Blog

Facing adversity and trauma together

14 Mar 2025

Harmful past events and circumstances can cause lasting negative effects on people, seriously impacting their mental and physical health, social and emotional behaviour. Increasingly – and importantly for Ingeus’ work in the justice sector – developing trauma informed services can hold the key to offering safe and meaningful support.   

Trauma-informed practice seeks to avoid revisiting people’s difficult pasts while creating trusted, welcoming support services to help them move forward. For Ingeus, which provides Commissioned Rehabilitative Services to thousands of people in the criminal justice system each year, it’s doubly important, as Carrie Peters, Director of Ingeus’ Justice Services explains: 
“One of the key aspects of trauma informed practice is to ensure that we don't re-traumatise people; we do no further harm. That's important for the people that we're working with and also for our own staff, particularly those who have their own lived experience of negative past events.”  

The benefits of Ingeus’ trauma informed approach were recently shared with more than 150 invited guests at a full day Compassionate Connections event in Leeds. Representatives from the region’s police, probation service, local council, charities, and support organisations attended to hear expert commentary and explore empathic approaches to engage and empower often very marginalised people, and the staff supporting them.

Keynote speaker Dr Lisa Cherry is a renowned expert in trauma, resilience and recovery and provides trauma informed training to Ingeus justice staff. She detailed how language and terminology can be instrumental in breaking down barriers, and practical approaches to care for the people who care.

“Ingeus recognises the toll that can be taken on their teams when navigating other people’s trauma,” she said. “They also want to deliver the most respectful and impactful services they possibly can. Trauma-informed approaches to both of those needs are unlocking effective health and care services for vulnerable people, while safeguarding the expertise needed to do that.

“Working in collaboration is hugely powerful, as are insights from other practitioners. Today’s event looked at effective approaches to face adversity and trauma together, why it’s so important, and gave practical take-aways for everyone involved. In what is a constantly evolving topic, it was great to get so many influential people sharing tips and ideas.”

Also contributing to the lived experience panel discussion at the event were the Getting Clean recovering addict project, St George’s Crypt housing charity, Penal Reform Solutions and Lincoln University. 

Ingeus encourages all of its staff, especially its frontline advisors, to prioritise their wellbeing. Our wellbeing hub and employee assistance programme provides 24-7 access to help and support, set alongside a team culture of openness and understanding regarding self-care. We have dedicated trauma-informed and mental health Champions, while our partner organisation CiC provides professional support via confidential individual and group sessions where staff can talk about issues impacting them.

Carrie concludes: “Hosting this event reinforces the importance we place on understanding and accounting for past trauma. We want our staff to engage with the wellbeing services on offer and to prioritise their own health and wellbeing in order that they can provide the best possible services to our participants.”