TJ Liggett-Creel

3/12/19

I’m more than the worst thing that happened to me.

Imagine having your whole life and everything you o be define by the worst thing that

Ever happened to you. This is an issue that plagues people who have experienced a traumatic

event. To alleviate this, Healing-Centered Engagement was created. This paper will go through

what the needs of the community are, looking at survey data and first-hand accounts. The current

program, Trauma-informed care, will be explained and its flaws will be fleshed out. Healing

centered engagement is then explained and shown how it is better equipped to deal with the

trauma that is rampant throughout the low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore city. This paper

will show that Healing centered engagement meets the needs of the community better using

strength-based healing and empathy better than trauma-informed care with it's clinical based

healing methods.

When talking about trauma, it is important to understand what it is. When people think of

trauma, they think ‘physical’. The type of trauma that this paper refers to is emotional trauma.

Emotional trauma is “the emotional response someone has to an extremely negative event.”

(American Psychological Association, 2018). When the minds coping mechanisms are

overwhelmed, symptoms of trauma are exhibited. There are two types of trauma, acute and

chronic. Acute trauma is when there is a one-time event such as a car accident or a mugging.

Chronic trauma is when the person lives in a setting that introduces trauma on a regular basis

such as an abusive relationship or living in a low-income environment.

How does one become traumatized? One becomes traumatized when the mind's ability to

cope is overwhelmed by the event. “Trauma can be caused by an overwhelmingly negative event
that causes a lasting impact on the victim’s mental and emotional stability. While many sources

of trauma are physically violent in nature, others are psychological.”. Like most physiological

ailments, the symptoms of trauma vary from person to person. “Some common emotional

symptoms of trauma include denial, anger, sadness and emotional outbursts”, “Some common

physical signs of trauma include paleness, lethargy, fatigue, poor concentration and a racing

heartbeat.” (Adams, 2019). These are symptoms that are not guaranteed to appear but are very

likely.

There are two different classifications for symptoms of trauma, short term, and long term.

Short term symptoms appear immediately after the event while long term symptoms appear for

an extended time after the event. Some short term symptoms would be nightmares, shakiness,

anxiety, and nervousness. Some long term symptoms would be depression, flashbacks, trouble

sleeping, and paranoia. There are multiple ways to treat trauma but the current technique is

called Trauma-informed care.

Low-income areas in Baltimore city have to deal with a lot of issues that hold them back

and make living there harder. The data used in this paper specifically is for three neighborhoods;

Upton Druid Heights, Sandtown Winchester, and Penn North. These three neighborhoods are

where B-CITY is active and so the survey data is based around those areas. Based on that data,

the main things that hold back the community is violence and drugs (community survey data,

2018). These are a huge issue in the community as there is about two times the amount of non-

lethal shootings in Sandtown-Winchester and Upton Druid Heights than in the whole city of

Baltimore. while Penn North still had an elevated non-lethal shooting rate. All three

neighborhoods have more than double the homicide rate of all of Baltimore. Sandtown

Winchester is the third worst neighborhood out of the whole city in both homicides and in youth
homicides (Baltimore City Health Department, 2017). In the past 11 years, there have been 2,287

homicides in Baltimore and with 65% of them, there was no arrest. (Washington Post, 2018).

There are a lot of people who are getting killed but there also people who are seeing these

murders, kids who are seeing these murders on an almost daily basis.

To understand what the problems the community faces, it is important to recognize the

history of the neighborhood of Upton-Druid Heights. Before Druid Heights was the

neighborhood that is described as “the wire in real life”, the wire is a TV show that ran from

2002 to 2008. It was about the drug life in Baltimore from the point of view. It was the center of

African American culture in Baltimore city. In the mid 1920s, Calloway, Armstrong, Nat King

Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and later, Ray Charles,

Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes, and Etta James all came to Druid Heights at

some point to perform at the venues like the Royal Theatre, Sphinx Club, and the Regent. Martha

and the Vandellas (Cassie). In 1971, the city demolished Baltimore's version of Harlem’s Apollo

Theater saying that it was part of an urban renewal plan that failed. Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson

met with Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. at the “Freedom House” on Druid Hill

Avenue. It was described as “There were movie theaters and playhouses all over, too, seemingly

on every block, a lot going on,” Calloway Murphy says. “But it was a place you felt safe as a

kid.” (Cassie). There were jobs everywhere and it was considered a “walkable neighborhood”.

