Trauma-Informed Practice For Workers In Public Service Settings

The TIPS project built upon the successful Erasmus+ project “Post-traumatic Integration – Low-level Psychosocial Support and Intervention for Refugees (PTI)”, which received great interest and a d...

The general objective of this project consists of raising the awareness about the occurrence of PTSS and equipping professionals working in the public sector with skills to assist them in identifying their clients, promoting their inclusion, and improving their own respective service or counselling work. To reach these objectives, the specific project objectives were: • to compile guidelines for professionals working in the public sector to raise their awareness about the occurrence of PTSS among their clients, and increase their skills to identify PTSS among their clients and to promote their inclusion; • to develop specific cases that illustrate common work situations and show examples how to react to clients who are suffering from PTSS; • to develop concrete training materials that build on these guidelines and cases; • to enable networking and exchanges of experiences through an e-platform for the access to all contents and training materials; • to give immediate access to the products through the development of mobile applications for smart phones; and • to achieve sustainability by providing access to of the project outputs for at least five years after the end of the project, i.e., until 2028.

This consortium had the unique chance not only to develop the outputs described in the next section, but also to raise the awareness about the occurrence of PTSS and to equip professionals working in the public sector with skills to assist them in identifying PTSS among their clients, promote their inclusion, and improve their own respective service or counselling work. Therefore, the partners have put a strong emphasis on project promotion and dissemination of project results: they have organised a number of project promotion activities, both during and at the end of the project life (including the 3-month extension period granted by the national agency in order to adequately organise the dissemination activities). They have focused, on the one hand, on the stakeholders of the project target groups, and have, on the other hand, also included representatives of the final beneficiaries to make sure that the project results are in line with their needs and requirements. To this end, the project partners have given effect to a number of public relations activities, in English and each of the partner languages, including the following: a specific project logo for the purpose of a strong visual appearance; a website with lots of information about the background and the outputs of the project; the production of flyers with a description of the project and its outputs; meetings with stakeholders and professionals working in the public sector; newsletters in several phases of the project; participation in national and European conferences for the dissemination of results; participation in monitoring conferences of the National Agency; and last but not least, multiplier events with stakeholders and professionals working in the public sector in each partner country.

The project has developed a wide number of tangible outputs (results): 1) User-oriented Guidelines for professionals working in the public sector to raise their awareness about the occurrence of PTSS among their clients, and equip them with skills to identify PTSS among their clients, promote their inclusion, and also lead to better working conditions; 2) a Catalogue with a Case Studies Collection illustrating the most common work situations and showing examples how to react to clients who are suffering from PTSS; 3) a Resource Pack with training and e-learning activities and quizzes related to the particular chapters of the Guidelines and Catalogue; 4) an Interactive e-platform with the access to all contents and training materials, including specially produced podcasts and videos; 5) Mobile applications for smart phones that will also give access to the materials. All these products will be available in English and all languages of the partnership, i.e. Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Slovak and Slovenian. In addition, the following results have been elaborated with the budget for project management and implementation: 6) Website: the project website (https://trauma-informed-practice.eu) provides all details of the project and the consortium; it is linked to the e-Training platform and contains the project results, and will be maintained at least five years after the end of the project, i.e. until 2028; 7) Newsletters: each partner has compiled information about the project, its milestones and current activities, in three issues during the project running (launch and background of the project; results from the development process; final results and multiplier events); 8) Flyers: they were produced in each language of the partnership plus English, and distributed at meetings with stakeholders and organisations, and serve(d) as entry point to obtain further information from the project website. For the purposes of managing the project, regular in-person and online meetings were held, with prior invitations, clear agendas, extensive minutes, and monitoring procedures. Moreover, the many discussions within the consortium have led the partners to formulate a new project proposal, which has been submitted to Erasmus+ in March 2024.