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Attachment and trauma awareness: good practice in local authorities

The Project

It is increasingly understood that traumatic experiences in childhood can have a profound and long-lasting impact on a young person’s ability to engage successfully in school.

The last ten years have seen the growth of a bottom-up movement within schools, variously referred to as ‘attachment-aware’ or ‘trauma-informed’. These schools have begun to take steps to recognise that a proportion of their pupils will be contending with a legacy of trauma or unmet attachment needs, leading to whole school innovations in ethos, policies and everyday practices. In some cases, these developments are actively supported by the local authority through training, advice and research.

The aim of this study, funded by the Hadley Trust, was to work with three local authorities who are leading in this space to explore and capture the good practice that they have developed. The three local authorities involved were Derbyshire, Islington and Kirklees. The principal outputs from the study are below.

Former team member: Neil Harrison