What changed? Baltimore was hit with legal and then later de-facto segregation which

included redlining the neighborhood. The government specifically drew a line through Baltimore

to discourage loans and excluding that neighborhood from money sent through bills for housing,

job training, and tuition. There were riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated that drove

out a lot of businesses as stores were destroyed, goods were ruined and six people died. This was
not the only event that created the west Baltimore that is seen today but it was the capstone that

led to a number of racist and regulatory policies and laws. This was worsened by the city

building public housing in already impoverished neighborhoods. George Romney described it as

creating a “high-income, white noose” (Cassie) around urban neighborhoods. He then tried to

loosen the segregation laws and even went so far as to block funding until the county did but

they did not desegregate. There were multiple laws put in place to keep African Americans in

low-income areas by both written and unwritten policies. Dale Anderson, the person who

followed the eventual Nixon vice president into the Baltimore County executive office, ordered

that real estate companies report and African American buyers to the police. After that, policies

moved resources to the suburbs as de-industrialization, lead paint crisis, the drug war, mass

incarceration—supported by everyone from presidents Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes,

to former Mayor Martin O’Malley— destroyed Druid Heights. All these laws and policies

gradually took money out of the neighborhood and enforced racist policies to force these

majority African American to stay in an area where there are no supports in place for a

community that the government set up.

There are a number of health issues in the neighborhood that comes from decades of

neglect from the community. A large number of the Upton Druid Heights community live in

poverty, 60.1% according to the Baltimore City Health Department. The only 28.8% of all of

Baltimore is in poverty, this is a huge difference that stems from supports and money being sent

into the neighborhoods. The hardship index is a numeral that takes all factors of an area and rates

it from 0 to 100 with 100 being the hardest area to live in. Upton Druid Heights has a hardship

index of 82 and Sandtown Winchester has a hardship index of 80 while all of Baltimore has a

hardship index of 51.

 A history of racist policies and redlining have left low-income neighborhoods with health

and violence issues that expose the people in the community to traumatic events. Social Workers

have noticed that people who grow up in these environments show symptoms of trauma. Given

that the community members are living in an environment of trauma, a healing method was

described to make an environment of healing.

Trauma-informed care is the current method of treating trauma that focuses on ensuring

that adults with authority are aware of the trauma that a person could have experienced. In order

to understand what trauma-informed care is all about, it is essential to understand the origin of

trauma-informed care. So where did trauma-informed care begin? “The social revolution that

began in the 1960s, combined with the women’s movement and the call for more attention to

diverse and disenfranchised groups, set the stage for an increase in the acknowledgment and

treatment of victims of interpersonal violence and crime-related trauma” (Figley, 2002)

Trauma-informed care has certain points that it values in the healing process. The first

value is safety. “Staff and the people they serve feel physically and psychologically safe.”

(SAMHSA, 2014). An important part of the healing process according to trauma-informed care,

is making sure that the person involved lives in a stable environment where there are a pattern

and people to protect them from harm, both physically and emotionally. The second value is

trustworthiness and transparency. “Operations and decisions are conducted with transparency

and the goal of building and maintaining trust among staff, clients, and family members of those

receiving services.” (SAMHSA, 2014). In a healing environment, having to victim be aware of

what is happening to them is very important. Being able to trust the person distributing the

treatment can make healing work even faster. The third value is peer support and mutual self-

help “A key vehicle for building trust, establishing safety, and empowerment.” (SAMHSA,
2014). This step relies on the connections made before the incident and has people rely on their

friends and themselves. The fourth value is collaboration and mutuality “There is recognition

that healing happens in relationships and in the meaningful sharing of power and decision-

making. The organization recognizes that everyone has a role to play in a trauma-informed

approach.” (SAMHSA, 2014). An important aspect of trauma-informed care is that everybody

has a role. Trauma-informed care is build to make sure that teachers and school employees

understand that there may be some other aspects to a situation that they do not understand and

how to work around that and help the student. The fifth value is empowerment, voice, and

choice. “Individuals' strengths are recognized, built on, and validated and new skills developed

as necessary. The organization aims to strengthen the staff's, clients', and family members'

experience of choice and recognize that every person's experience is unique and requires an

individualized approach. This includes a belief in resilience and in the ability of individuals,

organizations, and communities to heal and promote recovery from trauma. This builds on what

clients, staff, and communities have to offer, rather than responding to perceived deficits.”

