks, reject our support, or who are
indifferent to our support?
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Professional Role: Safety
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Professional Role:
Safety
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Professional role:
safety systems
• Various models of reflective practice
• Use of reflective practice and/or external consultants for
complex cases (Quality Standard for the health and well
being of looked after children and young people, NICE,
2013; National Guidance for the External Management of
Residential Childcare Establishments in Scotland, 2013)
• Also evidence building for therapeutic models that are
based on reflection as the key skill for staff (e.g. AMBIT)
• Specific systems designed for individuals who are at
particular risk of exposure to violence or harm within their
professional role (e.g. “Debriefing” & “Defusing”)
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Professional Role:
safety systems
• Debriefing originally designed as an intervention for
those exposed to traumatic or stressful events as
part of their occupational roles (Adler, Castro &
McGurk 2009)
• Model for supporting staff after a specific incident
• Use of these models has been considered
controversial in the past
• Used within the Metropolitan Police, Royal Marines
and parts of the UK prison service
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Professional Role:
safety systems
• Some studies show that post incident support
offered to staff on a group basis can be helpful with
respect to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Reducing anxiety
Reducing depression
Reducing post traumatic stress symptoms after 1 month
Reducing levels of alcohol misuse
Staff satisfaction with support
(Ruck et al 2013, Healy & Tyrrell, 2013, Deahl et al 2001,
Adler, 2008)
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developing, supporting & understanding youth justice
Professional Role:
Safety Systems
Studies suggest that post incident support can be
helpful when offered under following conditions:
- “opt-in” basis
- shortly after incidents
- pre-established occupational groups
- using educational models
- provision of appropriate supervision
- pre-established safe environment
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Reflection and Planning
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Safe Ships
In groups, consider your professional role, your young people, the team you
work with, and your service/organisation.
What compartments of the ship are full and at risk of flooding?
What strategies or systems might be helpful within your individual role/team/
service/organisation?
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Questions/comments/reflections
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References I
• Looking After Yourself: Working with people who have
experienced trauma Trauma and Homelessness Team, Carswell
House NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
• Golding, K S; Hughes, D A (2012) Creating Loving Attachments
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London
• Golding, K S (2008) Nurturing Attachments: Supporting Children
who are Fostered or Adopted Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London
• Rothschild, B, Rand, M (2006) Help for the Helper: The
Psychophysiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma
Norton & Company, New York
• http://www.childtraumaacademy.com/
• http://www.annafreud.org/training-research/training-andconferences-overview/training-at-the-anna-freud-centre/ambitmulti-team-training/
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References II
• Ardino, V (2012) Offending Behaviour: the role of trauma and PTSD,
European Journal of Psychotraumatology , 3: 18968
• Cloitre, M, Cohen, L R, Koenen, K C (2006) Treating survivors of
childhood abuse: Psychotherapy for the interrupted life. The Guildford
Press, New York
• Herman, J (1992) Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to
political terror. Pandora, London
• Perry, B D (1997) Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental factors in the
‘cycle of violence’ In: Children, Youth and Violence: The Search for
Solutions (J Osofsky, Ed.) Guilford Press, New York,pp 124-1488
• Rothschild, B (2010) 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery: Take-charge
strategies to empower your healing. WW Norton, New York
• Rothschild, B (2000) The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of
Trauma and Trauma Treatment, WW Norton & Company Ltd, New York
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