The general objective of this project consists of raising the awareness about the occurrence of PTSS and equipping professionals working in the public sector with skills to assist them in identifying their clients, promoting their inclusion, and improving their own respective service or counselling work. To reach these objectives, the specific project objectives were: • to compile guidelines for professionals working in the public sector to raise their awareness about the occurrence of PTSS among their clients, and increase their skills to identify PTSS among their clients and to promote their inclusion; • to develop specific cases that illustrate common work situations and show examples how to react to clients who are suffering from PTSS; • to develop concrete training materials that build on these guidelines and cases; • to enable networking and exchanges of experiences through an e-platform for the access to all contents and training materials; • to give immediate access to the products through the development of mobile applications for smart phones; and • to achieve sustainability by providing access to of the project outputs for at least five years after the end of the project, i.e., until 2028.
The TIPS project built upon the successful Erasmus+ project “Post-traumatic Integration – Low-level Psychosocial Support and Intervention for Refugees (PTI)”, which received great interest and a distinction as 'best practice'. During their dissemination activities, several partners were asked if the PTI project could be extended to support various professionals who come in contact with clients or people suffering from posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) but do not have a professional training. The number of persons in Europe suffering from PTSS is likely to increase in the years to come, through migration from violence and natural disasters, and health issues. Based on a needs analysis, we found that especially in the public sector many professions are confronted in their work with clients having PTSS: labour office advisers, social benefit workers, housing department officers, lawyers, debt counsellors, just to name a few. All these professionals have their specific experience but no training how to deal with a person who suffers from PTSS, and therefore frequently misjudge their clients. Implementing trauma-informed counselling will help service professionals to understand and respond appropriately to the effects of trauma.