7: Leading Trauma-informed Community Engagement

This chapter explores findings on leading trauma-informed family engagement. Progression standards for principals and school leaders consensually include indications for engagement with wider school communities and systems (AITSL, 2014; Day & Sammons, 2014; Leithwood et al., 2019). The Standard explicitly references values of equity and respect for the multicultural nature of Australia’s people, the rich and diverse linguistic and cultural resources, and understanding and reconciliation with Australia’s Indigenous cultures. Students’ families, including parents, carers, kinship groups, and those within the families’ cultural systems, serve as attachment anchors for the students’ relational connections. Educational leaders, striving for educational equity, must aim to engage and connect proactively with the families and communities that they serve. However, Dinham et al. (2018) argue that principals often find this as one of the most difficult initiatives to enact, requiring skills they feel least prepared for.