Building a Trauma Informed non-profit Culture: hiring & Managing people with lived experience

By Patty Carlson, Director of Quality & Innovation, 180 Degrees

We talk about hiring people with "lived experience" all the time. We know that including these people in our workplace, decision making and operations can have positive outcomes – including better health, connections and improved sense of hope – to the individuals we serve. We also know that people with lived experience have  intimate knowledge of the experiences people we serve have had and can connected deeply with them as role models, mentors and advocates.
 
As 180 Degrees works to become a more trauma-responsive organization, my understanding of hiring and working with people with lived experience has deepened, and I wanted to share.
 
When you work in an organization like ours, lived experience can mean homelessness, sex trafficking, neglect, substance use, mental health disorders, disability, and a variety of vulnerabilities. Compound this with the fact that many of our employees identify as BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+, or other marginalized communities that may have experienced racism and discrimination, as well as historical and generational trauma.
 
The people we serve are most often in active trauma-response when they arrive at our doorstep. They may have hit bottom, and we are their last resort. People do not often want to have to ask for basic needs like food, shelter, clothing – it can feel shameful and demeaning. They’ve reached a point in their life’s journey, where “asking” becomes necessary for survival. Those are just the visible, tangible aspects – they also experience significant emotional turmoil and trauma response. They may even be currently in the thick of their trauma. All they may know are maladaptive coping mechanisms from childhood, and other traumas, and their awareness is minimal because they have been merely “surviving” for much too long. They may be trying to turn the Titanic around and are faced with a myriad of personal and social barriers.
 
180 Degrees staff can relate to and support people through these exceptional experiences. And, they can also become triggered by them.
 
Furthermore, we work with a variety of other professionals who experience a similar degree of trauma in their personal and professional lives. This creates a culture in our industry of normalcy. Yes, it is commonplace, but it is not healthy when we treat it as merely normal. I believe we need to treat it for what it is, as individuals and as an organization.
 
Add this to the social climate of our time. We are a society that freely expresses anger and hate online, exploits people to make money, and makes certain groups invisible, isolated or ostracized. Over the past three years, all of us have experienced a global pandemic, mass exodus from workplaces, skyrocketing inflation making basic needs inaccessible to some, social and civil unrest, mass shootings… it is overwhelming to think about. But this is our reality.
 
We live in a culture where it’s ok to seek revenge (on criminals and delinquents) rather than help them to recover and heal. This kind of revenge requires us to de-humanize others. We know better, yet we don’t do better necessarily as a society. However, we do ask our staff to go counter-culture to do what society won’t. We go against the grain to remind people of our humanity, which can be hard to look at and accept. It’s hard to bear witness to the consequences of our society and admit our failings. It’s hard for us to not de-humanize society for all its failings – and instead lend grace and acceptance and patience. It’s hard work to go against the grain of society.
 
This is just a glimpse of what it looks like and feels like to work with and hire people with lived experience. We ask our staff to help people in need and function as professionals among a population of traumatized humans, to be the mature grownups in the room, to be role-models and to be healthy and stable examples to others.
 
We ask them to:

• Be strong in their own recovery and healing, so that they can use their experiences for the good of humanity and not to perpetuate or reinforce maladaptive behaviors.
• Show up 24/7, unsure what they are walking into or who they will meet, at any moment of any day.
• Be non-judgmental – to know their own limits and weaknesses, privileges, biases and tendencies.
• Do this when face-to-face with another human who is in crisis.
• See it for what it is, respond appropriately, and then do the necessary self-care to show up at home and in their personal life.
• Have the executive functioning and capacity to perform organized administrative tasks, to meet deadlines and see the big picture.
• Show up as their full selves, and give selflessly to others and each other.

 
This is what I know about people I work with at 180 Degrees:

• They are the hardest working people in America.
• They bring tremendous value to our work and mission; we would be nothing if not for their lived experience.
• They support one another.
• They show up as best they can for as long as they can.
• They are vulnerable to being exploited because of their deep empathy.
• They want to give back, and make a difference.
• They see humanity (most of the time) and live in the moment.
• They are masters at crisis management.
• They are fearless and strong.
• They are always growing and learning, extremely open.
• They are competent, responsible.
• They need support from others and an organization that can lift them up.

They drive my work, my motivations, and my appreciation for the people around me.

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