Responding Effectively to Trauma Manifestations in Child Welfare Cases

• Author: Rebecca M. Stahl
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12526
• Published date: 01 October 2020

RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY TO TRAUMA MANIFESTATIONS IN

CHILD WELFARE CASES

Rebecca M. Stahl

†

This article defines trauma and how it manifests in the dependency court system. Trauma is prevalent in child welfare cases

and all of the professionals on these cases can respond to the trauma they see and experience more effectively through a bet-

ter understanding of how to regulate the nervous system and the body. Trauma often manifests as difficult behaviors in the

dependency court world, but there is a lack of information for effective strategies to deal with it. This article discusses how

families and professionals experience trauma in dependency court and provides tools rooted in a physiological understanding

of trauma. It will help professionals notice and respond to trauma in themselves and others.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

There are many ways to define trauma, and using a broader definition of trauma helps put people’s actions into

context.

The discussion about the implications of trauma on family court parties and professionals helps inform every family

law decision.

Trauma manifests in recognizable ways, and learning to recognize traumamanifestations can help professionals inter-

act with clients and each other better.

Learning the skills to respond to trauma manifestations is important for family law professionals.

Keywords: Child Welfare; Dependency; Nervous System; Trauma.

I. INTRODUCTION

In the past ten years, the word trauma has entered mainstream discussions in all types of family

law, including private dispute resolution, state-involved child welfare cases, and delinquency cases.

There are several definitions of trauma and numerous studies on how the impact of trauma affects

people differently. This article, as part of this special edition of Family Court Review on child wel-

fare related issues, focuses on the unique impacts of trauma in state-involved, child welfare cases.

The issues here can be extrapolated to other family cases, but dependency cases often exacerbate

the underlying trauma issues in families and the professionals.

It is important to define the parameters of this article. I refer to these cases as dependency cases.

This is not the only word used to describe state-involved child welfare cases, elsewhere they are

called child protection or child welfare cases. This article discusses the underlying trauma that

exists in dependency actions generally. While the focus is on the United States, the issues addressed

can be extrapolated to dependency cases worldwide. I use “they”as a singular pronoun.

1

In order

to be inclusive, I will not use gender-specific pronouns except in actual quotations.

This article focuses on trauma and how dependency professionals can respond to trauma more

effectively, when they have a better understanding of how to regulate the body and the nervous

Correspondence: rmstahl@gmail.com

†

Rebecca is the Deputy Director of the University of Baltimore School of Law Sayraand Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families,

Children and the Courts. Rebecca previously represented children in foster care in both Tucson, Arizona and Los Angeles

County, California and is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I would like to thank Kelly Browe Olson, Philip Stahl, Cyn-

thia Bowkley, and Michele Hong for their help reading and editing this article.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 4, October 2020 920–936, doi: 10.1111/fcre.12526

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

system. It is impossible to discuss trauma without first discussing systemic and institutional trauma,

particularly because these issues affect children and families in the dependency system dis-

proportionally.

2

This article focuses on changing individual responses and on bias and nonjudgment

in all contexts.

This article proceeds in the following manner: Part II of this article addresses the varying defini-

tions of trauma and how they relate to dependency. Part III addresses what makes trauma in depen-

dency unique, including a look at systemic trauma. Part IV focuses on trauma ’s impact on

professionals in the dependency system, and Part V discusses how to respond to trauma manifesta-

tions when they arise in families and professionals.

II. DEFINING TRAUMA BROADLY IMPACTS HOW PROFESSIONALS CAN RESPOND

Trauma in dependency cannot be observed in a vacuum. As we will see, the impact of the depen-

dency system can and usually does exacerbate any other trauma that occurs in someone’s life, in the

families and the professionals in the system. When trauma is defined narrowly or objectively, as

through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the options for responding are limited. When trauma

is defined broadly as nervous system dysregulation, the opportunities to respond to trauma manifes-

tations increase, and professionals can help themselves or their clients. In this context, narrow and

broad are similar to the difference between objective and subjective. When trauma is defined by

objective criteria the responses available are limited but when trauma is defined by subjective, inter-

nal experiences, there are multiple responses available. I examine various ways to define trauma as

background for describing these responses outlined in later sections.

This article was written between March and May 2020, during a time when the novel coronavirus

pandemic affected the entire world. Any article about trauma cannot ignore the effect COVID-19 is

having and will continue to have on the world, and as related here, on the dependency system.

Other articles in this edition address COVID’s specific effect on dependency,

3

but I want to mention

the piling on effect. The impact of social isolation, a decimated econ omy, and the uncertainty of

how life will look in the future, has had a yet-unquantified effect on the mental health of people

around the world. We already know that COVID-19 has worsened prior mental health issues and

the mental health system is overrun with new issues.

4

COVID-19 will have lasting influence on

people’s mental health long after it is safe to go back into public because, as will be discussed

below, it will likely reduce people’s tolerance for additional trauma.

A. TRAUMA DEFINED BYAN EVENT

Defining trauma by an event is the most objective but also the narrowest way to define trauma.

The word trauma is derived from the Greek word for wound.

5

Multiple aspects of dependency par-

ticipants’lives can be traumatic. For example, they may face bullying in school, a car accident, or a

family member’s cancer diagnosis. While it is important to focus on the trauma that brought a child

into the dependency system, or the trauma of being in the dependency system itself, it is equally

important to pay attention to how events external to the case affect a child.

For many professionals in the legal field, trauma begins and ends with the Diagnostic and Statis-

tical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

6

Now in its 5

th

edition (DSM-5), the DSM is the preemi-

nent way to classify mental health disorders in the United States. Insurance companies use the

DSM to provide or to deny treatment.

7

The DSM-5 defines trauma through the circumstances that

can result in a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including:

8

The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or

threatened sexual violence, in the following way(s):

Direct exposure

Witnessing the trauma

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