I’ve spent decades listening to what happens when society looks away from trauma. I’ve sat with men who were sexually abused as children and who have carried their psychological injuries into their adulthood, workplaces, and relationships. I’ve seen how our institutions - health, education, justice, welfare - can re-traumatise as easily as they can heal.
It’s time we called that what it is: a moral State failure.
If a Labour Government is serious about renewing the state - as Mainstream’s radical realism demands - then we can’t keep patching cracks. We need a national trauma-informed-responsive strategy that transforms the state from a system of limitation and avoidance into one of understanding and proactive engagement.
This is not sentimental politics. It’s pragmatic realism grounded in evidence. Trauma - especially early, unaddressed trauma - drives much of what we call 'social problems’. From mental ill health and addiction to family breakdown and violence, trauma’s fingerprints are everywhere. Yet our policies mostly ignore that evidence.
When Freud withdrew his early recognition of sexual abuse as a cause of mental distress, society turned away from survivors for a century. Judith Herman later wrote that each time trauma threatens the established order, denial reasserts itself until survivors force us to listen again - we can see that playing out in the current 'grooming - rape gang' inquiry design process. The question now is whether a Labour government is ready to break that cycle.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research shows that childhood abuse, neglect or family dysfunction increase risks across the lifespan for poor health, exclusion, unemployment, addiction, and early death. Nearly half of UK adults report at least one ACE, and around one in ten report four or more.
Yet the British state still treats trauma as a side issue. Health policy acknowledges it rhetorically, justice speaks of rehabilitation but funds punishment, education disciplines behaviour without understanding adversity. The result is a patchwork of good intentions stitched with systemic inconsistency.
A national trauma-responsive strategy would not build new bureaucracy - it would align the moral compass of the state. It would mean:
But genuine change won’t come from Whitehall alone. It must come from the people Labour serves.
Vested interests - professional guilds, bureaucracies, even parts of the charity sector often resist reforms that expose past harm or challenges control. Trauma-informed reform requires humility; systems must admit they’ve hurt people. That rarely happens from within.
So, let’s take this question to the people through a Citizens’ Assembly on Trauma and Recovery.
Let survivors, professionals, and citizens deliberate together on what a trauma-responsive Britain should look like. We’ve seen citizens’ assemblies tackle seemingly intractable issues, marriage equality in Ireland, climate policy in France, constitutional reform in Scotland. They work because they blend evidence, empathy, and democratic legitimacy.
Such an assembly would not bypass the Labour government; it would help reinforce it. It would move the question out of Westminster’s echo chamber and into the hands of an informed public.
The Labour movement has always been at its best when it marries moral imagination with practical delivery. The creation of the NHS in 1948 was not utopian - it was radical realism. It turned the trauma of war and the memories of no medical care for many into a collective covenant for care. Today, Britain faces a quieter epidemic of hidden and often silenced wounds which demands a similar courage.
Just as Labour once made healthcare a universal right, we can now make trauma recovery and healing growth a civic goal. Trauma-responsive reform should be next great expression of that tradition.
Trauma-informed change is not soft politics; it’s hard reform. It challenges professional ego, bureaucratic complacency, and the culture of managerialism.
Survivors West Yorkshire pioneered online counselling for male sexual violence survivors years before the pandemic normalised it. We did it because systems had failed to reach those men. That spirit - compassionate innovation born of necessity - should guide Labour now.
A trauma-responsive state would measure success not only in GDP or waiting times, but in relational trust between citizens and institutions. It would see survivors not as problems to manage but as experts by experience partners in designing better systems.
Radical realism also means recognising that the British state itself is traumatised. Centuries of hierarchical power, class contempt, and punitive culture have left deep wounds in our governance and the workers who drive our systems. Healing that trauma is also part of any renewal.
Resistance will come from those who profit from crisis management rather than healing and prevention. But evidence shows trauma-informed policy is cost-effective. Early intervention could save billions in health, justice, and welfare spending. Scotland’s ACE Hub and trauma framework show promise, even if unevenly applied.
By empowering a citizens’ assembly, Labour can sidestep bureaucratic stasis and ground reform in collective wisdom. It’s how we move from rhetoric to reality.
What might a trauma-responsive Britain look like?
Schools where children’s distress is met with curiosity, not control. Workplaces that understand trauma’s impact on productivity. A justice system that treats rehabilitation as investment, not indulgence. Health services that ask, ‘what happened to you?' rather than ‘what’s wrong with you?'
In such a society, the long shadow of trauma - child sexual abuse, domestic violence, racism, poverty would no longer be private pain but public responsibility.
Evidence suggests profound dividends:
Beyond data, this is about moral renewal. Healing our collective trauma is the foundation for a healthier democracy and a more humane state.
After decades of working with sexual violence trauma survivors, I’ve learnt that healing is never passive. It’s an act of proactive courage and truth telling.
For Labour, the challenge is clear, policy renewal without community psychological renewal is hollow. To rebuild the state, we must rebuild trust, safety and belonging.
If we dare to face what we’ve long refused to face, we can create a Britain that no longer merely manages the fallout of hidden wounds but begins, finally, to heal them.
Because the real measure of a civilised society is not how it punishes or manages trauma, but how it helps its people recover from it.
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Rob Balfour was born near the docks of Merseyside and spent much of his childhood in 'looked-after care' in North Wales during the 1970s - experiences later examined by the Waterhouse Inquiry (2000). Those early years shaped a lifelong commitment to justice, truth-telling, and systemic reform for survivors of sexual violence. Drawing on both lived and professional insight, he founded Survivors West Yorkshire in 2000, pioneering video counselling and trauma-informed advocacy for male survivors of sexual violence in 2015. For over 25 years he has worked across community, policy, and digital innovation, arguing that human healing and civic renewal are inseparable. His leadership continues to press for a national trauma-responsive approach grounded in evidence, compassion, and radical realism. Rob has been a member of the Labour Party off and on for nearly 50 years.
All blog posts represent the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of Mainstream.
