An Open Narrative System for Trauma Informed Implementation

An open narrative system is a way of exploring narrative based themes to provoke learning and reflection. The aim is to capture the complexity of change in systems. It uses a 3D structure where routes to exploration can deepen and be individualised. The themes are based on an analysis of real good practice examples and these exist as narratives at the deepest level to illustrate practical applications.

Open Narrative Enquiry is the large scale qualitative methodology that was developed to extract themes rapidly from real practical examples. It was developed by Petia Sice, Associate Professor (Specialising in Wellbeing Informatics), and Angela Kennedy, Psychologist, in 2019 for use at a national trauma summit hosted by the Northern England Clinical Network and the Academic Health Sciences Network. It draws on ideas from "world cafes", "socratic cafes", "appreciative enquiry" and "qualitative research methodology".

Starting with a large number of constructive real world examples, small teams extract salient points and pass around their thinking to other teams until a consensus is reached. This process takes up to one day in vivo.

Trauma Informed Care is a whole system approach to thinking about health and wellbeing that appreciates people’s difficulties in the adverse contexts in which they arise. It empowers people and services towards a compassionate motivation in order to alleviate and prevent suffering. It addresses the underlying causes of problems and seeks to create a culture of cooperation and safety.

This national learning community is based primarily in England to promote and develop trauma informed approaches across healthcare and beyond. It was set up in 2020 with funding from NHS-England. Its aim was to provide a forum for people to share good practice and thereby create the possibility of emergent practice through small networks. It is based around the trauma informed workstream of the NHS Futures Collaboration platform. New members can request joining instructions via the platform. Click Here

The Open Narrative System was based on an idea by Dr Angela Kennedy and created by the team at Northumbria University: Garry Elvin, Lee Walton and Petia Sice. Its development was funded by the Trauma Informed Community of Action. The framework for the structure of the trauma informed care framework was written by Dr Angela Kennedy. This platform has been developed On behalf of the Northern England Clinical Networks and the North East and North Cumbria Academic Health Science Network.

Choose a theme to explore by clicking on it. Different routes will be opened at each level thereby creating bespoke explorations. Narratives that inform each theme and illustrate how to implement each are at the deepest level. Most practice examples are tagged with more than one theme. All examples are positive ones. Some practice examples include contact details of the person to contact for more information and they would be willing to network about it.

As the tool develops there may be a chance to add more examples or to comment on the themes and examples.

If you have examples you want to submit to the current themes please contact angela.kennedy@cntw.nhs.uk

The practice points listed in each domain form part of the ROOTS reflective framework. This co-produced guide supports the transformation of services and settings in becoming trauma-informed, building on the learning in the implementation framework. The non-exhaustive practice examples could be reviewed by individuals or teams in organisations to get a shared understanding of what is desired and achievable. The framework is designed to be used cyclically, prompting mapping, planning, action and review. The practice points have two sets: one for staff and the other that people who use the service may observe and experience.

The document can be found here: Roots framework

Click here to view the summit document.