0415 - Trauma-Informed Leadership: Transforming Your Agency into a Trauma-Informed Sanctuary of Care
Course Description
Hours: 12
Organizations that provide mental health and substance abuse services understand the profound link between these areas and historical trauma. Creating an organizational culture of safety and sanctuary means that leadership approaches must align with creating this culture. Leadership plays a significant role in understanding and effectively supporting organizational stress as a contagion effect from providing care to those who have suffered from historical trauma. The effects of this directly impact the ‘worker’ and the organization.
This Professional Development course will provide leaders with organizational leadership knowledge and skills for transforming their agencies into a ‘living’ committed trauma-informed organizational sanctuary of care.
This course will discuss:
- How to begin the trauma-informed care organizational journey.
- What is trauma-informed ‘treatment’?
- The crushed sanctuary effect on leadership.
- ‘Living’ your organizational trauma-informed system of care.
- Workplace stress, bad habits and parallel processes.
- We are all affected within our humanity.
- Organizational hyperarousal.
- Loss of emotional management.
- Miscommunication, conflict and organizational alexithymia.
- The use and abuse of ‘power’.
- Punishment and revenge in organizational injustice.
- Trauma-organized systems.
- Restoring healthy organizational attachment.
- Creating the ‘vision’ of organizational ‘health’.
- Understanding the role of organizational democracy.
- Creating a democratic workplace.
- Leading democratic groups.
- Democracy as an antidote to trauma.
- Becoming aware of the role of counter-transferences with leadership.
- Forces that determine leadership.
- Leading trauma-informed ‘team’ and ‘community’ meetings.
- The role of sanctuary as ‘safety culture’.
- The freeing power of social safety.
- The freeing power of psychological safety.
- The freeing power of physical safety.
- Subscribed components of a nonviolent community.
- The power of ‘holding space’ in trauma-informed leadership.
- Components to emotional intelligence.
- Understanding types of conflict.
- When adaptive coping becomes maladaptive.
- Being an effective decision-maker.
- How emotions affect decisions .
- Effectively confronting negative behaviours.
- Creating a culture of organizational justice and just processes.
- Creating the ‘Standards for Trauma-informed Care” – a means to organizational integration.
Notes
For more information contact the Faculty of Social Work Professional Development office:
Email: fswprofessionaldevelopment@wlu.ca
Phone:548-889-5128
Cancellations and Transfers
Be sure to carefully review our cancellation and transfer information before registering.
Website: wlu.ca/fswpd
Applies Towards the Following Certificates
- Management and Leadership Certificate : Management and Leadership
- Trauma Certificate : Trauma Certificate
This course has already taken place for the current academic year (July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025).
The 2025/2026 Faculty of Social Work Professional Development course dates will be posted on this website on July 3, 2025.