Centre for CDCT
The Centre for Developmental and Complex Trauma, St Andrew’s Healthcare
The Centre for Developmental and Complex Trauma (CDCT), at St Andrew’s Healthcare, focuses on improving the lives of marginalised populations who have been subject to repeated trauma exposure.
The centre was established to provide a forum to network, coordinate and engage in activities to improve outcomes for people who live with the impact of trauma.
In keeping with this focus, the CDCT has a strong co-production and multi-disciplinary focus to ensure that all stakeholders involved in the care and support of people with trauma-related needs have a voice.
A sense of ‘ownership’ by providers and recipients of care is key to the success of the CDCT in achieving its aims.
The Values of the CDCT
In addition to the core values of St Andrew’s Healthcare, the CDCT operates around five core academic values:
- Integrity
- Academic Excellence
- Social Justice
- Transformation
- Empowerment
As such the centre operates a highly collaborative working model, prioritising developing relationships with stakeholder groups to ensure that our work is aligned to our core values.
The CDCT's portfolio of current activities
- Higher education: Postgraduate Programmes in Trauma
- Research, service development and evaluation programme
- International conference programme
- Consultation and supervision
- CPD workshops
- Hosting Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
- Student and professional clinical and research placements
Aims and Key Objectives of the CDCT
The broad aims of the Centre are achieved through developing partnerships and practices to deliver comprehensive research, teaching and CPD programmes that incorporate holistic and survivor coproduction work that will focus on some of the most marginalised and disenfranchised sections of society. The core aims of the Centre are the advancement of clinical practice to achieve better outcomes for people who have experienced repeated incidents of trauma. The Centre will operate according to three broad principles:
- To improve the lives and outcomes for of people who have experienced repeated trauma
- To bridge the gap between academic knowledge and clinical practice
- To increase awareness of the trauma experiences and care needs for the most marginalised sections of society
To improve the lives and outcomes of people who have experienced repeated trauma.
Through recognising the whole-person impact of trauma and to place those affected by trauma at the centre of activities to improve the effectiveness of services. This will be achieved through research, hosting continuous professional development events and through influencing the national policy agenda to ensure that the voices and needs of our populations are reflected in government policy.
To bridge the gap between academic knowledge and clinical practice.
To support the development of models of care derived from research driven by a strong academic rigour and developed by clinicians and peer researchers working in the field. This will be achieved through employing people with lived experience and providing comprehensive training to promote the quality of survivor research. Our service evaluation and research programmes will also have a strong applied clinical focus and will report findings based on the needs of our populations.
To increase awareness of the trauma experiences and care needs for the most marginalised sections of society who are typically excluded, or who are minimally present, in trauma research and have limited access to trauma services.
This will be achieved through focusing our CPD, service evaluation and research activities with these populations and using this platform to inform and influence national policy agendas.
The Trauma Brief Newsletter
Launching the ‘Trauma Brief’ Newsletter with free resources, practice guidance and research updates for those working in the field of psychological trauma. As a part of our commitment to reduce the gap between research and clinical practice, we have combined the newsletters associated with our Special Interest Groups into a single newsletter, ‘The Trauma Brief’.
The first edition of official newsletter for the Centre for Developmental and Complex Trauma (CDCT), contains focused pieces and practice guidance relating to autogenic sources of PTSD (PTSD arising from your own actions), Autism and trauma needs, Improving practice and outcomes for Deaf people with trauma needs.
We also report on the outcomes from the new ESTAIR programme to treat complex PTSD, developed and led by Thanos Karatzias We have an in depth interview with the wonderful Jon Taylor, exploring the weaponization of trauma in forensic risk assessments. His insights on how we can improve practice and the ethical context of this work are well worth the read! We also have research and book updates from across the field of traumatology including moral injury, occupational distress and personality disorders and complex PTSD.
