Trauma-Informed Care: The Key to Understanding Violent Youth

By Phillip LeConte August 18, 2020

Bob Jones

My name is Bob Jones. I wrote a column recently. It was called Kids in Trouble and Injustice posing as Justice in America. I've been providing services for these kinds of kids for 48 years. So it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

Phillip LeConte

If we want people to drop "trauma informed care" into their next conversation, give me a definition of what that is and why it's important that this be a part of people's conversation when there's a shooting or when there's trouble with youth.

Bob Jones

Just what is trauma informed care? t's one of the most exciting things to happen in the way that we provide psychosocial treatment or behavioral health services for kids or adults. The short of it is we've been treating people with a model or a perspective that says "what's the matter with you". And now we're starting to look at "what happened to you" and the way that the brain has been affected by trauma is what's driving these behaviors. Since it's a brain disease and since we can actually change the way the brain is wired, trauma informed care is, providing the answers. Does that make sense?

Phillip LeConte

I think so. I think most people look at it and go, he was bullied. He was a bad seed, too much time in Racist chat rooms ,too much time on your Atari. And that would be my diagnosis.

Bob Jones

Those things are true. all those things are true, but here's, here are the hard facts, almost 93% of the kids entering the juvenile justice system have experienced intensive, serious trauma. Can you imagine that 93%?

Phillip LeConte

That's a lot.

Bob Jones

That's huge . In fact, we can, say without much hesitation, that every kid that enters the system has an ACEs score of six or above.

In other words, they've witnessed, almost unbelievable chaos in their lives

So when we think about the kids who are in the juvenile justice system we have to deliver services that address the trauma. If we don't they just keep coming back don't they? And it gets worse and we have school shootings and gang related activities. So these numbers are huge. This is all about trauma.

If you're living in a home where you're worried about being sexually abused or physically abused, or seeing your mother being a victim of domestic violence, when this is happening to him all the time, that hypervigilant midbrain literally sets off reasoning because the survival brain is designed to act quickly and act first.

What we have to do for PTSD victims, adult and kids is to begin treating the trauma. As opposed to throwing medicine at it or institutionalizing people. The old system just doesn't work.

Phillip LeConte

What's keeping communities from pursuing these solutions.

Bob Jones

Phil we're slow to change. I think that's a universal truth, don't you? We don't embrace change. We're comfortable doing what we've always done. But I think that because of the increased publicity and the ongoing exposure we have to trauma and violence, current legislation and treatment models are being embraced like I've never seen them embraced before.

They really caught the attention of chaplains police officers, childcare workers, teachers. So there's a groundswell. I'm not sure that we're being slow. I think it's catching on, of course it's up to us to make that it continue to happen. W are the vehicles for the change.

So long story short, we've been punishing lots of behaviors, but the consequences of adolescent and childhood violence and trauma continue to persist and increase as we see in the news every single day.