25/10/2025
How many times have I witnessed or being in an organisation that says it’s trauma-informed but pushes responsibility for well-being back onto the individual?
Too many times.
Why?
Because it’s entirely performative.
Community care is trauma-informed because it recognizes that trauma’s roots derive from the collective impact of social inequalities like poverty, misogyny, abuses of power, racism, and structural violence.
Many organisations are set up on hierarchical power structures and instead of working on their own accountability defer back to the individual. This approach does not foster trust, safety, or empowers individuals and their resiliency and creates re-traumatisation.
I often see its prevalence in organisations and services bogged down by complex bureaucracy, like a sort of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Orwell’s 1984, which micro-manages and observes individuals with a lens of measuring to focus on what is “wrong” or “compliant” with an individual which is highly disempowering. It’s so Foucault!
The ethos of self-care fits entirely with the capitalistic ethic that places the burden of dealing with exhaustion and stress on the individual and this allows the organisation to be free of the duty of care and accountability that comes with it, making people into disposable units.