(SAMHSA, 2014). Trauma-informed care wants the victim to have a voice in their rehabilitation

and want them to feel empowered towards healing. This can include them deciding between who

they want to come with them in treatment or what kind of treatment they want to go through. The

sixth value is cultural, historical, and gender issues. “Actively moves past cultural stereotypes

and biases (e.g., based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, geography), offers gender-

responsive services, leverages the healing value of traditional cultural connections, and

recognizes and addresses historical trauma.” (SAMHSA, 2014).

What is wrong with trauma-informed care? Why does it need to change? “The term

“trauma-informed care” was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you.
For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit-based, rather than asset driven

strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the

terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.” (Ginwright,

2018). Trauma-informed care has an issue where it brands the victim with trauma. They are told

that they cannot remove it and that it will forever control every aspect of their life.

Trauma-informed care focuses on a very clinical way of treating trauma and focuses on

building an environment that supports stability and healing however, it does not accept that one

can move past their trauma. It also focuses on one-on-one healing instead of setting up the

community that has been so successful in the past.

When it comes to implementing trauma-informed care, training bo clinical as well as

clinical adults is integral. According to “Key Ingredients for Successful Trauma-Informed Care

Implementation”, having caretakers of any kind be trained on how to handle mental trauma is

integral to create an environment where a person who has experienced a traumatic event can feel

safe. Engaging the patients also is an important part as emotional trauma can make the victim

feel as if they do have any control over their situation so having a say in their treatment plan can

have a huge effect on the effectiveness of the treatment.

This is the technique currently used to treat emotional trauma and it works but it has its

flaws. Flaws such as not allowing to person to be themselves separate from their trauma and

treating emotional trauma individually and not using the community that has had such an impact

in the community before. These are all issues that are resolved by Healing Centered Engagement.

All the issues that Trauma Informed Care bring with it are absent in Healing Centered

Engagement. Healing Centered Engagement is a technique that focuses on building up the

neighborhood community and creating a healing environment that benefits the victims of

emotional trauma and focuses on using the other aspects of the person and building on those.

When trying to understand something, it is important to at least understand its origin. the

origin of healing centered engagement begins with one person. Shawn Ginwright is the creator of

healing centered engagement. He discovered a flaw with the way that trauma-informed care

makes people think about the event that traumatized them. He created a treatment plan that ended

with accepting that the event happened and moving on. He came across this idea when he was

leading a group of young men. He was sitting with a group of African American men all of

which had experienced some form of trauma. He was explaining how emotional trauma can

affect the different aspects of one's life such as speech, development, and interpersonal skills.

One of the young me stopped him and said: “I am more than what happened to me, I’m not just

my trauma”(Shawn Ginwright, 2018). Shawn Ginwright was surprised with this answer but he

put it together that the term Trauma Informed Care does not properly describe this young man’s

story, only the negative that the harm that it has had on him. After this event, Ginwright put

together Healing Centered Engagement, with the sole purpose of this new technique is to

alleviate this issue as well as recreate the community that the neighborhood used to have.

When dealing with a program to help those who have experienced emotional trauma, the

values of the program are very important. What are the Trauma-Informed Care values? The first

value is a connection with ancestors, rituals, spirituality (Shawn Ginwright, 2018). This would

include activities like learning about one’s family tree and looking at the struggles that they went

through. The second value is knowledge of history (culture and social action) (Shawn Ginwright,

2018). Activities that this value would support include history lessons on the neighborhood

showing that there is a history to be proud of. The third value of Healing Centered Engagement
is to build upon their experiences, knowledge, skills, and curiosity as positive traits to be

enhanced. (Shawn Ginwright, 2018). Healing Centered Engagement recognizes that people have

their own skills and interests, it then proposes that in order to heal, the patient uses those skills as

a coping mechanism. An example would be if a person’s friend dies and to cope, the person uses

their interest in a video game to create a video game character based around that friend. The

fourth value focuses on providers rather than the patient, the fourth value is wellness for

providers (self-care) (Shawn Ginwright, 2018). A huge issue with being a provider for people

who have experienced emotional trauma is that they are then vulnerable to second-hand trauma.

