I have also worked in the emergency department as a child life specialist, my sole purpose was to provide psycho-social support. I found the best ways to advocate for trauma informed practices was present pulling for research and theories and to use modeling in my ever day interactions. For presentations and since I was working with children, I focused on things like stress-appraisal/responses, child development, resilience theories, and any support I could find about the impact of trauma on development. With the said, I found it most effective to make it relateable to them. How does it benefit them, not just the patient. How can it make their job easier, reduce costs, save time, improve patient satisfaction scores. Leadership will be most driven by those factors. Make it as tangible for their every day work experiences as possible. Do they want to reduce the number of behavioral health codes? Get patients out the door faster by improving compliance and reducing use of medication?
Secondly, with the front line staff, I found modeling was the best teacher. I used family centered, trauma informed practices in every single interaction. Someone would notice a difference and ask me about it. Then they would start doing it and it just snowballed from there. If a staff member was strongly apposed to utilizing a certain method or technique and they had more "power" than me, I just had to roll with it. I still showed them respect, but I always advocated for what was best. Some slowly, over time, began to shift their ways; some did not. Again, my information was targeted towards pediatrics, so that may change your approach. However, these strategies worked well for me. Getting buy in from leadership is really the best way to create system wide change.