Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I welcome Adele Brown, head of the Executive's programme on paramilitarism and organised crime (EPPOC); Helen McKenzie, director of operations for the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland (SBNI); Colleen Heaney, the director of youth justice services in the Youth Justice Agency; and Michael McCracken, the principal psychologist at the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI). Thank you all very much for joining us. We really look forward to what you have to say to us, and we have read your presentation. We will work on the basis that you will give us a briefing of 10 to 15 minutes and then take some questions. Is that all right?

Ms Adele Brown (Department of Justice): That sounds great. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Again, thanks for coming. You are very welcome. I will hand over to you.

Ms Brown: Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. The presentation that we prepared is on the screen. We will try to get through it as quickly as possible. We are trying to cram in a lot of information. We will do that as quickly as we possibly can. I hope that the presentation is visible to you all. We want to talk to you about the need for a trauma-informed Northern Ireland. It might be best to start by talking about what the word "trauma" means. The definition on the slide says:

There are lots of stereotypes and misconceptions about what trauma is and is not. It can look like very obvious mental distress of the type that is pictured on the slide, but it can also mean that someone presents asymptomatically or as being entirely "normal". What we know is that it can condition a lot of behaviours, including emotional self-regulation, impulse control and decision-making. If we lift it up from the individual level to families, it can look like traditions. If we talk about communities, it can sometimes look like culture. If we go to a more strategic level around politics and public discourse, it can look like binary, adversarial position-taking, an inability to find common ground with others who have different views, and generally being stuck when it comes to working through complexity and change.

There is a lot in that, but the key word is "can". Trauma, as everybody here will talk about, does not need to lead to bad outcomes, and bad outcomes are not necessarily always the result of trauma. We do not want to pathologise the issue, but when we talk about it, it is really important that we understand what trauma looks like and how we can respond to it. In doing that, we can make sure that people are able to bounce back, communities are able to thrive and we can move on from that. We want to give you a bit of a good news story and tell you about how good Northern Ireland is at this. It is world-leading in many respects, which is really pleasing to say. We want to give you insights from the Safeguarding Board, the Youth Justice Agency and the Probation Board, but we also want to say why we need this across Northern Ireland as a whole and across all aspects of public life. Trauma often starts in childhood, and the slide shows a graphic produced by the Safeguarding Board called 'A pair of ACES'. It can be about individual relationships and interactions, but adversity can also come from adverse community environments of the sort that are on that slide and people's interactions with organisations. That goes to show how complex all of it is and how challenging it can be sometimes to address.

As I said, one key thing that it is really important to understand is why people struggle to address trauma. Many people want to address their adversity and trauma but cannot. They are stuck, and they need help to do that. If it is not resolved and is left to fester, it can lead to adverse consequences. We are very aware that adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are strongly associated with aggression, violence, criminal behaviour and the risk of incarceration and of being a victim. Those sorts of impacts affect everybody across the population. In Northern Ireland, we have the same adversities as many other jurisdictions, but we also experience adversities that are linked to past violence and conflict, with one third of our adult population experiencing and reporting conflict-specific adversities. Those who live in more-deprived areas are more likely to report exposure to that sort of adversity. Sadly, we see an awful lot of that in our work with adults and young people in the Executive's programme on paramilitarism. With young people, we are seeing the intergenerational effect of trauma. On one project alone, 93% of young people screened positive for trauma, compared with a population-level equivalent of 37%.

We are very keen to talk about the personal impact of trauma on people, but there is a financial cost to the issue as well. That is estimated to be around £1·3 billion a year, which is a significant amount of money. That all adds up to a complex picture. Executive policies, strategies and initiatives will all land, to some extent, on people who have experienced adversity and trauma. We are keen to promote thinking very consciously about that. As I said at the start, Northern Ireland is, fortunately, very good at this. We are already a long way along the journey towards becoming a trauma-informed jurisdiction. Helen will talk a little about what has already been done.

Ms Helen McKenzie (Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland): It is nice to be able to report that Northern Ireland is world-leading in some of its practice of adopting a trauma-informed approach in the public sector and the third sector. There is nothing in what I am going to talk to you about to suggest that we reinvented the wheel in 2018. Many people were already working in a trauma-informed and ACE-aware manner, so it was about starting to get common language, consistency and standardisation.

In 2018, the Safeguarding Board commenced its trauma-informed journey to raise awareness of adverse childhood experiences across its 21 member agencies and develop a trauma-informed workforce as part of the early intervention transformation programme. That was carried out across health, education, justice, social care and the community and voluntary sector. We worked across those sectors in the broadest sense. In education, for example, we worked from early years up to higher education to look at how to grow the next set of professionals — social workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, paediatricians and allied health professionals (AHP) — such that they will come into the workforce already having an awareness of adversity and the impact that it has on those whom they are going to serve.

