Teaching trauma: Critically engaging a troublesome term

Abstract

How the social work profession supports people to live through experiences of trauma and helps to facilitate recovery represents an important base of our practice. Whilst the impacts of trauma in people's lives cannot be discounted, there remains significant scope to further inquire into how people respond to traumatic situations and locate their own sources of healing, hope and survival. Drawing on two different case studies—one with resettled Sudanese refugees in Australia and another involving critical incident debriefing—this paper looks to address the complex intersections between trauma, well-being and the roles of social work pedagogy and practice.