Trauma-Informed Care 2.0: The Living Systems Model for Implementing and Sustaining Trauma Informed Care
By Zachary Barry, MSW
Why Trauma-Informed Care Fades
Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) has made an invaluable impact by raising awareness and encouraging organizations to consider how someone’s past influences their present and to design programs that encourage safety, trust, collaboration, choice, empowerment and cultural humility. But awareness alone does not guarantee long lasting impact, or sustainability. Too often, TIC becomes a set of words on paper rather than a living, breathing practice.
Lets be real- TIC doesn’t stick.
The problem: organizations are treated as if they are static structures when they are living systems. Under stress, these systems respond like the nervous system; they react, they regress, and they get stuck in predictable patterns.
To make trauma-informed care stick, we must support organizations in healing, regulating, and learning. This is the heart of Trauma-Informed Care 2.0.
The Trauma Tree: A Framework for Growth
The Trauma Tree is a conceptual framework for trauma-informed organizational change:
Roots (Values & Understanding): Change starts underground- where values and shared understanding take hold. This is where staff learn the why: that trauma impacts the brain, the body, and behavior. Without deep roots, the tree can’t stand strong.
Trunk (Practices and Organizational Climate): The trunk represents everyday practices, relationships, and routines. It’s where leadership, staff interactions, and organizational climate show up. Consistency and trust make trunks resilient.
Branches (Systems & Structures): Branches reach outward into systems and structures- policies, procedures, and organizational design. This is where trauma-informed care either scales and sustains- or falls apart. Healthy branches spread shade and shelter across the whole community.
The Trauma Tree reminds us- change must be rooted, structured, expressed in practice, and designed to last.
The Living Systems Model: Three Stages of Organizational Functioning
Survival Systems (Protective Mode)
Characteristics: Reactive, compliance-driven, controlling. High turnover and burnout.
Healing Focus: Roots. Create stability, safety, containment, and predictability.
Emotional Systems (Reactive Mode)
Characteristics: Relational but inconsistent. Time is a critical deciding factor. Trust is fragile, alliances drive decision-making, and favoritism flourishes (of individuals and of ideas).
Healing Focus: Trunk. Strengthen transparency, equity, and shared leadership.
Responsive Systems (Regulated Mode)
Characteristics: Reflective, strategic, flexible, and sustainable. Practices align with values. Data and fidelity guide decisions. A learning organization is formed.
Healing Focus: Branches. Integrate trauma-informed care into long-term planning, policy, and culture.
The journey of TIC is helping organizations move from Survival to Emotional and ultimately Responsive. Living systems are chaotic. At one moment, or even one domain, we can be regulated and then move to reactive. That is the importance of reflective practice.
Institutional Grooves: Why Systems Revert
Like the brain, organizations develop “grooves” well-worn tracks of response to stress. Through reflective practice and fidelity monitoring, these grooves can be predictable, but they can retraumatize staff, children, and families. A few examples are:
Compliance Groove: More rules, less trust.
Time Groove: We don’t have enough of it
Favoritism Groove: Power through alliances.
Short-Term Groove: Quick fixes instead of long-term sustainability.
Creating New Grooves
Healing grooves requires intentional, shared leadership:
Notice the Pattern. Identify how the system defaults under stress.
Interrupt the Cycle. Create pause points to disrupt automatic responses and reflect as a team.
Replace with Healthier Patterns. Introduce reflection, co-regulation, and predictive planning.
Reinforce the New Groove. Embed, celebrate, and measure fidelity until the new pattern becomes the default.
The Future: Trauma-Informed Care 2.0
Trauma-Informed Care 1.0 was about awareness.
Trauma-Informed Care 2.0 is about sustainability.
By rooting change in values, strengthening systemic structures, and growing sustainable practices, organizations can move from survival to responsiveness and become a learning organization - breaking old grooves and carving new ones.
The Living Systems Model offers a roadmap for making trauma-informed care not just a training, but a transformation.
