11 minutes
Choice, transparency and collaboration in practice Turn the principles of a trauma-informed approach into things you say and do in an intake, an assessment or a phone call.
What you’ll be able to do Use at least one specific sentence or action for each of choice, transparency and collaboration in a routine encounter, and explain what each protects. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What do you do? Document a next step for Choice, transparency and collaboration in practice: Rewrite the first two minutes of your most common encounter so that it opens with what will happen, what is recorded and what the person can choose. Three practices, each with a sentence attached A trauma-informed approach is often summarized in principles. The version many public agencies use comes from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and includes safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment through voice and choice, and attention to cultural, historical and gender issues. Principles are only useful when they become sentences you actually say and things you actually do. This lesson focuses on three: choice, transparency and collaboration.
Choice is offering options that are genuinely available and explaining the consequences of each, including the consequence of choosing nothing today. A choice with a penalty attached to every option but one is an instruction. Transparency is telling people what will happen and what is being recorded, before they ask, in words they can keep. Collaboration is treating the person as the expert on their own life and their own history with services, and building the plan with them rather than delivering it to them.
None of these slows the work down. Most of the time they speed it up, because a person who knows what is happening and has a say in it stops guarding and starts answering.
What each practice sounds like Choice Transparency Collaboration Safety
“We can do this by phone, by video or in person, and today or next week. Here is what changes with each.”
“You can stop at any point and we will pick up where we left off.”
“You do not have to answer that. Here is what happens if we leave it blank.”
“Here is what happens in the next forty minutes and what happens after.”
“I am typing notes as we talk. You can see them or have a copy.”
“That part is not my decision. Here is who decides and when you will hear.”
“I do not know. I will find out and call you by Thursday.”
“You know what has and has not worked before. What should I know before we start?”
“Here is the draft plan. What is wrong with it?”
“Who do you want in the room, and who do you not want?”
Safety underlies the other three. It includes the physical room, the door, the volume, who is present, and whether the person can leave without penalty. Ask about it directly: “Is this a good place to talk?”
Say what you are writing What you can change You control whether the person knows what is being recorded about them and by whom, at the moment it is being recorded.
What to watch for Do not type in silence and then ask for a signature. Do not describe a record as “just for our files” when it will be read by others.
Your next step In your next assessment or intake, name what you are writing at least twice, and offer to read it back or share it.
Collaboration in a plan or an assessment Begin with the person’s account, in their words, before the required fields.
Ask what has worked and what has failed in earlier plans, including plans from other agencies.
Draft the goals with the person, then read them back and ask what is wrong.
Offer more than one path to each goal and let the person choose the pace.
Agree how you will check in, by what channel, and what either of you does if something changes.
Give the person a copy in a format they can use, and explain who else will see it.
Checks before you close an encounter Did the person choose anything?
Channel, time, order, who was present, what to leave for later. If every decision was yours, the encounter was done to them.
Does the person know what happens next?
What you will do, by when, who decides what, and how they will hear. Say it, and put it in writing they can keep.
Does the person know what was recorded?
And who sees it. A person who learns later that a note went further than they expected has learned not to talk to you.
Did you ask what has failed before?
The fastest way to avoid repeating another program’s mistake is to ask the person what it was.
Carry this forward The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration describes a trauma-informed approach through principles that include safety, trustworthiness and transparency, collaboration, and empowerment through voice and choice; the cultural, historical and gender dimension runs through all of them.
Choice means real options with real consequences explained, not a menu where one item is punished.
Transparency is telling people what will happen, what you are writing, and what you cannot control, before they have to ask.
A scenario decision, a knowledge check and a rewritten opening for your own most common encounter.
Rewrite the first two minutes of your most common encounter so that it opens with what will happen, what is recorded and what the person can choose.
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