Planning for Youth Emotional Health in Unruly Environments: Bringing a Trauma Informed Community Building Lens to Therapeutic Planning

Planning in the context of emotion is an important but underemphasized aspect of planning practice. Planning literature has traditionally viewed issues of trauma through the lens of therapeutic planning. Two strands of scholarship emerging from the field of public health can enhance our understanding of planning for the emotional health of youth. Trauma Informed Community Building (TICB) focuses on community building strategies that counteract contemporary trauma found in challenging environments. Scholarship documenting the impact of youth trauma, referred to as Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE’s) emphasizes the need to support emotional health for youth. The paper presents a case study of the I Am My Brother’s Keeper (I Am MBK) program, implemented in Columbus, OH, as a model of trauma informed youth community development. I Am MBK illustrates the importance of supporting the emotional health of youth as a form of planning for emotion. Findings from the I Am MBK case illustrate how trauma informed practice can strengthen our existing concept of therapeutic planning, by supporting the emotional health of youth through empowerment, radical acceptance, creation of safe spaces, advocacy, relationship building, mind/body practices and experiential learning. The I Am MBK case improved the emotional health of youth but could not counteract other systemic or structural policy challenges in the community. The case demonstrates the importance of aligning planning for emotional health with reforming systems and structures in alignment with Schweitzer’s three obligations of restorative healing.