As part of that work, we partnered with practitioners, leaders and, most importantly, people with lived experience. We were privileged to have those people share their life stories with us in order to try to improve outcomes for mitigating trauma for those who would come behind them and for their peer groups. We developed a huge number of resources, which Committee members can see on the screen. It was about having something for everybody, wherever they were in that journey, and making sure that we delivered something Northern Ireland-specific that people could relate to. We have a Northern Ireland-specific animation: we were very keen that that would represent us and was not from elsewhere. We also have different levels of training: what I relate as being vanilla training — generic training — level 1 and level 2. We also have a train the trainer programme. We have almost 500 trainers in Northern Ireland who are trained to disseminate that training and the resources associated with that. There was also bespoke training for professionals across their disciplines, which was co-designed with them. All that work has been independently evaluated. It is not that we were just going to put it out there to see whether it works; it has been independently evaluated and continues to be so.

In addition to the original training modules, the bespoke training was first piloted with the PSNI in Derry City and Strabane. The PSNI worked with what had come out of the College of Policing's vulnerability work stream and developed its training in line and in connection with that. The PSNI has gone on to train over 3,000 front-line officers in ACE and trauma-informed practice (TIP) awareness. It has embedded that training in its 23-week student officer training programme and across its crime training. It has also taken that into its occupational health department to look at secondary and vicarious trauma, not only for officers but for families and partners of officers.

We moved on from there being a lot of push on raising awareness and training in 2018 to look, in 2023, at how we could really understand —. We had done original research with Queen's University in 2018. We really wanted to say, "How can we really embed this now? We've got the basics. How can we embed that?". We partnered with Trauma-Informed Oregon at Portland State University. That was the first international pilot. Both Colleen and Michael were part of that, and you will hear about it later. They developed what they called a trauma-informed care implementation tool. It is all right for us to say, "Yes, we are doing it, and we are doing it properly", but do we really know? What are the outcomes? That tool was designed to assist organisations, systems and agencies to implement trauma-informed practice. It enabled them to know whether their business was doing it properly, how to evaluate their approach and whether their practice was aligned to the correct principles. We monitor that, and that has been a really important part of the process, and we know that Northern Ireland is adding to the international reference point and the research.

In February 2024, we asked Queen's University to review how far Northern Ireland had come since 2018 and how far we had got in embedding that approach. There has been significant commitment from organisations, from partners at a service level and an organisational level, and from the leaders who made that happen. The review said, essentially, that we had come full circle from a bottom-up, middle-out approach with leaders at an agency level and that we required government and political support to enable us to realise the benefits of a trauma-informed approach. All the resources continue to be available, updated and free at the point of delivery for all the SBNI's member agencies and all the Departments and partner agencies. Colleen and Michael will be able to tell you what that looks like in reality.

Ms Colleen Heaney (Youth Justice Agency): It is over to me. I will give you a sense of what applying a trauma-informed approach in an organisation looks like. We are working collaboratively here: I have had to share Helen's glasses.

As Adele mentioned, adversity in childhood does not necessarily lead to poor outcomes. With mitigating factors, the impact of that adversity or trauma can be overcome. These mitigating factors, which are evidence-based, include having one or more stable or caring adults, having a sense of purpose, feeling connected and building resilience. Through our interventions with children involved in offending, the Youth Justice Agency attempts to replicate those mitigating factors in our plans of work by, for example, focusing on building family relationships, or rebuilding them, with caregivers to build emotional stability in support; working with our colleagues in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) to build mental health resilience; connecting children to education, training and employment, which helps to create a sense of purpose; and creating opportunities for connection through, for example, community engagement, sport and charity work. We know that, by doing this, we give hope, and that creates space to allow for healing. It is supportive, it demonstrates empathy and love, and it leads to opportunities for change. We like to think, "If this were your child, how would you want them to be treated, and what type of service would you want them to receive?" You want them to learn from their behaviour and to stop doing anything negative that they are doing, but you also want those who work with them to care and to have their best interests at heart. That is a trauma-informed approach.

That approach also applies to how we work with parents, carers and victims. It allows for a safe psychological and physical space for staff not just to work in but to thrive in. Staff are central to a trauma-informed approach — it does not exist without their understanding and buy-in — so we need to care for our staff as a central component, as they are the ones who mitigate the trauma and can often suffer from secondary and vicarious trauma themselves. Staff well-being is a key component of what we call the whole-systems approach. A whole-systems approach also means that the individuals who travel through the criminal justice system get a better service. As we share and have a shared understanding of the impact of trauma with our colleagues in the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), the Police Service, the Probation Service, the Prison Service and, more widely, the Department of Health and the Department of Education, the services and the individual can start to understand the behaviours and be given and create the opportunities to change. A whole-systems approach is more collaborative and more cost-effective; we are using the same resource but differently, leading to better outcomes. That has been picked up on by two recent Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) inspections: the inspection of the Youth Justice Agency and the inspection of Hydebank Wood.

