Who We Serve
The Gulf Coast Trauma Institute can help support your organization’s goals of increasing positive behavioral health outcomes, resilience, and hope for your employees and people you serve through implementing research-based, trauma-informed care principles and practices. Explore how we provide expert consultation services and training to a broad range of people and settings.
Schools
Schools across the nation are reporting sharp increases in student behavior problems, poor learning outcomes, and low morale and retention of educational staff. Although some of these issues may have always been present to some degree, the COVID-19 exacerbated many of these problems by creating uncertainty, fear, disrupted neurological and academic development, along with taking away protective factors like daily structure, social supports, and routine. Our approach to supporting schools acknowledges and addresses all of these factors, and provides comprehensive training that focuses on creating a school system that fosters safety, regulation, connection, and purpose for both educators and students.
Our recommended training schedule includes foundational trauma-informed practices, crisis response protocols, treatment planning support, restorative justice, skills for self-regulation, stress management for employees, and suicide prevention training. For best results, we highly recommend we review current schools-based policy and practices and provide ongoing, expert consultation to ensure your staff feel competent to implement these practices.
In-Patient
In-patient settings typically work with populations who have been exposed to incredibly high rates of stress, adversity, and trauma. These settings can include residential treatment, stabilization units, and short-term shelters. If your organization does not have specific plans and protocols in place to ensure your staff can manage the extreme emotional and behavioral reactions that can occur, employees can quickly experience job dissatisfaction, burnout, and can in some cases cause harm to the people they serve. Treatment outcomes can suffer as well, especially if people don’t feel safe and supported in these environments.
Our recommended training schedule for in-patient settings includes trauma-informed care training, crisis response protocols, treatment planning support, stress management for employees, skills for self-regulation, and suicide prevention training. We can also provide advanced clinical training that focuses on how to effectively treat trauma in therapeutic settings using a combination of evidenced-informed cognitive and body-based therapies. For best results, we highly recommend we review current organizational and clinical practices and provide ongoing, expert consultation on how to best implement these practices.
If your organization serves primarily out-of-home children and their families, our partners at the Institute for Quality Children’s Services at Florida State University can provide additional services, such as comprehensive evaluations on standards of practice, along with recommendations and training to ensure your organization is administering the highest quality, evidenced-based care.
Businesses
Providing trauma-informed training to your organization isn’t just a good idea, it’s good business! Creating a sense of safety, transparency, promoting wellness, and supporting the mental health needs of employees can do wonders to improve morale, increase worker retention, and increase productivity. Providing such a supportive environment in the Gulf Coast region—where many have experienced loss from both natural and human-caused disasters—can further assist those who may need additional help navigating past stressors and traumas, while also preparing the organization to quickly rebound after the next potential disaster! Our approach provides businesses the tools they need to build a safe, welcoming, and trauma-informed business environment.
Our recommended training schedule for businesses includes training in trauma-informed practices, crisis response protocols, skills for self-regulation, yoga for wellness, and stress management for employees. For best results, we highly recommend we review current business practices and provide ongoing, expert consultation on how to best implement trauma-informed practices.
Healthcare
Healthcare leaders are well aware that if their organization does not provide a patient-centered trauma-informed environment, then patients may be more likely to experience confusion navigating the health system, distrust of medical personnel, and possibly be re-traumatized during their medical visits. This can lead to poor health outcomes, demoralized staff, and ultimately higher healthcare costs. That’s why we take a comprehensive approach to supporting healthcare providers that 1) enhances patient care through increasing transparency, cultural sensitivity, and patient choice, 2) provides tools for medical personnel and health systems to combat stress and boost employee morale, and 3) works with medical training programs to integrate trauma knowledge and trauma-informed practices into their educational curricula.
Our recommended training schedule for healthcare settings includes trauma-informed care training, crisis response protocols, stress management for employees, skills for self-regulation, yoga for wellness, and suicide prevention training. For best results, we highly recommend we review current healthcare practices and provide ongoing, expert consultation on how to best implement trauma-informed practices.
Prenatal, Early Childhood, and Families
Agencies who specialize in pregnancy, young children, and families are often working with highly vulnerable people who need immediate and comprehensive support. To ensure the best outcomes, agency leaders know their staff need to use the most current evidenced-based and developmentally appropriate interventions. Whether you run a daycare, preschool, early childhood center, foster/adoption agency, or the department of human services, we can provide engaging and dynamic training on best practices that foster healthy prenatal care, maternal wellness, parent-child attachment, and proper child development. Because staff who work in this field can often experience burnout and compassion fatigue, our approach also focuses on training staff on stress management tools and long term wellness strategies.
Our recommended training schedule for agencies serving children and families includes trauma-informed care, crisis response, infant and maternal health, the latest research on attachment, stress management for employees, skills for self-regulation, yoga for wellness, and suicide prevention training. For best results, we highly recommend we review current practices of your organization and provide ongoing, expert consultation on how to best implement trauma-informed practices.
First Responders
Those whose job is to protect and serve others (e.g., police, paramedics, fire, mobile crisis workers, etc.) often experience some of the highest levels of chronic stress and burnout compared to almost all other professions. Agency leaders know that to maintain the psychological and physical health of their first responders, they need extensive training on crisis and de-escalation responses along with stress management tools and wellness strategies. Providing such support ensures these professionals will continue to perform at the highest level.
Our recommended training schedule for first responders includes trauma-informed care, crisis response, stress management for employees, skills for self-regulation, yoga for wellness, and suicide prevention training. For best results, we highly recommend we review current practices of your organization and provide ongoing, expert consultation on how to best implement trauma-informed practices.