The Healing Kids, Healing Families (HKHF) team wants to understand how difficult or stressful experiences affect children and their families, and how we can best support them to heal and move forward.
Our research focuses on listening to and learning from the experiences of children and families visiting the hospital. By understanding what feels stressful, overwhelming, or supportive during these times, we can identify practical ways to improve care. One way we do this is through research on trauma-informed care.
What is Trauma-Informed Care?
Trauma-informed care means that everyone involved in caring for a child and their family — doctors, nurses, and other staff — understands that being in the hospital can be scary, stressful, or even bring up memories of past difficult experiences.
This approach goes beyond treating physical injuries. It also focuses on helping children and families feel safe, supporting them emotionally, empowering them in their experiences, and making sure their inner healing is cared for alongside their physical recovery.
Our trauma-informed care research looks at what kids and families experience in hospital, so that we can find practical ways to support wellbeing and recovery. Our work is guided by six key trauma-informed care principles:
- Safety
- Trustworthiness and transparency
- Peer support
- Collaboration
- Empowerment and choice
- Cultural respect and humility
See more about our projects below.
To find out more about these projects, please email hkhf@thekids.org.au
Trauma-informed care project
Lead investigator: Dr Hayley Jackson
Aim: Trauma-informed care is becoming widely recognised as best practice in Australian health services. However, we still need to understand how it should be defined and delivered in hospitals that care for children. The Trauma-Informed Care project will explore this through three linked studies:
- Study 1 – Children and families: Looks at how children and carers experience hospital care, the effects of trauma-informed care, and how it could be improved.
- Study 2 – Clinical staff: Explores current trauma-informed care practices, outcomes, and what helps or hinders implementation from the perspective of hospital staff.
- Study 3 – Consensus with children, carers, and staff: Combines findings from Studies 1 and 2 to develop practical recommendations for delivering and evaluating trauma-informed care in children’s hospitals.
The project will produce a framework informed by children, parents, and children’s hospital staff to guide research, practice, and evaluation. Ultimately, this work aims to improve hospital experiences and support health and wellbeing for children and their families.
Funding: This project receives funding from Embrace at The Kids Research Institute Australia
Healing Together Study
Lead investigators: Dr Karen Lombardi, Amanda Zaffino
Aim: This project is about understanding what children and families go through when they are in the hospital and finding new ways to support them. We want to learn from kids, parents, and hospital staff about what helps them feel safe, calm, and cared for — especially during stressful or scary moments.
By listening to kids’, families’, and hospital staff members’ experiences, we will create helpful tools and ideas that make hospital visits more positive and less overwhelming. Our goal is to build a supportive, healing approach that ensures children and families feel understood, safe, and supported during and after their hospital stay.
Funding: Rio Tinto and Channel 7 Telethon Trust via Embrace at The Kids
Developing a Trauma Informed Care Patient-Reported Experience Measure (TIC-PREM)
Lead investigator: Dr Michael English
Aim: More children’s hospitals are becoming interested in using trauma-informed care to create more positive experiences for children and families, but there’s currently no simple way to find out how patients or carers feel about the care they receive. This is important, because the success of trauma-informed care depends on the experiences of the people being cared for.
We plan to create a questionnaire that lets patients and carers share their experiences of care in hospitals and other health environments. Our research team will write the first draft of the questions, then an Advisory Group will review and improve them. Finally, we’ll ask a group of people to complete the questionnaire online to see how well it works and whether the questions make sense to a broader audience.
Funding: UWA School of Psychological Science