Overview
LBI Foundation’s capacity building initiatives are focused on equipping and empowering people, programs, organisations and regions build wellbeing and trauma responsive communities. This page is dedicated to the definition and features of wellbeing-and-trauma responsive communities.
Definition
What is a Community?
The term “community” represents a group of people who are brought together around a shared purpose. In application it may include a:
- Support team around a person.
- School.
- Program.
- Agency.
- Region.
- Group of people who have a shared purpose or set of interests.
What does Wellbeing Mean?
The term wellbeing can be understood as the complex combination of a person’s physical, mental, emotional and social and health life domains. It is strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction. In short, wellbeing could be described as how you feel about yourself and your life. At LBI, we support individuals and communities to come up with a definition of wellbeing that is meaningful to them.
Importantly, this definition of wellbeing does not mean the absence of physical or mental disease. In other words, it is possible to be diagnosed with a mental illness (e.g., anxiety/depression), and still report high levels of wellbeing.
Within this definition of wellbeing, we see that there is an interdependent or symbiotic relationship between “individual” and “community” wellbeing. In other words, an individual’s wellbeing cannot be seen outside of the community they live within (and vice versa).
What does Trauma Mean?
Trauma by definition is any event or experience that overwhelms your coping ability, and it is frequently associated with intense negative feelings and the absence of physical and emotional safety.
What does Responsive Mean?
The term “responsive” means that the community can respond to the mental health, trauma, wellbeing, growth and developmental needs of individual and collective community members, in a manner that is contextualised (or personalised) to an individual’s needs and context.
Features
A wellbeing and trauma responsive community is a group of people who have the shared:
Language
Knowledge
Skills
Methods
To:
1. Understand the science of wellbeing, trauma, growth and optimal human development.
2. Integrate this understanding with existing knowledge and strengths.
3. Apply this knowledge through intentional actions.
4. Co-Create personalised wellbeing solutions for individual and collective community members.
In short, there are sustainable methods for the community to develop contextualised or personalised wellbeing solutions, at the individual and group level. These solutions draw upon holistic or ecological understandings of mental health and wellbeing, and honour the existing strengths, wisdom and knowledge systems of individuals and communities.