To help conceptualise what a whole-systems approach in an organisation looks like, I will share an infographic. It shows how you grow a trauma-informed culture. All the flowers represent the principles of a trauma-informed approach. I will not go into them all, because I do not have enough time, but I will draw your attention to three of them. The first is leadership and government. You cannot have a collaborative trauma-informed approach without strong leadership. In the Youth Justice Agency, we achieved that by setting up a strategic steering group — a champions model — to take the message out to teams. We have an implementation plan. We still have an implementation plan. It is a journey, not a destination. We ensured that all our policies and procedures were aligned with our children-first approach and our model of practice, and we have reviewed our physical environments and introduced softer rooms that were more young-person-friendly, both in the community and in custody. That has been shared in your briefing pack, but you can take the time afterwards if you want to want to explore that more in the hyperlink.

I also draw your attention to workforce development, because I have already mentioned the importance of staff. As part of workforce development, obviously you have training, learning, development and support, and we had different levels of training. All staff, universally, were trained in ACE awareness, from the groundskeeper and the catering staff in custody right up to chief executive level. We then have bespoke training for those who are working directly with children's families and victims — specialist trauma training. I also draw your attention to the initiatives that we have developed to support staff. One of them is the guidance that we developed on the death of a child. That was an issue that was raised by staff. Unfortunately, we work with children who are involved in risk-taking and chaotic lives, and occasionally we lose children. The guidance was developed to support staff around how they manage that: in their grief and, in work, what they can expect. In developing that, we approached paediatrics, we approached CAMHS and we approached other organisations. Nobody had any guidance, so this was the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, and it has subsequently been picked up by the Public Health Agency to take forward for other organisations.

Finally, I draw your attention to the wee cultural diversity flower. As I said, this is a journey, not a destination, so, at times, we will put more effort into different areas. This is an area that we are still growing our trauma-informed approach to. We have been horizon-scanning to understand the impact of trauma on our neurodivergent population. We are beginning to see unaccompanied minors featuring in the youth justice system who have had horrendous experiences, and we need to shape our services around how we support them, as well as understanding other diversity issues — for example, the travelling community and how we best respond to their needs too.

What are the benefits? The benefits were shared with you in your briefing pack, but I will give you a quick synopsis. The benefits are highlighted in the Queen's University research that Helen mentioned. One of them is having a better understanding of the most complex cases and a shared language across services. That leads to better service delivery and working in the best interests of the child. People are coming together, they are talking differently about behaviours, and everybody is working in a way that is more collaborative to create a better outcome for the most complex children. Victims are also satisfied. Not only do they feel that they been heard and have had their needs met through the restorative process, but the child is receiving a service that is impactful, so they trust the outcome of the plan that has been developed.

Lastly, we have created a culture where staff have reported that not only do they feel safe but they feel valued. For the Youth Justice Agency, embedding a trauma-informed approach was not an option: it was the right thing to do, not just for the children, the families and the victims we serve, and not just for staff, but for society as a whole. I am now going to pass back to Adele.

Ms Brown: I will very quickly pass over to Michael, who will continue talking a bit more about how the Probation Board has experienced this and the journey that it has been on too.

Mr Michael McCracken (Probation Board for Northern Ireland): Thank you. I will talk a bit about why, at the Probation Board, we feel that that is very important. I will also tell you a bit about where we are on our journey, which is not quite as far along as the Youth Justice Agency.

The Probation Board plays a central role in criminal justice in Northern Ireland. You will find our staff working in courts, in the community, across the three prison sites and directly with victims of crime. The Probation Board is on a journey to become a trauma-informed organisation. Within criminal justice, the prevalence rates for trauma and adverse childhood experiences are much higher than in the general population. A third of women and a quarter of men in the adult prison population were taken into care as a child, compared with 2% of the general population, and almost half of women and men in the adult prison population observed violence in the home, compared with 14% of the general population. As Adele said, adverse childhood experiences have been found to be strongly associated with aggression, violence and defiant and criminal behaviour. An increased tendency to respond to situations through anger or aggression appears to be exacerbated by domestic violence that children witness or experience as victims. Also relevant is the fact that people who have experienced multiple adverse childhood experiences are more likely to become victims of crime.

Unresolved trauma continues to manifest for many into adulthood, and our service users at the Probation Board face challenges, for example, in maintaining social relationships and finding and maintaining employment. These issues often lead to further marginalisation, so, for many, the criminal justice system becomes a revolving door, perpetuating cycles of harm, poverty and crime. To effectively change behaviour, reduce harm and protect the public, we see a need to recognise and respond to the trauma experienced by our service users. In addition to that, all staff who work in criminal justice work in a profession where there is a high risk of being exposed to traumatic events that may, at times, exert a critical impact on staff psychological well-being. We want to develop an organisation that is a psychologically safe place for staff, who are often having to carry quite a lot of risk in their supervision of our service users. We want to pay acute and sustained attention to workforce resilience and well-being and to create a culture in which our staff can flourish.

