JSA Psychotherapy to attend trauma informed care event in Durham

There’s great excitement at JSA Psychotherapy at the moment, as this time next week we will be making the journey North to attend the Academic Health Science Network’s latest networking seminar and collaborative workshop, hosted on this occasion in Durham. The event is titled ‘Creating a Narrative for Trauma-Informed Service Transformation’, and will be taking place at the Ramside Hall hotel in Carrville. 

We have spoken before about our involvement with the AHSNs in previous blog posts summarising past events hosted by our regional body, Health Innovation Manchester. The upcoming occasion has been organised by their counterparts in the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria, in association with the North of England Mental Health Clinical Network. 

The AHSNs form part of a government initiative to innovate and revitalise the quality standards for practice across the UK’s health sector. They aim to achieve this by uniting and facilitating the flow of ideas between the public, academic and private practitioners of healthcare. Unsurprisingly, it’s the mental health sector that is of particular interest to us. Within the scope of our own work, we endeavour to push ourselves to refine our process for assessment and intervention wherever possible and stand out as a leading example of care. 

This particular event will serve to address the topic of trauma-informed care, which has become an increasing priority for care providers in recent years. This follows substantial exploration into its importance, and the development of therapeutic models that support its implementation. Discussion is set to take place between all of the UK’s top experts in the field of mental health research and implementation who are committed to refining care to improve the experiences of our service users. 

Already incorporated into our programmes of therapy at present, the principle of trauma informed care is that any therapeutic work performed with a client must be cognisant of their prior adverse experiences to be suitably effective, as must any external inter-agency support that may be provided in other areas of their life. Crucially, the impact of trauma is such that certain therapeutic interventions that are ordinarily well suited to a presenting mental health issue, may be inappropriate for individuals whose ability to engage has been inhibited by early life experiences that have hindered their cognitive and emotional development. 

For the purposes of achieving the full picture of a client’s presenting issues, we are one of very few sites in the UK to utilise the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. This specialised metric is what allows us to gain a suitably thorough understanding of these traits as part of our assessments, and formulate a bespoke package of clinical psychotherapy that will yield evidence-based, trauma-informed results for our clients. 

We look forward greatly to being able to meet with other industry pioneers and seize this opportunity to make our contribution to a much needed advancement of client care that will be felt throughout across the country in years to come.