Dr Catherine O’Neill, one of The Intermediary Cooperative’s most experienced members, was among the speakers at a recent seminar examining the subject of trauma informed care.
Catherine was one of five speakers at the webinar hosted by Garden Court Chambers Family Law and Children’s Rights Teams, in collaboration with Lawyers Who Care CIC.
Catherine is a Speech and Language Therapist /Art Psychological Therapist and Trauma Specialist (EMDR) with over 35 years’ experience, working with children and adults with communication difficulties and mental health disorders.
She is a specialist in Trauma Informed Practice and has researched at doctoral level, The Knowledge and Experience of Trauma Informed Practice in the Justice System.
The Garden Court seminar looked at a range of topics including what is meant by trauma informed representation, the myths around trauma, the physiological aspects of trauma and how these impact on an individual’s ability to engage with professionals including their legal team and the court process.
Catherine said: “Intermediaries have an important role to play in assisting traumatised people. This could be people who have experienced early complex trauma or been through a recent traumatic experience such as mental trauma. We hold the effects of trauma in our bodies and brain and therefore not under our conscious control. It is a physiological response to threat.”
Catherine says trauma can have many faces including:
Distraction/ focus – making it difficult to determine what information is important and what isn’t.
Hypervigilance / hypo vigilance – causing dysregulation and erratic behaviour. This may affect their ability to remain within the window of tolerance.
Anxiety – making a person more reactive to unexpected changes or information, sometimes causing ‘shut down’.
Language Deficits – making it difficult for someone to connect words with experiences. Processing issues due to intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.
Executive Function Deficits – inhibiting the ability of a person to develop and access the skills required to plan and solve problems.
She added: “It means that a traumatised person can be misunderstood in court and this is where the communication assistance of an experienced intermediary can be so important.”
The research that Catherine undertook for her PhD revealed the huge lack of training in Training Informed Practice.
Findings indicated that 91% of barristers and solicitors and 74% of police had never attended any formal training. This compared with 75% of intermediaries who had been trained but this was self-funded and not in their initial RI training. This is very concerning considering around 93-95% of each of these groups said they worked with traumatised people.
Catherine said: “There is a serious knowledge deficit among professionals working in the justice system when it comes to Trauma Informed Practice. Judges need to be trained so they can understand or, at least, accept the findings in the reports of expert witnesses and intermediaries.
“Supervisions and reflective practice are key to Trauma Informed Practice to maintain healthy wellbeing. Reflective practice is a term not known to many of the participants in the research apart from intermediaries.”
Catherine added: “Events such as the Garden Court seminar are important for helping to highlight some of the issues including the benefits of training, supervision and the vital role that intermediaries play when it comes to helping to ensure that traumatised people are not misunderstood in court.”
The seminar was chaired by Amanda Weston KC of Garden Court Chambers with fellow speakers including Amanda Meusz, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, Lucy Barnes, CEO of Lawyers Who Care CIC, and Rachel Braverman, a director of the NVR (Non-Violent Resistance) Practitioners Consortium.