Second-hand trauma is emotional trauma that occurs when a person develops symptoms of

trauma from a second-hand source such as hearing it from the person or reading it. Studies show

that from 6% to 26% of therapists working with traumatized populations, and up to 50% of child

welfare workers, are at high risk for secondary traumatic stress (NCTSN). Healing centered

engagement makes sure to include self-care to remedy the issue of second-hand trauma. Self-care

includes acts such as taking time to one’s self and building resilience through psychoeducation.

The fifth value states that when dealing with a person who has experienced a traumatic event,

treatment should start with empathy (Shawn Ginwright, 2018). The provider should start with a

mindset of understanding and be open to listening to what the patent has to say. The sixth value

of Healing Centered Engagement is to encourage youth to imagine and dream (Shawn

Ginwright, 2018). Children in low-income areas tend to have an idea that they will amount to

nothing because of where they come from. “My father is dead.” he said, “My brother is dead. I

had two cousins, they got shot. My uncles are locked up. What do I want to be when I grow up?

Nothing. I’m from Baltimore, I’m already dead.” This quote is from a Washington Post article

where a reporter went to a school in Baltimore and asked a middle schooler “what do you want
to be when you grow up?”. Healing Centered Engagement aims to alleviate this by pushing

youth to believe that they can have a future. The seventh and last value of Healing Centered

Engagement is to build critical reflection and take loving social action (Shawn Ginwright, 2018).

Healing Centered Engagement is more political than clinical and a huge part of that is social

action. Attending activities such as protests and looking at the situation that one is in and the

different factors are important to the healing process.

Implementation is very important when considering a new treatment option. With

Healing Centered Engagement, There will be three places where it will need to be taught. One is

in the clinical offices so that the therapists and the social workers are aware of this new treatment

option and they can change their treatment of patients to better match these values. The second

groups are non-clinical caretakers such as teachers and other school staff. With this information,

they can create a community in the classroom and school that is crucial in the healing process.

The third group is the community leaders. They are the most important people for this treatment

technique to work. They need to be aware of the necessity of having a strong community and

how to best plan activities within said communities so that they can have the best effect on those

who have experienced trauma.

Healing centered engagement works on building up a community that supports healing

and having a support system within one's close circle that focuses on accepting that the trauma

happened and that it is possible to move on.

All of the points that preceded this lead up to this. How does Healing Centered

Engagement meet the needs of the community better than Trauma-informed care? As said

before, Healing-Centered Engagement's main focus is the community. Baltimore city has lost

some of that healing community due to centuries of institutionalized racism. Healing Centered
Engagement works to try to recreate that. Healing Centered Engagement works to build up the

community which was so important back in the day.

B-CIITY is a group that funds programs in low income in Baltimore city. They surveyed

people from 18 to 25 about their life in Baltimore. This gives a look into what the community

needs instead of the usual where the community does not have a say in what supports they

receive.

This survey question asks, “what three things prevent the community from getting

better?” to the people in the Penn North community. There are 400 responses to this question and

those responses are organized into eight categories; interpersonal, Violence, environmental,

drugs, police, infrastructure, crime, and other. Interpersonal includes responses that are between

people such as fights or bad influences. This category has 59 responses making it about 15% of

the total. Violence includes entries that involve someone getting hurt such as murder or fights.

This category has 105 responses making it about 26% of the total. Environmental includes

entries that have to do with the world around them such as trash or gangs. This category has 18

responses making it about 5% of the total. Drugs include entries that have to do with people

using or selling drugs used in a negative manner. This category has 97 responses making it about

24% of the total. Police include responses that mention something wrong with the police

department whether it be too many police or too little police presence or police brutality. This

category has 33 responses making it about 8% of the total. Infrastructure includes entries that

have to do with the systems in places such as jobs or education. This category has 43 responses

making it about 11% of the total. Crime has responses that talk about crime such as robberies.

