Read on Twitter
Some reflections as I move on from my post in women's secure services and return to community forensic psychology...
The women I have had the honour of sitting alongside in this role will stay with me a life time. The trauma and adversity they have endured, and the tenacity...
The women I have had the honour of sitting alongside in this role will stay with me a life time. The trauma and adversity they have endured, and the tenacity...
they have demonstrated in order to survive (however problematically) their experiences feel at times, seismic and I can understand why some feel compelled to look away. We cannot. Stories I've witnessed about attachment, loss, mothering & identity sit heavily. They should.
The staff that I have worked with and supported within this role are incredible. They are connected. They are compassionate. They care and they seek constantly to understand and relate. Without them and the secure base they have built, therapy would be redundant. Of course...
providing trauma informed secure care, is a complex, thorny area, filled with challenges but also hope. I feel we are becoming more able to sit with the dialectics of providing psychologically informed, compassionate, relationally focused care whilst managing a punitive CJS...
and understanding the potential for re-enacting difficult relational patterns characterised by control, neglect, abuse and power. Truly trauma informed care is systemic & understanding these complexities is essential. Building secure bases is essential. Kindness is essential...
....Healing trauma, developing new and healthier relational patterns and ultimately reducing risk is possible. It is a long-term endeavour and we need to develop pathways that recognise this. Equally it feels jarring that we only appear to understand all this when serious...
...offences have taken place, not only to to the women who are often thereafter traumatised by their offending (and their victims), but to the thousands of women experiencing trauma outside of forensic services who may feel this is imbalanced and neglectful of their pain...
Sitting within services demonstrates more acutely than ever, however, how outside, utter systemic failure damages females over days, months years and lifetimes. The trajectories of the lives of women who find themselves in secure care are characterised by gender oriented...
individual, familial, partner based, and structural violence and abuse at every turn and tragically, until we make meaningful inroads into truly changing this, and understanding the impact of trauma, pathways into secure care and into the CJS generally will remain well-trodden...
...And as I return to a service whose users are predominantly male, I am struck by the notion that the needs within psychological services are ever interlinked. We cannot prevent trauma for women if we can't affect difficulties, gender stereotypes, attitudes and beliefs in men...
