What’s trauma got to do with it?
Nobody chooses trauma. As an overwhelming experience that fundamentally shifts how an individual views themselves, others and the world around them, trauma organises a person’s life into ‘pre-trauma life’ and ‘post-trauma life’ with that not previously known impossible to ignore.
While some evaluated programmes and projects explicitly address trauma and supporting trauma survivors, any evaluation participant or evaluator may have an undisclosed trauma history; hence the need for trauma-informed evaluation that seeks to do no harm.
What can trauma-informed approaches offer evaluation and evaluators?
While compatible with diverse evaluation approaches, distinct to trauma-informed evaluation is that, moving beyond ethics, it enables:
- recognition that anyone can experience trauma;
- tangible steps to be taken to avoid inadvertently traumatising people and retraumatising trauma survivors; and
- prevention of vicarious trauma in evaluators.
Evaluators do not have to be experts in trauma, nor is it appropriate for them to seek to engage in trauma-specific work in the evaluation context. However, evaluators will benefit from looking through the lens of trauma and implementing trauma-informed evaluation practice with colleagues, evaluation participants and other stakeholders throughout the entire evaluation process. This entails understanding what trauma is, its triggers, responses and impacts, and how trauma-informed principles can be applied to evaluation.
"Evaluators do not have to be experts in trauma, nor is it appropriate for them to seek to engage in trauma-specific work in the evaluation context.
However, evaluators will benefit from looking through the lens of trauma and implementing trauma-informed evaluation practice with colleagues, evaluation participants and other stakeholders throughout the entire evaluation process."
Cultural competence and trauma-informed evaluation
Alongside acknowledging that what is traumatic for one person may not be for another, a trauma-informed approach to evaluation includes recognising that experience and expression of, and recovery from, trauma is different across cultures. Some cultures view trauma through a medical or psychological lens; others as communal, spiritual or fate-driven.
Understanding, for example, historical and intergenerational trauma, such as slavery, colonisation and forced migration, is required, as is engaging with a range of complex and contextual contexts of individual’s and communities’ lived experiences including systematic inequalities.
Importantly, being trauma-informed means ensuring approaches to evaluation do not replicate any inequalities that may have contributed to experiences of trauma. Similarly, reflecting upon the power dynamics between evaluators and evaluation participants is key with considerations of how they can be informed by historical injustices, privilege and status.
Ensuring high quality evaluations including positive experiences for participants
Being trauma-informed supports evaluators to avoid evaluation participants and wider communities – including evaluation teams and audiences – from experiencing potential costs to their engagement with the evaluation process. Alongside possible retraumatisation, costs could relate to, for example, disempowerment, emotional distress, shame and not being believed.
Through implementation of trauma-informed evaluation, participants and other stakeholders can enjoy the benefits of engaging with evaluation. These include, but are not limited to, being recognised, validated and empowered.
Trauma-informed evaluators can support participants with the opportunity to explore their experiences, emotions, motivations and views in a non-judgemental context. This is achieved through applying the principles of collaboration, safety and transparency. Alongside providing positive experiences for trauma survivors that offer connections, relationships and opportunities that support recovery from trauma, trauma-informed approaches to evaluation also promote obtaining good quality of data and robust analysis, thereby ensuring production of an evidence-base that can meaningfully effect programme and policy change.
"Trauma-informed evaluators can support participants with the opportunity to explore their experiences, emotions, motivations and views in a non-judgemental context."
Delivering trauma-informed evaluation
Trauma-informed practice can be applied at all stages of the evaluation process: scoping; design; ethics; data collection; analysis; presentation of findings; development of evidence-based recommendations; design of evaluation outputs; and dissemination strategies. There may be systematic and organisational barriers to implementing trauma-informed evaluation including: a lack of buy-in from leaders and other individuals; allocation of resources for evaluation; insufficient investment in workforce development; and staff turnover. However, there are steps that organisations and individuals can start to take to facilitate their journey to implementing trauma-informed evaluation. Commissioners can ensure that evaluation tenders explicitly state the need for trauma-informed principles and require potential evaluation teams to consider how to apply trauma-informed evaluation practice as appropriate to the study being commissioned. Evaluation organisations can ensure workplace practices, and the workforce, are trauma-informed. This of course will benefit from measures promoting staff wellbeing and safety. Lead evaluators can model trauma-informed leadership.
This can be done by: ensuring trauma-informed practice is integrated into evaluation design and delivery; providing supervision that includes steps to prevent vicarious trauma; and access to tailored support should an individual team member experience trauma. At the individual level, through self-reflective practice or conversations with trusted others, we can:
- reflect upon how our own experiences shape our world view, which may differ from others we work with, and shape our evaluation practice;
- consider any gaps in our knowledge and understanding about trauma and trauma-informed practice that may require addressing as part of delivering a specific evaluation; and
- engage meaningfully with any available learning opportunities addressing trauma, trauma-informed principles and trauma-informed evaluation
Final words
Trauma-informed evaluation is important because of its recognition of the diverse impacts of trauma upon the individuals and communities that engage with, and are affected by, evaluation. Inherent within trauma-informed evaluation is a commitment to treating all compassionately, irrespective of background, status or role. Trauma-informed approaches to evaluation are inclusive and work to avoid harm, alongside improving the quality of evaluation practice. There are also long-term benefits that stem from the contribution from trauma-informed evaluation to programmes, projects and services.
About the author – Emilie Smeaton (Trauma-informed research and trainer)
For the past ten years, Emilie has been working with service delivery organisations and others to develop trauma-informed practice. She has also provided training and consultancy to academic teams, public sector research teams, the third sector and to research consultancies around trauma-informed research and evaluation to support their evidence activities to be trauma-informed, culturally competent and consider researchers’ wellbeing. She is Director of Trauma-informed Research and holds a number of associate roles.
Emilie also has nearly three decades’ experience of commissioning, designing and delivering both small-scale and large-scale evaluation studies. She has worked in academia, an arms-length government body and national and international children’s charities. She has also worked extensively as a freelance researcher and evaluator and consultant, receiving commissions from national government, the police, social care and health alongside academic institutions and the third sector. Emilie’s extensive research and evaluation career has included carrying out studies that directly address trauma and have included working with trauma survivors.
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