The ACCEPT Study: Improving the Process of Disclosing Adverse Childhood Experiences in Community Mental Health

Experiences of abuse, neglect, domestic violence, severe bullying and community violence in childhood are very common among people who use mental health services. These often have serious and long lasting impacts on people's mental health.When a person decides to disclose or talk about these traumatic experiences it can help healing. However, mental health staff often lack confidence and organisational support to ask about childhood traumatic events and struggle to know how to respond to disclosures or how best to offer follow up support.

A research method called experience-based co-design will be used to find different ways of supporting staff to safely have conversations about childhood trauma with service users. Experience-based co-design involves;

1. Exploring experiences of service users' and staff through in-depth interviewing, observations and group discussions; 2. Creating a short film of service users' experiences which helps staff and service users work together to identify areas for improvement and explore potential solutions; 3. Staff and service users working together in teams to develop the ideas into actionable changes to service delivery

The co-designed intervention could include:

* A training package for community mental health team staff * A toolkit for clinicians to help them to safely talk about childhood trauma with service users. * Changes to the physical environment to make it feel safer * A reflective practice group for staff

Anticipated impacts:

For service users: Improved experience of disclosing ACEs; improved access to trauma treatment; improved therapeutic relationships; improved mental health outcomes.

For staff: Improved confidence and competence to sensitively explore ACEs; improved compassion; greater job satisfaction