New state law in Texas mandates trauma-informed services in family shelters

CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS

State Senator Juan Hinojosa (D)

Source: The University Star
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
Starting September 1, 2024, to be eligible for a state contract in Texas, a family violence shelter must use a trauma-informed service delivery model.
 
Who Did This?
The main sponsor of the bill was Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat who has served in the Texas House or Senate nearly continuously since 1981. The other four co-sponsors were three Democrats and one Republican.
 
The Premise
Family violence agencies are typically known primarily as shelters for domestic violence victims in times of crisis. Certain aspects of how they must operate have been regulated by Texas code to receive state funding. Senate bill 1841, which was passed in 2023, amended a section of the Texas code to require these services:

• Advocacy focused on physical, behavioral, and mental health
• Safety planning services
• Community education regarding family violence and family violence prevention efforts
• Counseling services

 
The bill also slipped in a stipulation that a shelter must “demonstrate that the center is using a voluntary and trauma-informed advocacy service model that respects an individual's needs.”
 
What is a trauma-informed advocacy service model? The bill defined it as the service “is provided in a manner that recognizes and responds to the signs and symptoms of trauma in, and the risks of trauma to, a victim of family violence to better support the victim and promote the victim's choice, trust, dignity, connection, and healing.”
 
Analysis
Why was the phrase “trauma-informed” inserted into the bill? During brief testimony for the bill in the Criminal Justice Committee of the Senate, Hinojosa described the bill as simply a modernization of law that had not been updated in fifteen years. Hinojosa mentioned the trauma-informed model as almost an afterthought at the end of his remarks.
Providing testimony were a director of a shelter and a former client who survived domestic violence. Neither mentioned trauma-informed care. No evidence was provided that some shelters were not providing the services in the bill.
 
Contrary to the testimony about the bill, the language of trauma-informed represents a specific social agenda that has little to do with trauma or with appropriate services. The definition of trauma used in psychiatry for diagnosis and research on posttraumatic stress disorder is that an event must rise to the level of life-threatening. Episodes of domestic violence almost always rise to this level. Shelters have de facto always operated on a model of dealing with physical and psychological trauma. So, it may seem confusing about why a law was needed to add trauma-informed language.

The social agenda of the trauma-informed movement has almost nothing to do with facts about trauma. The definition of trauma-informed services in the bill is consistent with this agenda, being vague and confusing.

Being vague and confusing is purposeful, suggesting that the movement is science-based. Instead, it is primarily an ideological movement determined to control the language and ideas in society for a leftist, progressive, Neo-Marxist agenda that is intent on installing a cultural belief that human nature is highly malleable (see here and here). It is an attempt at cultural transformation that must be amorphous enough to avoid any criticism.

Despite gaining traction in the U.S., Europe, and Australia for the past twenty-five years, there is no evidence that trauma-informed practices improve effectiveness (see here).
The services required in the new law have been staples of shelter services for decades and represent nothing revolutionary. The concern is that the new law creates a formal link to the trauma-informed concept, which has a much wider and disturbing agenda. What usually happens in these situations is that many shelters will scramble to document how they have transformed themselves into being trauma-informed. They will require their staff to participate in trauma-informed workshops provided, for a fee, by outside consultants who travel the country. 

This is the trojan horse that delivers the trauma-informed ideology about human nature, i.e., humans are fragile, trauma permanently damages the brain, and trauma is oppression that causes nearly all societal inequities.

​In this situation, it is possible that the person who wrote the bill inserted the trauma-informed language without realizing what it means. If so, this represents a major victory for the trauma-informed movement. They have successfully gained control of the language and ideas about trauma to make it mean something that it doesn’t, and made it widely acceptable.