We further recognise that victims, families and witnesses of crime are often traumatised too. The Probation Board has completed a trauma-informed audit and assessment process, with the support of SBNI, and we have used the Trauma-Informed Oregon assessment tool. That tool has provided for us a baseline report which lets us know where we are, and it also maps out where we can go and how we can develop. We are undergoing a systemic organisational change process, and that includes developing our culture and climate, how we train all our staff, feedback processes and how we design our services. It is also about reviewing our policies, processes and procedures. We have set up a trauma and resilience implementation group at work. We have representation from across all the different professional groups, and we are in the process of mapping out our implementation plan and starting to roll that out. What we want from this is to get to a place where we are minimising the risk of re-traumatisation. We want to be better at recognising signs of trauma within our staff, service users and the families and victims that we work with, and we want to respond in ways that reduce the impact of trauma on people and promotes recovery. Whilst we are early in the journey and we do not have outcome measures as yet, what we expect to see as a result of being trauma-informed is greater staff satisfaction, less staff grievance, less sickness absence, greater service-user engagement and better quality of relationships within the organisation and between staff and service users.

Ms Brown: We are going to run through this quickly as we are conscious of time. We have tried to give you a sense of just how good the practice is in front-line service delivery and the organisational change that is going on in respect of organisations. This is not limited to the organisations represented here: it is much wider than that, and it is not always called "trauma-informed practice" or "trauma-informed approaches". It could be called "problem-solving" or it could be "restorative work". There are lots of things out there.

The point is that Northern Ireland is really good at this. Where we need to take it to the next level is in making sure that that response exists across the system and public life. It is not enough to have it in front-line specialist services; it has to be across the board.

We have shared this horrible slide with you before. It does not make any more sense if you zoom in on it. It is not just the screen size. It maps out our working environment for the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime. Fundamentally, our programme is about changing behaviours and attitudes and improving our effectiveness in addressing paramilitarism and organised crime. You can see how difficult it is for us to navigate the system. That is our operating environment. We have to dedicate all our time and effort to doing that, so you can imagine how difficult it is for individuals to be able to do that in practical, everyday life. We want to see something that is far more streamlined, effective and collaborative.

Ms McKenzie: If we were to look at doing something on how we look at strategies, we would look at a whole-systems approach and at joining that up. It would be about a simple design and process and co-design, and it would include lived experience and collaboration across the boundaries. On multiple occasions, we have heard people talking about the strategy that they are interested in and saying that we need to work together, but we need to look at things together before we produce the strategy. That would give us more effective ways of working with the public and increase morale for those who have to deliver it. There would be improved communication and collaboration between the systems and the services, which is a really key point. We believe that it would be more cost-effective. We would be able to evaluate and review what we were doing more easily and know when we were spending money effectively and getting positive results. We believe that there would be improvements in staff well-being, confidence and morale. We also envisage that there would be increased access to services for service users, which is, obviously, what it is all about.

Ms Brown: To do that, we need strategic leadership now. We are delighted to see multiple references to trauma-informed approaches in the draft Programme for Government. That is a really welcome commitment. Turning that commitment from words on paper into the daily life of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Committees and scrutiny bodies is something that we are keen to delve into in more detail. That is where we are really interested in how we can work with you and support you in doing that.

There are some specific asks in the briefing paper that we shared with you to enable our organisations, all of which adopt slightly different approaches, to collectively make the next jump from front-line excellence to a truly trauma-informed Northern Ireland. We need to be able to bridge that gap. Political support for that is absolutely critical. You, as a scrutiny Committee, have such an important role to play in looking at how Departments discharge their statutory responsibilities. It is not just about what they do but how they do it. We think that this Committee and many others are ideally placed to start on that journey. We would be very pleased, glad and privileged if you would consider engaging individually with us on the issue — perhaps you might engage in some masterclasses on trauma-informed practices so that we can support you in the journey — and continue to ask others what they are doing in their departmental plans, efforts and strategies and in the designing and commissioning of services to make the leap. There are huge benefits to it. It does not need to be pathologised or weaponised. It can be about common sense, empathy and effectiveness. There is an awful lot here that we can build on. Unless anyone has anything to add, we will stop there. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Is it over to us, then?

Ms Brown: Yes.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Folks, thank you very much. It has been really helpful. The Committee has been really interested in what trauma-informed practice means and looks like. I will outline what will happen. We are already half an hour behind schedule, so, first, I apologise for keeping you late, but we had some business about the Bill that we needed to attend to. We will aim to be succinct in our questions, and we ask that you be the same in your answers. We have some general questions, which I will pose, and the Deputy Chairperson has some questions about resources and toolkits. Connie will then ask a couple of bits and pieces around collaboration. I am certain that, if other members want to come in, they will indicate. I usually go last, but, because my questions are really general, I will go first on this occasion.

Please bear with me. There are a lot of specifics in your paper about the changes for individuals and how these approaches impact on an individual. I would like to understand how, in practice, approaches have changed. Helen, you touched on it to some extent. Adele, in some of the EPPOC programmes and projects that are under way, what is done differently now from what was done before you started to introduce this approach?

