Based in the Scottish Borders, our Mental Health Services are underpinned by our trauma-informed approach to support delivery. We work with people experiencing mental health issues to live as independently and as holistically as possible. Multi-agency working with a range of statutory and voluntary organizations, including our colleagues at NHS Borders are a key part of the services we deliver, ensuring that the people we work with get the support they need.

We work closely with the EFT & Mindfulness Centre who provide accredited training and EFT supervision for our team members and the CPD service who certify our training courses and we support students counsellors by providing placements in partnership with the Centre of Therapy and Counselling Studies, based in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

At APS CIC we advocate for a trauma informed society, our Lived Experience insight Model comprises two elements: TRUST and RAPPORT.

Trauma Informed TRUST is training delivered to Services, Businesses and Organisations educating the workforce on how to recognise and response effectively to trauma. TRUST is an acronym serving as a reminder of what is required to provide customers and service-users with a trauma informed service.

Being Trauma Informed is important because people impacted by trauma often experience life differently. Following a traumatic event or a series of traumatic events, they may be hypervigilant, anxious, uncertain and/or easily triggered. This can happen when facing everyday situations that other people who are not impacted by trauma, may not deem to be stressful.

When someone is triggered, they can experience overwhelming emotional flashbacks whereby they are being hijacked by unwanted thoughts and feelings which can cause their fight/flight fear response to be triggered. When this happens, it naturally causes the body to release chemicals into the blood stream, such as adrenaline and cortisol which when repeated over long periods,  can become unhealthy. It is important that we as a society understand the impact of trauma so that we can recognise the signs and help to prevent people from being repeatedly triggered and retraumatized.

Trauma Informed TRUST training is a simple effective approach that aims to achieve this.

Training Accounts and Trauma Informed Membership

RAPPORT is a mind-body approach to healing that we use to support service-users on their journey of self-discovery for recovery from trauma. It involves empowering and supporting people to recognise, understand, cope and heal from trauma and to help create their own bespoke emotional first aid toolkits. Our service includes;

• Equipping people with skills and tools to help them manage their mental health
• Developing personal support plans with the supported person to help them identify and achieve the outcomes they desire
• We work from a recovery-based perspective, which means we enable the people we support to live a good life – as defined by them – with or without symptoms.

We support adults who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Abusive Relationships and toxic stress.

“Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person’s ideas and none of my own ideas are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me.” – Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person, 1954