Trauma Informed Support and Supervision for those Working with Children at Risk: Implementing the TISS Model in Practice

Working with at-risk children and their families is trauma-laden in nature, making exposure to occupational trauma a professional inevitability.

Child protection systems around the world have consistently been found to struggle with providing adequate quality supervision to practitioners within their workforce, leading to high rates of practitioner turnover. This book has been written in response to the lack of trauma-informed supervision models designed to support practitioners working in trauma-laden environments. It introduces professionals to the Trauma-Informed Support and Supervision (TISS) model, including all the elements that underpin the framework. Readers will be guided through a series of activities throughout the book preparing them to design and implement their own TISS plan in their own occupational setting. Case studies and vignettes are included as teaching tools within chapters. Catering to both frontline practitioners and line supervisors and managers, the TISS model normalises the experience of occupational traumatic stress and offers a preventative model of care and support as well as a guide to support practitioners post-exposure.

It will be of interest to all professionals who work with at-risk children and their families, including social workers, psychologists, nurses, healthcare professionals, teachers and other education professionals, counsellors, youth justice workers, lawyers and paralegals, family support and domestic and family violence practitioners, housing and homelessness workers as well as programme delivery professionals.

Fiona Oates, PhD, is a social work-trained practitioner, consultant, researcher and educator with more than 20 years of experience working with vulnerable children and their families. Dr Oates has a strong interest in supporting the professional development and wellbeing needs of practitioners working in trauma-laden environments with an emphasis on child protection. Dr Oates has developed a model of support that is trauma-informed and practitioner-centered: the TISS model. The TISS model acknowledges the challenging occupational environment that practitioners who support vulnerable children work in and has context-specific strategies embedded within to effectively support them. Dr Oates is based in Far North Queensland, Australia.