Trauma-Informed Library Practices

Reflective practice is a deliberate process of critically analyzing one's experiences, actions, and emotions to gain deeper insights and enhance professional practice. In the context of a library setting, reflective practice helps individuals examine their work and well-being to:

1. Assess Personal Well-being and Navigate Emotional Labor: Reflective practice encourages professionals, particularly in library work, to regularly check in with themselves to recognize signs of stress, burnout, or dissatisfaction. It helps them identify how the emotional labor of managing their emotions to maintain a welcoming and supportive environment for patrons impacts their physical, emotional, and mental health. Through reflection, librarians can address these emotional demands and develop strategies to better care for their wellbeing.
2. Understand Work-Life Balance: By reflecting on their daily routines and responsibilities, individuals can evaluate how they are balancing their work and personal lives. This practice helps to identify areas where they might need to set boundaries or make changes to maintain a healthier balance.
3. Enhance Emotional Intelligence: Reflection helps to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence by examining how one’s emotions affect their interactions with colleagues and clients and how those emotions are managed in different situations.
4. Promote Personal Growth: Reflective practice promotes continuous personal and professional development by encouraging individuals to explore their values, motivations, and goals and consider how these align with their work.
5. Develop Resilience: Through reflection, individuals can better understand how they respond to challenges or setbacks and develop strategies to build resilience and cope more effectively with stress.
6. Adaptation to Change: The rapidly changing landscape of information technology, digital resources, and library services means librarians must continuously adapt to new tools and practices. Reflective practice helps librarians identify skills they need to develop and how to best adapt to change while minimizing stress.
7. Navigating Multiple Roles & Expectations: Librarians may take on various roles, from information specialists to educators and community outreach coordinators. Reflecting on their experiences can help them prioritize tasks, set realistic expectations, and manage their workload more effectively.
8. Creating Inclusive Spaces: Librarians are often at the forefront of efforts to create inclusive, accessible, and welcoming environments for all patrons. Reflective practice can support these efforts by encouraging staff to consider their own biases, assumptions, and practices and how they might affect different groups.
9. Support Patron Needs: Librarians often encounter diverse patron needs and expectations, including challenging interactions that require patience, empathy, and effective communication skills. Reflective practice allows them to evaluate these interactions and consider how to improve their responses while maintaining their own well-being and increasing their overall capacity to meet these needs.
10. Embodying Trauma-Informed Practices & Librarianship: Reflective practice is crucial in integrating a trauma-informed approach into all library services, policies, and interactions. By fostering continuous self-awareness and critical thinking, reflective practice helps library staff recognize and address the impact of trauma, ensuring that the environment remains safe, supportive, and inclusive for both patrons and staff.

Watch the video below from Alyssa Caldwell for more on the reflective practice groups:

Reflective practice groups provide a structured, supportive environment for library staff to reflect on their work experiences and wellbeing together. These groups are often facilitated and follow a set format. Here’s what they typically involve:

1. Regular Meetings: Reflective practice groups meet regularly (e.g., weekly or monthly) to ensure continuity and provide ongoing support. Meetings might be held in person or virtually, depending on the group's needs.
2. Structured Format: Sessions usually follow a structured format, such as:
   1. Check-in: A brief personal check-in where participants share their current state of wellbeing or any immediate concerns.
   2. Reflection Exercise: A guided reflection exercise or prompt. For example, participants might be asked to reflect on a recent challenging interaction with a patron or a situation that affected their stress levels.
   3. Group Discussion: Open discussion where participants share their reflections, listen to others, and provide support or feedback.
3. Facilitated by a Leader: A facilitator, often a trained professional or an experienced staff member, guides the sessions (in this case a Licensed Independent Social Work). The facilitator ensures the discussion remains constructive, inclusive, and focused on reflection and growth.
4. Peer Support and Empathy: Participants provide mutual support, sharing their experiences and insights. This process fosters empathy, understanding, and community among the group members.
5. Feedback and Learning: Members are encouraged to offer constructive feedback and share different perspectives, which can help others see situations from new angles and apply learnings to their practice.
6. Action Planning: Groups may conclude with an action-planning segment or skill capacity building, where participants identify concrete steps to apply what they have learned to their work and well-being. This might include setting goals, trying new approaches, or committing to self-care practices.By participating in reflective practice groups, library staff can enhance their professional practice, support each other in maintaining wellbeing, and build a more resilient and inclusive work environment.

By participating in reflective practice groups, library staff can enhance their professional practice, support each other in maintaining well-being, and build a more resilient and inclusive work environment.

Beth Wahler, PhD, MSW is founder and principal consultant at Beth Wahler Consulting, LLC and affiliated research faculty and previous director of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina- Charlotte. Dr. Wahler is a social work consultant, researcher, and experienced administrator whose primary focus is trauma-informed librarianship, library strategies for addressing patrons’ or community psychosocial needs, supporting library staff with serving high-needs patrons and reducing work-related stress/trauma, and various kinds of collaborations, services, and programs to meet patron, staff, or community needs. She has worked with multiple public libraries- urban, suburban, and rural- as well as large library systems and state library associations to provide personalized training opportunities, conduct needs assessments, and develop individualized plans to help meet the needs of their patron populations and staff. She has also published and presented internationally on library patron and staff needs, trauma-informed librarianship, and library/social work collaborations. Her recently published book, Creating a Person-Centered Library: Best Practices for Supporting High-Needs Patrons, focuses on strategies for supporting patrons with psychosocial needs while simultaneously supporting library staff. She also co-hosts a podcast, Surviving the Stacks, aimed at providing support to library staff across the globe. Prior to her current roles, she has 14 years of experience as a social work practitioner and administrator, working with organizations serving individuals who have barriers to economic mobility and stability including homelessness, mental health problems, substance use problems, intimate partner violence and other experiences of trauma, disabilities, and chronic health problems.

Alyssa Caldbeck, MSW, LISW is a Licensed Independent Social Worker with a wide range of social work practice, educational, and training experiences including prior experience with both Mental Health First Aid and facilitating reflective practice groups with non-social work professionals. She is a long-time supporter of libraries and is acutely aware of the challenges faced by library staff due to patrons’ social service-related needs, having previously supervised library-based social work practicum students. Alyssa lives and works in Iowa, has worked with both urban and rural communities and individuals, and focuses primarily on issues related to burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue. She strives to create safe, supportive environments for professionals from diverse backgrounds to explore their work-related experiences and challenges while simultaneously continuing their personal and professional growth.