Of the many reaches of trauma-informed practice, a trauma-informed court room seems to be one of the most impactful. The court is an instutution which holds tremendous power, through the work of trauma-informed courts, judges are uniquely positioned to use this power to help traumatized youth who appear before them.
What this means is a more accurate assessment of what a traumatized youth may need as far as mental health, behavioral, and social-emotional support. When trauma-informed systems look closly at what youth needs to address their traumatic experiences, the chances of youth recieving appropriate services increase exponentially. While this won't ensure the other systems providing these services are also trauma-informed, and more importantly, have the resources available to meet the needs of the youth they serve, it's one step closer to a multi-pronged, multi-system approach to effectively addressing the traumatic experiences of system-involved youth.
Native American youth, 22% of whom were determined to have experienced post-traumatic stress in 2014 by the Justice Department, are also faced with the effects of historical trauma, as well as disproportionate representation in the child welfare system and the prison system as adults. This population of youth has historically been under-served, as described in the story of Brandi, who experienced childhood trauma in her family home and continued to experience trauma by the systems designed to help her as an adolescent and young adult.
This is the first in a two-part special report on how courts and other institutions deal with traumatized children, especially Native American youth. You can read part two here.
FARGO — Brandi Azure could feel the love fade from her family on days her parents drank.
What happened on one of those joyless days left a deep scar on her memory, ever-present among a constellation of scars from a childhood spent in poverty with parents stuck in the haze of addiction.
It was a Saturday gathering at her uncle's house in West Fargo where the adults were boozing. An argument erupted, and her uncle started choking her aunt.
Brandi's dad, seeing his sister being attacked, grabbed a knife and stabbed Brandi's uncle in the torso repeatedly, enough to put him in serious condition and require surgery.
Brandi, just 6 years old, saw the violence unfold.
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