Embedding Trauma-Informed Practice in Community Safety: Key Learnings

On 26 August 2026, Safer Communities Scotland and the Improvement Service's Protecting People Team co-hosted a special, extended Lunchtime Learning Seminar exploring how trauma-informed practice connects with and strengthens community safety responses. With 117 attendees joining from across the public and third sector, the session brought together national context, practical experience from housing and homelessness services, and a wide-ranging group discussion on next steps.

Ariane Beaver, Protecting People Project Manager, Improvement Service

Ariane opened with an overview of the National Trauma Transformation Programme (NTTP), which grew out of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry and has evolved from a training-focused initiative into a long-term, whole-systems culture change programme. She introduced the NTTP's nine key drivers for trauma-informed change — including organisational culture, leadership, staff wellbeing, lived experience involvement, and policy and process — and highlighted the clear overlap between trauma-informed principles and existing community safety principles, such as person-centred approaches, prevention, and partnership working.

A key message throughout was that trauma is everyone's business, not a responsibility confined to specialist services, and that meaningful change depends on sustained investment rather than one-off training.

Anthony Morrow, Community Connector Manager, Sanctuary Scotland

Drawing on six and a half years of work embedding trauma-informed practice across Sanctuary's housing services, Anthony shared lessons from a long and sometimes difficult journey. Key themes included:

• Staff wellbeing as the foundation: trauma-informed practice cannot be sustained if staff themselves are operating outside their "window of tolerance" — a model describing the capacity to manage stress before moving into fight, flight or freeze responses.
• Every interaction as an opportunity: small, human moments — eye contact, a smile, a genuine question — can shift someone's experience, without requiring major resource.
• Looking beyond services: communities and individuals with lived experience are not just beneficiaries of this work but central to it; healing happens through relationships, not services alone.
• Symptoms vs. root causes: many issues housing teams deal with day-to-day — rent arrears, anti-social behaviour, hoarding — are often symptoms of underlying trauma.
• Champions and momentum: change spread through informal conversations with anyone willing to engage, eventually becoming embedded in senior management agendas once linked to staff retention and productivity.

Karen McDonald, Team Leader, Prison-Based Homeless Services, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership

Karen shared insights from a shorter, roughly two-year journey embedding trauma-informed practice into homelessness services. Key points included:

• A shift in lens, not a new technique: moving from "what's wrong with this person?" to "what has happened to this person?" — a small but significant shift, particularly relevant to community safety work involving enforcement or difficult conversations.
• Recognising existing good practice: staff were often already doing trauma-informed work without naming it as such; the framework gave language and structure to existing strengths.
• Leadership buy-in as critical: senior management support from the outset made trauma-informed practice an organisational responsibility, not just a frontline expectation.
• Redefining choice: even when options are genuinely limited, trauma-informed choice means involving people in how decisions are communicated and carried out — not necessarily changing the outcome itself.
• Sustaining momentum: rather than cancelling meetings when actions hadn't been completed, Glasgow's team kept sessions running to maintain accountability, supported by a clear governance structure and an implementation group drawn from across services.

Group Discussion and Q&A

Attendees contributed anonymously via Mentimeter on next steps, barriers, and one key action to take away. Recurring themes included:

• The need for staff wellbeing, reflective supervision, and protected time to be prioritised alongside — not after — frontline delivery
• Leadership buy-in as one of the strongest enablers of sustainable change
• Structural barriers such as funding, capacity, and competing demands, and the value of connecting with existing local and national networks rather than starting from scratch
• A shared recognition that this is a long-term culture change process, not a one-off training exercise

In the live Q&A, Anthony and Karen answered questions on establishing trauma-informed champions, embedding practice within communities, and keeping momentum going over time — with both speakers emphasising persistence, small starting points, and building support incrementally rather than waiting for ideal conditions.

Ariane also highlighted the Improvement Service's peer learning workshops, co-hosted with the Resilience Learning Partnership every eight weeks, as a space to continue these conversations.

Resources mentioned

• Case study with Sanctuary Scotland
• Case studies - National Trauma Transformation Programme
• Tools and Resources - National Trauma Transformation Programme

For more information about trauma-informed practice, please visit the Improvement Service or get in touch with them at info@improvementservice.org.uk