Ms Brown: Others will want to speak about this. The introduction of trauma-informed approaches gives a lot of projects a different starting point for looking at really complex problems. In our case, we have been able to refine interventions. We have been able to make them more effective because we are able to better understand the needs of the people involved. That will vary across different projects, and some will need to be more involved in this than others. Fundamentally, it has allowed us to, in real time, become far more effective in making sure that the interventions are actually meeting the needs of those whom we seek to support. With the best of intentions, projects start off with an idea of how something should work. What is really important is being able to have the courage at any point to say that there is another way that we can do this and through which we can continually improve it. Trauma-informed approaches allow us to do that, and they allow us to do that across a range of different projects.

Ms Heaney: Practically, in youth justice, what we are doing differently from what we were doing prior to 2018 is that we have reshaped our service delivery. For example, one of the improvements has been our Youth Justice Agency needs assessment. Previously, that focused on risk. We know that that is not an appropriate measure for children. It now focuses on need. We look at the history of the child's development from birth onwards. Particularly for complex kids, we have developed an enhanced case management system, which is a really collaborative and multidisciplinary wrap-around approach that involves Health, Education, us and others to support the child. We also have reinvigorated our family work: we do not work with the child in isolation but with the family. Those are some really core differences that came from our embedding a trauma-informed approach.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you. My other question is around your ask of us. You indicated that there is an individual level and then our level as a Committee. I will not commit the Committee to doing anything; the Committee will make its own decision, and, doubtless, we will come back to you, but I know that everybody on the Committee is very engaged on this issue and very supportive. What do the masterclasses and so on look like? What does your ask from us look like in practice?

Ms McKenzie: Time: committing to take some time to do the training or a variation on the theme of the training. Today, we have not spoken to you in detail about understanding what not mitigating adversity in childhood does to the individual and how that is carried across their life course. There is what that means for the neuroscience piece of that, how you can mitigate it and what you would expect to see in things that you are supporting, committing to or agreeing to when it comes to spend. Initially, it is, literally, a time-based commitment. We did some work with the previous permanent secretary in the Department of Justice, and he gave us five hours, which was quite telling. That, literally, is it. It is to really understand it. What you are getting now is such a minuscule amount of the detail. We are asking you to be able to take that and apply it to every aspect of what you are doing, personally and professionally. That is the core piece.

It is then about talking about this in areas where people may not expect to hear about it. People would probably expect to see this in a Health Committee or when we talk about a service, but we want to talk about it in the context of finance, resource and procurement. We want to talk about it in the context of how we look at capital spend and how we review those types of things when considering what this means for the bigger Northern Ireland plc. It is about giving you that information so that you can start to bring this conversation into areas where you would not normally bring it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): That is really helpful, Helen. To follow up on that, it might be useful if you put something to us in writing on what you are thinking, and we can follow up on that with what we can, as individuals or collectively, commit to and take it from there. Is that all right? That will enable the Committee to have an informed conversation about it. Thank you for that. I will move on to the Deputy Chair, who has questions about resources and the toolkit.

Miss Hargey: Apologies that I had to get up from the table, but I was dealing with a sudden death in a community, which feeds into the issues that you are talking about and the intersectionality between individuals, the community and the agencies that respond to such things.

You talked about the creation of a centre of excellence and the end of the current cycle in 2027. Where in government do you see responsibility for that sitting, along with the resourcing of it?

You can see from the agencies involved where the pressures are. They are felt by those that face the community and interact at the coalface. What buy-in is there from others on finance, and how does that shape policy and implementation from the social justice perspective? What could be done beyond what you are trying to do now?

The other thing is the community perspective. It is about trying to move to a mode of early warning and prevention from one of using a sticking plaster at the other end of the process and trying to stop the avalanche. How can we start to shift that and bring communities with us as we look through that lens?

On the basis of the work that you have done on organisational resilience, will you say something about building resilience in those who are working on the programmes, given the pressures that we see across society, and also about building community resilience? Is a step change needed, or is there good piloting or modelling work here or elsewhere that showcases that resilience?

Ms Brown: We are the sole funders. The Executive paramilitarism and organised crime programme is the sole funder of the SNBI's work on trauma-informed approaches. We are privileged to do that, but it seems fundamentally precarious and that the programme is not the right place to fund that work. This is much wider than paramilitarism and organised crime, as we have discussed. There is a real challenge because, as you said, we will have no committed funding in a couple of years, and we do not want to lose the good work that has been done. Helen's model and those whom she has worked with on it have meant that a lot has been embedded, and we will not lose that, but we need to keep taking it to the next level. We do not have a solution. It should sit across the Executive, and, fundamentally, it should be sustainable. We will be really happy to have that discussion with all Ministers and all Departments. It feels wrong in principle that it sits in the programme that it is in at the moment.

