Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what training her Department provides to its staff on supporting people who have experienced trauma.

The DWP has a dedicated Trauma Informed Approach Integration Programme and we are at the start of an ambitious journey. Our integration programme applies the six core pillars of the approach; safety, trustworthiness, choice, empowerment, collaboration and cultural consideration within the framework of, our colleagues, our customers, our culture and the context of our interactions (whether that is physical, telephony, digital or postal). Alongside internal and external experts, we have established an eight-stage roadmap for implementation. We anticipate we will have completed the eight stages of design by 2030, making trauma informed approaches fundamental to our business-as-usual approach.

With response to the query around what training is provided, as part of a wider trauma informed training framework we have piloted an introductory module for all colleagues to develop awareness of the pervasive impacts of trauma and to develop the skills required for trauma informed interactions with customers. This product is currently in iteration to align with the wider trauma informed framework of learning that becomes more intensive depending on the colleague’s role. This module is part of a wider roll out within the framework which will be coproduced with customers, colleagues and experts. Supplementary learning products will also be made available to support embedding trauma informed principles into our business-as-usual approach.