When a kid acts out in New Britain, the first question teachers, administrators and mental health professionals are asking is no longer, “What’s wrong with you?” but, “What happened to you?”
The reaction is no longer to punish, but to empathize.
The shift is just the beginning of the city’s efforts to become “trauma-informed.”
To be “trauma-informed” is to recognize that 25 percent of children under 17 have suffered some form of trauma in their life, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and to help them heal and move on rather than punish them for how they have responded to what happened to them.
[For more of this story, written by Julia Werth, go to https://ctmirror.org/2017/08/2...ift-and-partnership/]
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