Ms McKenzie: What has been developed so far is important. We had funding through the early intervention transformation programme (EITP) and Atlantic Philanthropies, which was excellent. That underpinned everything that has been developed to date. All organisations train, and all organisations recruit new staff. We have courses at university, and they have their modules. It is about how we embed the knowledge throughout the mainstay of other areas of work. There is not a big spend on trauma-informed practice as an extra piece. It should be within what has already been committed to. You always want to be learning and improving, and the centre of excellence is to be looked at from that perspective. You can think of it as in a hub and spoke concept, with experts feeding into the centre, from where you can take an overview and see what it means. It is about being really respectful of the work that has been done before. This did not start in 2018 and was not just manufactured through the 21 member agencies of the SBNI. They just put a language and a formality to that. A centre of excellence is about continuous improvement: evaluate, monitor, review and be really good with our spend. That is what the model looks like from that perspective. On what has already been developed, everything is there, and it is free. The organisations build on that by adding their own professional knowledge. We have had great commitment. There have been 1,300 downloads of the toolkit that was launched in September. We have had TONI&GUY downloading that toolkit. This applies across the board because of the staff welfare aspect. You could say that you are looking at hairdressers as some form of therapy. What do they hear; what do they take on board? That is real, true connection with the community. We have had it through academia with organisations in Australia and internationally, so it is about connection.

When we started this, the community and voluntary sector was ahead of the game. We commissioned from outside because the public sector was not ready for ACE awareness, but the community and voluntary sector was. The sector is offering a level of support across different groups in communities that is second to none. We are starting to get a balance between the statutory agencies and an understanding. That is about respect as well between different sectors.

The individual sits in the middle with everybody else going around them, and it is incumbent on us to have the system operating in the same way, going in the same direction, so that we create the best possible opportunities for individuals.

You asked where we start. We start pre-birth. We start pre-conception, actually. We understand what the science says about the fetus in the womb. We understand about intergenerational trauma and trauma across the genome. We have that information, so we can start to build on what is there when people are getting ready for a baby or getting ready for a toddler. We can also look to mitigate. You asked about resilience. Colleen and Michael would be better placed to talk about that. However, it is about that trusted adult; it is about connectedness to community; and it is about us understanding what makes people tick. A teenage risk-taking brain is a good thing. It creates our personalities. We do not want to do away with that, but we want to hold and protect our most vulnerable and stop them from falling through the gaps. We can do that in that collaborative way.

Miss Hargey: Stigma is an issue. When you say trauma or things like that to people, communities or organisations, they identify that it is about them, a wee bit like deprivation. Have you met challenges around stigma, and have you shifted that by having conversations about communities and organisations wanting to be resilient? They want to be out front on these things. Are there opportunities to do more?

Ms McKenzie: There are opportunities to call it whatever you want. If it is about stress, let us call it, "We're looking at stress". If we are talking about wealth building or empowerment, call it whatever it is. The key point is the principles behind it. We might have a particular language based on research or a certain profession, but we do not need to take that out to where people will not understand it. We do not want the language to alienate. As long as we are doing it with hope, honesty and respect, it really does not matter what it is called.

We have a lot of resilient communities in Northern Ireland. It is not about us from the centre telling them. It is about us listening to, understanding and hearing them. We have seen good work through a number of community projects and in the Developing Women in the Community programme that is funded through EPPOC. We see the empowerment, the links to the strategic framework to end violence against women and girls (EVAWG) and the links to research into children who are at risk or have experienced paramilitarism or violence in the home or on the street. We get that, and we can learn from what people tell us about culture, identity and traditions, and we can make that real. You then just put that into language that people understand.

Mr McCracken: I would like to add one or two thoughts about good examples of the use of language. Oregon decided to go with Trauma Informed Oregon. Wisconsin opted for Resilient Wisconsin as its approach. What they are doing is similar, if not the same, and what they are trying to achieve is the same. In probation, we have opted for "trauma and resilience" in how we describe our implementation.

I agree completely with Helen that it does not matter what you call it. You can call it "flourishing environments" or "creating healthy and well spaces", but make it inclusive and approachable to overcome any barriers with stigma.

I have one or two brief thoughts as well about the question of resilience. Not everybody who has adverse childhood experiences is traumatised or becomes so. There are lots of mitigating factors that can affect how people respond. There are the events that they experience, how they evaluate those and the supports that are around them, and then there is the effect that these things have. However, I would say that individual resilience will only take any of us so far. We really need to be looking at organisational and systemic changes in order to support resilience more broadly. I would be happy to send some further information to the Committee on some research into that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): That would be useful. Thank you.

Miss Hargey: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Are you finished, Deirdre?

Miss Hargey: Yes.

Ms Egan: Thank you, everybody, for coming in today. A lot of the questions I had in mind after reading the report, you have addressed, particularly around collaboration. As you said, Adele, it is not really just linked to tackling paramilitarism and justice. Something that came out through it that I would like to know more about is collaboration with schools, particularly with the Department of Education, our schools and youth services. How can you ensure trauma-informed practice for young people through that?

