Southern Downs CFC - GRATITUDE - Issue 17 - January 2022-2

WORDS MATTER
Last month, the Australian Childhood
Foundation released this excellent, informative
guide to using trauma-informed language to
help shift how we speak about vulnerable
children and young people, including how we
represent them in our written work.
In this Australian Childhood Foundation blog
post by Sue Buratti, she writes that as "Our
words are very powerful, they can be used to
advocate [for] or undermine those we are
representing. How we portray children and
young people in our documentation [e.g., emails,
case notes, etc] can characterise them in a
negative way which inadvertently ignores their
trauma experience and their deep desire to be
seen, heard and valued."
She goes onto say that, "Seeing a child’s
behaviour without considering their histories
can lead to deficit-focused writing which limits
hope and creates documentation awash with
negative labels. The trauma-sensitive practice
invites us to represent them in a way that
evokes an understanding of how behaviour is an
attempt at seeking connection, rather than it
representing a deficiency in the child."
The accompanying Words Matter: Trauma
Sensitive Language with Children guide has
some excellent suggestions for alternatives to
negative words when representing children’s
experiences of trauma. For example, we might
label a child's behaviour as disrespectful and
rude, but what might be happening in for that
child is that they are: experiencing an urge to
push bad feelings away, or testing the strength
of connection, or seeking belonging with their
peers, or feeling a sense of shame, or
experiencing a sense of danger.
gratitude | 8