Coalition Formed To Raise Awareness About Trauma-Informed Care

A new coalition has formed to raise awareness for trauma-informed child care in Putnam County.

Tennessee Tech Assistant Professor Dr. Elizabeth Ramsey and a group of community leaders formed the Putnam County Resilience Coalition. Ramsey said the goal is to bring the community together to better understand how to support trauma patients.

“This coalition is going to be very helpful to all of those agencies and institutions and even non-profits that are working with people,” Ramsey said. “The truth of the matter is when people experience traumatic events, there are lasting health outcomes.”

Ramsey said by becoming increasingly aware, providers can come together to try to mitigate and even prevent negative outcomes. Ramsey said the organization will serve as an extra layer of support for that mission.

“We are trying to figure out what is going on in our community, where the holes are and what we need need to do to be able to assist our community,” Ramsey said. “So right now I feel like our main goal is just to explore what is happening in our community surrounding trauma, and I can tell you our community has been through a lot. You think about 2020 before COVID hit we had that massive tornado.”

Ramsey said the last year has been spent laying the groundwork to understand what needs to be done. Ramsey said the group is surveying local agencies in the community to determine the level of knowledge and training of the area.

“We also wanted to take that a step further and determine their perceived ability to implement trauma informed care strategies,” Ramsey said. “I feel like as board members we all recognize there has been a lot of training through state initiatives in our human services sectors and we started wondering who has been trained? Who hasn’t been trained? Who is implementing a trauma informed care approach?”

Ramsey said the coalition is still working on a web presence to further spread the mission. Ramsey said for now, board members will be the point of contact. They include Kristi Paling, regional coordinator of the Upper Cumberland Council on Children and Youth; John Rust, program coordinator of Power of Putnam; and Jada Campbell, interventionist/mentor at Avery Trace Middle School.