My PhD looked at trauma-informed care in a rather novel way, a way that necessitated a complex adaptive systems perspective. Inspired by Dave Snowden, Ralph Stacey, Gregory Bateson, Petia Sice and many others, my perspective evolved from developments in the natural sciences – interpersonal neurobiology and complexity science. I also relied on human behaviour, emotional affect, culture change and even evolutionary science. This combined pool of knowledge fed into a number of applicable insights in the relatively unchartered domain of trauma-informed care, which are universally relevant – as long as there are people involved.

Organisations and services don’t exist without people. Our organic existence radiates outwardly into the systems of which we operate. These systems develop organic properties, or behaviors, as a result of their organic agents. A few of these properties include self-organisation, emergence, and a sensitivity to initial conditions. I’ll talk more on these in separate blog posts.

Culture emerges from the nature and pattern of the relationships between those in the organisation. This is how trauma-informed care, which can be seen as a culture, because it is “how we do things around here”, can be adopted. There are certain steps we can to steer the ship. See ontological recommendations.