Trauma and Family Law
Trauma is not a new or rare occurrence. In fact, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) estimates that 75% of Australian adults have experienced a traumatic event at some point in their life.
This is often the case within family law matters, with the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA) accounting that 83% of family law matters involve allegations of family violence with a high comorbidity to child abuse. This is a real issue within our community and makes understanding trauma and adopting a trauma informed approach imperative.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma occurs when a person’s coping mechanisms have been overwhelmed because of a perceived or experienced threat. When we perceive extreme threat, our bodies activate a ‘fight’, ‘flight’ and/or ‘freeze’ response. These responses are our bodies way of trying to protect us from the threat, but it can negatively impact our health if the cause of the trauma is not resolved.
Unresolved trauma can cause adverse effects such as the inability to cope with the normal stresses and strains of daily living, difficulty with trust and benefit from relationships, difficulty manage cognitive processes such as memory and attention, and difficulty regulating behaviours and emotions.
What Is A Trauma Informed Approach?
A trauma informed approach is about understanding how past experiences shape who a person becomes. It is an approach that is based on the principles of not knowing and respecting. It recognizes that the person who holds trauma has a lived experience, and so we may Invite them to share information about what may be triggering, but do not compel information.
There are five core foundations of a trauma informed practice. These are:
1. Safety
2. Trustworthiness
3. Choice
4. Collaboration
5. Empowerment
It is important to adopt a trauma informed approach, as it is the unfortunate reality that trauma victims are commonly labelled with derogatory terms (eg. Crazy or difficult), can be retriggered or mistreated by services meant to help (eg. Courts, Police, Hospitals), are often poorly understood and not referred to the services they need, can sometimes dissociate and appear inconsistent or disconnected, can have difficulty giving instructions or evidence, and can pass on their trauma to their children or significant others.
Therefore, being trauma informed is not only beneficial to providing help to the trauma survivor, but also promotes the welfare of the family unit.
How Can We Be Trauma Informed?
There are simple actions we can take and behaviors we can adopt to make sure we are acting in a trauma informed way. These include:
1. Avoid questions that are blaming or shaming
2. Allow physical, mental, and emotional presentations that do not match our expectations.
3. Acting without judgement.
4. Allowing the person to explain or inform instead of using our own explanations or experiences.
5. Understanding and responding to racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender needs.
6. Being clear and predictable.
7. Provide options and choices.
8. Reinforcing strengths and a belief in recovery.
9. Reducing the need to re-tell or revisit traumatic events or providing warning.
10. Linking people with specialist support services and encouraging support people.
A Trauma Informed Approach in the FCFCOA (‘the Family Court’)
The Family Court has embraced a trauma informed approach to legal case management. In fact, all Judicial Officers and Court Experts have received ongoing detailed and careful training on topics to do with trauma and family violence including the Safe and Together Family Violence training by David Maendel.
This training compliments shifts in practices and procedures in the Court, as well as a change in attitude which has been grounded in trauma informed learning.
Benefits of a Trauma Informed Approach
There are many benefits to adopting a trauma informed approach to practice.
It encourages better working relationships with clients, promotes better outcomes for trauma survivors, reduces the risk of trauma survivors being re-triggered by events and processes, and reduces the adverse effects of vicarious trauma.
At Cominos Family Lawyers, we are aware of the difficulties trauma survivors may experience when they are making the decision to separate from a partner and need to access the family law system.
We pride ourselves on our commitment to our clients and our ethos of ensuring our clients feel safe, supported and reassured, which we do by adopting a trauma-informed approach.
For More Information
Contact us on 02 8999 1800 and we can explain our approach and how our family lawyers will make you feel safe, supported and reassured.
Disclaimer:
The above information is not legal advice.