In 2012 Blue Knot Foundation launched our Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Complex Trauma and Trauma Informed Care and Service Delivery.

The publication was highly endorsed and acclaimed by clinicians, researchers, academics and people with a lived experience of complex trauma alike. Downloaded over 25,000 times the 2012 guidelines still stand and provide a helpful introductory guide for practitioners who are new to this work.  

Between 2012 and 2019 the clinical and research evidence around working clinically with complex trauma, including dissociation has exploded. This has necessitated the development of our 2019 updated Practice Guidelines for Clinical Treatment of Complex Trauma.

Again these guidelines have been extensively endorsed and acclaimed by global leaders in the complex trauma and dissociation field prior to their release – ‘truly remarkable – masterful - ground-breaking - milestone’. They provide an integrative guide for diverse practitioners working with complex trauma and dissociative clients.

Guidelines to Differences between Therapy for Complex Trauma and Standard Counselling Approaches and Guidelines to Therapist Competencies for Working with Complex Trauma and Dissociation 
(They are included within a single `Complementary’ Guidelines publication)

In addition a companion guide to the 2019 Guidelines – combined Complementary Guidelines which provide an overview of the differences between working with complex trauma clients and standard counseling approaches as well as a guide to therapist competencies for working with complex trauma and dissociation.

Complex trauma-related dissociation underlies diverse presentations to health professionals and is often not detected. This means that many people do not receive appropriate responses and care. These Practice Guidelines for Identifying and Treating Complex Trauma-related Dissociation are for clinicians who work in a range of roles, come from different disciplines and have received diverse training but who want to enhance their ability to recognise and work with people experiencing complex trauma-related dissociation.

Organisational Guidelines for Trauma-Informed Service Delivery
`Stand-alone’ organisational guidelines: different from but complement the clinical guidelines

In 2012 we included the clinical and organisational guidelines in the one publication. Although it was important to present the 2012 guidelines in that format at that time, the trauma-informed organisational guidelines were somewhat overshadowed by the clinical set.

Although the clinical and organisational guidelines do complement one another, they also focus on different areas. This means that the diverse audience accessing them may conflate and confuse the different sets. Additionally, the sheer volume of material now available for each of these clinical and organisational domains has made an updated single publication untenable. For this reason, we have decided to release the updated clinical and organisational guidelines separately.

These reissued trauma-informed guidelines for services and organisations provide more detailed contextual information than the 2012 guidelines. This relates to the emergence and nature of the trauma-informed paradigm, issues which have arisen about it, and the current state and scope of
its implementation.