Exploring What is Old and What is New about Trauma-informed Care: Implications for Child Welfare Practice.

Trauma-informed care is becoming increasing part of discourse in child welfare practice. This paper explores the current debates and offers some critical reflections relevant for traumainformed care implementation in child welfare practice. Firstly, the paper discusses the lack of conceptual clarity of a shared understanding for both trauma and trauma-informed care posing challenges for implementation and assessing evidence. Then, it explores the proposed paradigm shift of trauma-informed care in a child welfare practice context. The paper then explores aspects of trauma-informed care that may support newer ways of understanding experiences and interventions. Then, explores aspects of trauma-informed care that may support re-emphasising and re-establishing well-established within child welfare practice. The need to bring critical thinking to applying trauma-informed care is stressed to ensure it is applied to support best child welfare practice. Furthermore, the paper highlights the need for systems level support to support the integration of trauma-informed care (the old and the new).