Kay Ayre - Trauma Informed Behaviour Support: A Practical Guide to Developing Resilient Learners

Govind, my sincere thanks for your inspiration, guidance and friendship. To all the heroes making a difference to the lives of vulnerable children and young people, this book is for you.

Thank you Kay for your wisdom, patience and generosity. Thank you to my family for their sacrifices and giving me the opportunities they never had. I dedicate this book to my two girls.

Special thanks to Mr Adrian Stagg and Miss Nikki Andersen and members of the Open Educational Practice community for their invaluable support.

The authors wish to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to the land, culture and community. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live and work, and where the book was written. We acknowledge the cultural diversity of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pay respect to Elders past, present and future. We celebrate the continuous living cultures of First Australians and acknowledge the important contributions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have and continue to make in Australian society.

As I write this the planet is in the grasp of a global pandemic in which 28 million individuals have become ill and nearly one million have died. This event has changed the lives of nearly everyone in the world. By the time you read this it is my sincere hope that there are effective vaccines and ample quantities to address this catastrophe. I feel the pandemic has been able to put the focus of this book into perspective. As terrible and heartbreaking as the COVID 19 pandemic has been, the impact of trauma on the children of the world has been and continues to be much greater. However, unlike the pandemic crisis that headlines the news, children living with trauma is a hidden crisis that only catches the attention of media and world leaders periodically and that attention is sadly not sustained, and no vaccine will address this hidden crisis.

When I say that childhood trauma impacts our children far more than a viral pandemic, here are a few comparisons. The United States has 13 times the total population of Australia. The United States (US) leads the world in many areas, some we dont like to discuss such as more incarcerated individuals than any other nation, and more child abuse than any country that has data. The US does have excellent child abuse data, so we know that every year in the US around 1,700 children die of child maltreatment. However, COVID 19 so far has resulted in 60 child deaths. Any childs death is tragic, but a child in the US is 28 times more likely to die at the hands of parents and care providers than from the pandemic, and 10 times more likely to be a victim of child abuse than infected by the COVID 19 virus. Recent data has found 182 children in Australia died of maltreatment in a year. Compare that number to the child deaths in Australia from COVID 19 where no child death had been reported as I write this. Trauma often has an impact throughout the lifespan of the individual, unlike an illness in which many children recover from. You get the point, we call the pandemic a catastrophe, but child abuse and the resulting trauma and its impact on learning and the childs future is a far greater catastrophe.