Culture-centred Trauma-informed Care for BIPOC Children: Placing Culture at the Center of Mental Health Service Delivery

In this course, Dr. Cirecie West-Olatunji, Ph.D., Professor of Counseling and Director of the Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit at the Xavier University of Louisana, outlines the outcomes when children and adolescents have PTSD and other traumatic stress. Attachment issues can accrue when caregivers are subjected to continuous traumatic stress, as in the pathological environment of ongoing racism and intergenerational trauma from colonisation and marginalisation. To counter the cultural and educational hegemony found in institutions (especially schools), trauma-informed care must be culture-centred. Dr. West-Olatunji offers five broad areas of intervention: employing social justice and advocacy; developing traumatic stress assessment tools, exploring evidence-based interventions, developing community-wide interventions, and employing non-Western techniques and theoretical frameworks.