This category has 45 responses making it about 11% of the total. Other includes responses that

do not fit with the rest. This category has 0 responses making it about 0% of the total
 This survey question asks what kind of programs would help the community to people in

the Sandtown Winchester neighborhood. The different kind of programs is listed in a “pick all

that apply” format. The different kinds are youth programs, recreation, drug programs,

mentoring, job programs, big brother/big sister, poetry programs, sports programs, computer

programs, and others. There were 84 selections for youth programs. There were 73 selections for

Recreation programs. There were 89 selections for drug programs. There were 68 selections for

mentoring programs. There were 90 selections for job programs. There were 31 selections for big

brother/sister programs. There were 26 selections for poetry programs. There were 64 selections

for sports programs. There were 31 selections for computer programs.

Upton Druid Heights

In total, there were 199 participants in the Upton Druid Hill neighborhood. That data was

organized into 5 groups, Social, Systemic, Crime, Internal, Other, and Nothing. Social includes

subjects such as friends, family, environment and the type of people around the participant.

There were 81 entries or about 41% of the total that believe that it is their community that holds

them back. Systemic includes subjects such as jobs, police, school, and income. There were 43

entries or about 22% of the total that believe that the system that is meant to support them is

failing. Crime includes subjects such as violence, gambling, and drugs. An example of this is”

Seeing my brother get killed over Drama at the age of 15”. There were 21 entries or about 11%

of the population believe that is the wrongdoings of others that hold them back. Internal includes

reasons that are attributed to a flaw with the participant such as loss of faith, lack of motivation

or bad decisions. There were 37 entries or about 19% of the total population believe that there is

something that they can do better that holds them down. Other is made up of responses that do
not fit in any of these categories, there are 7 entries in that category. Finally, Nothing includes

entries that do not believe that they are being held back, there are 4 entries in that category.

What are some of the issues that low-income communities deal with? Median income-

$15,950 (Baltimore city health department, 2017). Percentage of families in poverty- 60.1%

(Baltimore city health department). 4 out of 5 children do not consume vegetable every day.

(promise heights community survey, 2014). Percentage of high school students missing 20+

days- 46.0% (Baltimore city health department, 2017). Percentage of residents 25 years and older

with a high school degree or less- 60.3% (Baltimore city health department, 2017) 15% of adults

over 18 in the neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester do not have health insurance while only

11% of adults in Baltimore do not have health insurance. (Baltimore city health department,

2017). In the neighborhood of Penn-North, about 30% of the land is a food desert meaning that

there is not easy access to groceries and the best place of food is a convenience store. (Baltimore

city health department, 2017). In the neighborhood of Upton Druid Heights, the life expectancy

at birth is 68 years.

Where did trauma-informed care begin? “The social revolution that began in the 1960s,

combined with the women’s movement and the call for more attention to diverse and

disenfranchised groups, set the stage for an increase in the acknowledgment and treatment of

victims of interpersonal violence and crime-related trauma” (Figley, 2002) What are its values?

An important part of the healing process according to trauma-informed care, is making sure that

the person involved lives in a stable environment where there are a pattern and people to protect

them from harm, both physically and emotionally. In a healing environment, having to victim be

aware of what is happening to them is very important. Being able to trust the person distributing

the treatment can make healing work even faster. This step relies on the connections made before
the incident and has people rely on their friends and themselves. An important aspect of trauma-

informed care is that everybody has a role. Trauma-informed care is build to make sure that

teachers and school employees understand that there may be some other aspects to a situation

that they do not understand and how to work around that and help the student. Trauma-informed

care wants the victim to have a voice in their rehabilitation and want them to feel empowered

towards healing. This can include them deciding between who they want to come with them in

treatment or what kind of treatment they want to go through. Trauma-informed care has an issue

where it brands the victim with trauma. They are told that they cannot remove it and that it will

forever control every aspect of their life.

Shawn Ginwright is the creator of healing centered engagement. He discovered a flaw

with the way that trauma-informed care makes people think about the event that traumatized

them. He created a treatment plan that ended with accepting that the event happened and moving

on. What are healing centered engagement values? Connection with ancestors, rituals, spirituality

(Shawn Ginwright, 2018). Knowledge of history (culture and social action). Build upon their

experiences, knowledge, skills, and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. Wellness for

providers (self-care). Start with empathy. Encourage youth to imagine and dream. Build critical

reflection and take loving social action (Shawn Ginwright, 2018). Healing centered engagement

works on building up a community that supports healing and having a support system within

one's close circle that focuses on accepting that the trauma happened and that it is possible to

move on.