“The changes that you make to become trauma informed are not hard and they’re not huge. But the impact of changing your perspective is enormous and you can see it immediately.” – Lauren Baker, First Lady of Massachusetts
Lauren Baker, the First Lady of Massachusetts, serves on the Pathways to Resilience Steering Committee, comprised of seven Governors’ First Spouses who support trauma-responsive efforts in their states and are champions for the initiative. From advocating for children in foster care to fighting childhood hunger to advancing access to the arts and music, these First Spouses support and promote a wide range of trauma-responsive policies and programs in their states. The other Pathways Steering Committee members include Dawn Amano-Ige (Hawaii), Tracey Quillen Carney (Delaware), Kristin Cooper (North Carolina), Abby Cox (Utah), Donna Edwards (Louisiana), and Susanne Shore (Nebraska).
In this second video in our series featuring Pathways Steering Committee members, Ms. Baker shares how her passion for improving the lives of children inspired her to found the Wonderfund, a nonprofit organization that serves children engaged with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) by providing emergency assistance for children going into care in the form of duffle bags filled with clothing and other necessities, as well as “enrichment grants” that pay for these children to experience extracurricular activities like music lessons, sports, and summer camp.
Ms. Baker and the Wonderfund worked closely with DCF to create trauma-informed spaces for family visitations with children in foster care. In total, Ms. Baker oversaw the renovation process for more than 60 visitation rooms across the state of Massachusetts.
Creating Trauma-Responsive Systems
In her video interview for Pathways to Resilience, Ms. Baker talks with Wonderfund CEO, Erin Murphy Rafferty, about how the learnings from the family visitation room renovation process — including paint colors, lighting, room arrangements, and furniture styles — have expanded across state government agencies. After the experience with the visitation rooms, DCF was interested in getting help with trauma informed design for all of their office spaces. Ms. Baker worked enthusiastically with the state agency to put together a procurement opportunity that provides access to trauma-informed design assistance from architectural design firms in Massachusetts. She is in the process of introducing the idea to state agency leaders in hopes of encouraging them to use office space that has become available due to new hybrid approaches differently.
DCF will be the first agency to sign a contract with an architectural design firm that specializes in trauma informed design. They will work together on existing and future office space leases to ensure that the spaces are trauma responsive for both staff and clients. The result will hopefully be lower work-related stress and lower turnover among staff. Additionally, clients will experience more successful meetings in these trauma-informed spaces because the stress level is reduced.
Our goal is for Pathways to Resilience to elevate this and similar strategies across the country so states can learn from one another’s successes.