Ms McKenzie: One of the bespoke areas of training that we did was through the Department of Education and the link with the Education Authority (EA). We developed training specifically for teachers, which is online to level 1 and level 2. That was launched by the previous Minister of Education. All schools were written out to about how they could take part of their five days of training to do this training. EA, in particular, has been very involved as to how we practically apply that. EA is a member organisation of the Safeguarding Board. You may have heard of Operation Encompass. That is totally vested in a trauma-informed approach about understanding domestic violence as an adversity and how that fits in with the professionals who come into contact with those children and adults.

It is really about understanding and, again, about taking away the stigma. If a child comes into school and the homework is not done, or a child comes into school and they are very quiet, that is actually quite a learning as well. If they have a language of violence, the question should be, "What is going on? What has happened to you?", not "What is wrong with you?" It is really back to basics. The Department of Education and EA have been totally supportive. In the beginning, we started some of the initial pilots looking at raising awareness and training. Also we have worked across that with hundreds of teachers who have come to stakeholder events. That is how we were able to define and deliver that. Then there is the specialist education, such as education other than at school (EOTAS) and similar to that, that also been playing in this space.

Colleen, you have had some links with that as well.

Ms Heaney: Practically and on the ground, what does that look like? We work collaboratively with schools and provide a targeted schools programme. It is not for every school; it is for schools that are in the areas of highest deprivation and attract the most concern. We will approach that school, or sometimes it will approach us, to see whether there are any kids who would benefit from our going in to deliver a programme of work which is tailored to the needs of the child in the school.

We also work with kids who are in EOTAS. Some of our kids are EOTAS kids. We work with the Education Welfare Service and the Youth Service on a daily basis, may I add. Part of our role is reconnecting children back into their community through the Youth Service and supporting them to re-engage with education through the Education Welfare Service and EOTAS, so there is a collaboration across that. One of the positives of the Department of Education being a member agency of SBNI is the shared language of trauma. When we talk about the behaviours, we also talk about needs. We are all singing from the same hymn sheet to create bespoke interventions for that child that we hope are more impactful and lead to a better life.

Ms Egan: Thank you. You have addressed most of the questions I had. This presentation would be good for not just this Committee but others as well, so if you get that opportunity, do use it. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you, Connie. Anyone else online? Justin, go ahead.

Mr McNulty: Thank you, Adele, Helen, Colleen and Michael. I applaud you all on your obvious empathy for people who have experienced trauma and for people in communities and organisations where trauma is an issue. You have demonstrated huge empathy and understanding. With you leading a systems-based approach to addressing that, it is encouraging, to say the least. As regards how you proceed with consistency, does any of you see it as "Four legs good; two legs better" in terms of communication in relation to paramilitarism in particular?

Ms Brown: I am sorry. I lost the last part of that question.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Please repeat your question, Justin.

Mr McNulty: Do you see a little bit of an almost "Four legs good; two legs better" position taken in terms of consistency in relation to dealing with paramilitarism?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): What do you mean by that, Justin? What you do mean by your "four legs" thing? Just explain that.

Mr McNulty: It means that current-day paramilitarism is bad; past-day paramilitarism is good. It is glorified now, and consistently.

Ms Brown: Where we are coming from is that there is no hierarchy of harm here in terms of trauma-informed approaches. We are looking at the needs of people as we find them and trying to develop solutions, both specifically on the front line for them and from a system-wide perspective, that addresses that. That is very much looking at whatever we find in front of us. Each individual organisation represented here, and others, will deal with that slightly differently, depending on what they find. That is an appropriate response, because this has to be individualised, but there is a broad range of services available to people, regardless of when or how they might have experienced adversity and trauma. Is there anything that anybody else wants to add?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): OK, Justin?

Mr McNulty: OK. There was reference to how you need a strategic initiative on that front, so I was curious to know whether you saw any inconsistencies. In terms of what you said, Michael:

tell me what you mean by that.

Mr McCracken: What I mean by that is that there are circumstances that some of us may experience in life that will just tax the coping abilities of anybody. We all have a limit. I said that there were certain things that can mitigate whether or not an adverse experience becomes trauma. That can be age. It can be the kind of supports that we have around us. It can be features of our psychological functioning. The research evidence suggests that organisational changes and organisational supports are actually very powerful at mitigating challenging and adverse experiences that individuals have.

Mr McNulty: You have agreed to send us some more information on how you specifically describe one particular issue around individual coping strengths. Some people might appear to be very strong psychologically, but there is only so much that anybody can take and so much burden any one person can carry without support in some capacity. Is that the gist of it, Michael?

Mr McCracken: Yes, that is the gist of it.

Mr McNulty: OK. I would like to see further information on that, Michael, please.

Ms Ferguson: I am conscious of the time, so I will try to be quick. I thank Adele, Helen, Colleen and Michael. Thank you for taking the leadership, because that is what is needed: the leadership in organisations at whatever level throughout government. I declare that I was sceptical many years ago, probably 10 or 12 years ago, when this first came about with the adverse childhood experiences. I was involved in the Multiple Adverse Childhood Experience (MACE) project, which was funded through Europe particularly in the health service. I was part of the guinea pig, originally, when they were doing the adverse childhood experiences and made us all do it ourselves in Omagh many years ago.

