TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE
The Gene Slay’s Girls & Boys Club was awarded a grant from the St. Louis Mental Health Board for three years to implement the Sanctuary Model for trauma-informed care. Through this grant, GSGBC has hired a full-time Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and staff is undergoing trauma-informed training, learning about identification and other techniques through Sanctuary’s trauma recovery framework. GSGBC is only the second after-school program nationally to pursue Sanctuary certification through the Andrus Center for Public Policy.
The implementation of the Sanctuary Model allows the Club to be better equipped to focus on identifying the impact of trauma, and allow for the potential to foster healing through social emotional skill-building and access to clinical care and referrals.
The Sanctuary Model increases awareness, emphasizes safety, and teaches the necessary skills to manage feelings, while creating an environment that can support the challenges of processing change, feelings, past trauma, grief, and loss for the children and families we serve.
Sanctuary Commitments:
- Democracy: shared decision making
- Emotional Intelligence: managing our feelings so we don’t hurt ourselves and others
- Social Learning: respecting and sharing the ideas of our teams
- Open Communication: saying what we mean and not being mean when we say it
- Nonviolence: being safe outside physically, inside emotionally, with others socially, and to do the right thing morally
- Social Responsibility: together we accomplish more; everyone makes a contribution to the organizational culture
- Growth & change: creating hope for those we serve and ourselves