The work of trauma-informed care discourse: Constructing clients, workers, and logics of governance

Despite its centrality to contemporary social work practice, education, and research, trauma-informed care (TIC) remains ambiguously defined. Nevertheless, we suggest that TIC constitutes a distinct discourse operating across social work and social services contexts. Building on findings from a scoping review of TIC in social work literature, this study uses critical discourse analysis to explore the question of what TIC discourse in social work does, as evidenced by its treatment in the ten most widely cited TIC articles from the scoping review sample. Findings suggest that: (1) TIC discourse paradoxically constructs people with trauma as both fragile and dangerous, while positioning the trauma-informed professional social worker as benevolent and empowering, but also in need of protection from the dangerously traumatized client; and (2) TIC discourse enacts a form of neoliberal governance through the construction of productive (client) subjects.