Supporting positive wellbeing requires a multidimensional approach, involving individual staff and team leaders, together with organisational policy, procedures and culture.

Trauma education, skills training, and supervision are key tools in the prevention of secondary traumatic stress. These elements are discussed throughout this toolkit. In this section we will focus on specific strategies for supporting staff resilience and wellbeing.

Developing a staff resiliency and wellbeing strategy should:

• Recognise the potential impact and consequences of secondary trauma on staff
• Recognise that exposure to trauma is a risk of the job of supporting survivors
• Understand that how wellbeing is managed and promoted can shape the culture of your organisation
• Understand that a staff team affected by trauma is less likely to effectively identify its clients’ past trauma or mitigate or prevent future trauma
• Provide access to additional support where required

Using this in practice will require:

• Utilising your organisation’s trauma knowledge and context and translating this into meaningful action, policy, and improvements in practice.
• Integrating the actions into direct services, programs, policies, and procedures, staff development and training, and other activities directed at secondary traumatic stress
• The policy to be part of an overall trauma informed approach to services. Safety should be embedded for survivors and staff alike.
• The policy to be reviewed on a regular basis

This overarching strategy  can be supported by operational and individual actions to ensure that wellbeing is embedded across practice in the organisation. In the section below you can see some suggested approaches to embed this at an organisational, team and individual level.