A couple of things: to me, it is just common sense. As you mentioned, in the community and voluntary sector, it is about asking the right questions. It is not about what you did but how you got here. I suppose it is the individual who is the expert in their journey, and it is about having that empathy, compassion, those listening skills. I welcome its being embedded across the organisations and the fact that you are leading on that. This question is particular to Justice. Are organisations from throughout the justice process, such as the courts system and the Prison Service, engaged in driving trauma-informed practice in their organisations? That is my main question in respect of Justice, because I am conscious that it is across Departments.

It is about leadership and a change and reducing the number of institutional barriers. I always believe that there are a lot of institutional barriers. That has a lot to do with time and resources for people on the front line in particular. It is about how to support those people and having the resources available. Are there any institutional barriers to embedding trauma-informed practice across the Department that you find still exist?

Those are my two questions. Is it being implemented throughout Justice, and what other institutional barriers might exist to fully embedding it and supporting staff to have the time, compassion and empathy to take a trauma-informed approach to their daily practice?

Ms McKenzie: It is being embedded across all of Justice. The Department of Justice has a very good structure that is hugely and overtly supported by the Minister. At every point, she articulates an understanding of the connections with what is happening in the Department.

The Prison Service availed itself of bespoke training. You can see that if you look at how its Davis House establishment is structured and how that environment is worked with a more trauma-informed approach. Purists might say that you cannot have a trauma-informed prison, but you can have a better prison. There has been a commitment to that and to their student officer programme. We are working with the courts on the courts modernisation process. New prison vans were bought years ago, and the lighting and information in them was intended to support a trauma-informed approach. There is training for the court officers for when someone is sent into custody, basically to understand, "Gosh, you've just been sentenced. You're going now: you're going into that van". It was about empathy and understanding what works there in that training.

The Lady Chief Justice is all over it, for want of another phrase, when it comes to the connection with courts and special courts and understanding what this means in the context of applying the recommendations of the Gillen review. There is also interaction on that with the Bar Council, the Law Society of Northern Ireland and Queen's University. Those places are all on their own part of the journey; I am not trying to say that it is anywhere near completion. There is, however, a commitment and a willingness to be part of that and to make that connection to understand what that means for people in terms of being victims and witnesses and part of an adversarial court system.

The justice system in its entirety has understood and come together in a practical way when the PSNI is completing files for court and in relation to how that translates to the PPS. The PPS is looking at what it means to review its policies from a trauma-informed perspective and what that means for understanding adversity in youth cases — all of that connection — and also understanding the impact of adversity across the life course and what that means for adult prisoners. In terms of disposals, what does that mean in terms of what somebody can accommodate in order to help them on their rehabilitation journey? That is outside my realm of knowledge, but they are available for that interconnection.

Ms Ferguson: The second one was about any institutional barriers that still exist. I am conscious that it is about having that quality time with individuals who are presented at all levels of the justice system, having that compassion and building an effective relationship with them so that they can share their story. Is that seen as a barrier? Are there any other barriers?

Ms Heaney: To be honest, when Helen was giving her answer, I was trying to think of any institutional barriers. I like to talk about trauma-informed approaches as being like a train, and everybody in the justice system seems to have got on the train and to understand the need for this approach. We may have barriers with other Departments and other agencies that are not quite there yet, but within the justice family, no. That is a really positive thing to say.

Ms McKenzie: Across the system, we are still, to a certain extent, personality-dependent. If the senior leaders who are committed now move on, and if it is not mandated, either through the Programme for Government or legislatively — it would be great if it were, as it is in some other jurisdictions. There is the idea that what gets counted gets done, and "What is the new thing?" It is about understanding the benefit to the whole system in Northern Ireland and making sure that that is embedded at the most senior level in the whole system, so that it cannot just be somebody's view of a good thing to do. It is about how we embed it and take the personalities out of it at a very senior level.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): You would imagine that, in the current financial climate, once those who are sceptical see a potential cost of £1·3 billion for not addressing trauma, they would at least decide to be informed about it to see what differences could be made if it were to be implemented.

Folks, thank you very much for your time. It has been really helpful. Some of the statistics included in your report are really stark. The Deputy Chairperson and I very much look forward to attending your conference at the start of next year. We are excited about that, albeit I am certain that there will be some shocking revelations. It is a massive subject, and you are doing very well with eating the elephant. I congratulate you on the work. I think that it will make a difference in people's lives, and I am delighted to see that other people are buying into it and taking it forward.

We look forward to receiving information from you on what our commitment might look like in practical terms, how you envisage that it might work out, what the modules might be and things like that, so that we can determine the extent to which we may or may not be committed. In general, most people are supportive of what you are trying to do and absolutely see the benefits of it. It seems to me that it is a win for the individual, for the organisations and for society, and, for the sceptics, it is a win financially. Thank you very much for your time, everybody. It has been really helpful to have you with us today.