Use these key components to start your assessments and the corresponding tools and resources to support you through this process.
The trauma-informed care organisational self-assessments allow you to assess the trauma-informed care practices of your staff and services against the actions of Trauma-informed Care in Mental Health Services Across NSW – A Framework for Change (PDF 510.8 KB) (the framework).
The self-assessments are available in the Quality Audit Reporting System (QARS) and can be accessed by all NSW mental health services. They can be modified to suit the needs of your service.
The self-assessments should be reviewed and retaken at regular intervals to determine measures and understand areas of strength and need.
Once self-assessments are completed, they will:
- provide an overview of capabilities against the framework
- identify strengths and exemplar practice
- identify areas for improvement that may need further investigation
- support the development of an action plan
- facilitate common understanding, increased knowledge and agreed priorities for actions
- support the development of trauma-informed care practices among mental health care providers.
The assessment can be completed by all staff working in NSW mental health services.
There are two organisational self-assessments: individual and service.
Identify which self-assessment to undertake based on your needs and which staff would be best placed to receive the assessment. The assessments aligns with the individual actions outlined in the framework (PDF 511 KB).
Individual self-assessment
Mental health staff and employees, including administration, clinical, non-clinical and management, can assess the use of trauma-informed care actions in their day-to-day care.
Service self-assessment
Mental health managers and leads can assess trauma-informed care at a service level.
The assessment will take around 15-30 minutes to complete.
The self-assessment should be completed in one sitting. It is not necessary for you to spend a long time on each question, as the objective is to gather a snapshot of trauma-informed care.
This rating scale provides a reference for staff when answering the self-assessment questions. It is shown in both self-assessments.
The scale will also provide a clear measure to analyse the self-assessment results.
| Yes | This action is consistently applied (i.e. not just a one-off instance) in all relevant situations. |
| No | Never completed. |
| In progress | Infrequent action, may have commenced but not consistent; more improvement required. |
Self-assessment guide templates
Use these templates to support your processes. You can share them with your staff for information and instructions. The guides can be used as is or adapted to suit the needs of your service.
Preparing for QARS organisational self-assessment
Steps to ensure you can access individual or service self-assessment in QARS.
- Speak to your clinical governance unit (CGU) and ensure you have administrative access to distribute surveys. You may already have this access, but you will need to confirm.
- The CGU will need to nominate someone who is willing to receive access to the survey in addition to yourself. The role of this person is to provide support to you in case you encounter difficulties in setting up your survey.
- The project lead will need to email ACI-MentalHealth@health.nsw.gov.au to access the survey. Include the name and contact of the CGU nominee in the email. The ACI will then share the survey template with the nominated CGU person and yourself (project lead).
- If you are unable to obtain support from the CGU, please email ACI-MentalHealth@health.nsw.gov.au.
- Decide whether you want to make your survey responses anonymous or not. You will need to specify this as part of the survey set-up.
- Prepare your list of survey recipients. You will need to enter their email addresses as part the QARS survey invitation process.
How to set up the organisational self-assessments in QARS
The self-assessment tool has been created in QARS survey module so it can be adopted statewide for local use.
QARS can be accessed via the login page. Project leads and survey administrators can access the QARS survey module using their Stafflink ID and password.
Read the step-by-step guide to setting up trauma-informed care assessment in QARS (PDF 614.2 KB)