Trauma-Informed, Culturally Based Intervention

This book examines war-related trauma, the impacts of forced migration, and the importance of emphasising body/brain responses in social work practice. The author integrates neuroscience and social work through an innovative approach to better understand the trauma process and survivors’ healing journeys. This approach presents a trauma-informed, culturally based intervention (TICBI) model for social workers and other practitioners to implement.
This book is crucial because the world faces a new level of trauma driven by global conflicts and forced displacement. These conflicts most profoundly affect survivors from non-Western cultures, who often lack adequate support through current social work practices that tend to rely on Western ideas and a one-size-fits-all approach. This book provides social workers and other professionals with an innovative way to support refugees and survivors of war. The TICBI model introduced by the author will help practitioners address the emotional aftermath of war-related trauma, intergenerational trauma, and the role of culture in both the experience and healing processes.
Working with survivors of war and forced migration requires integrating neuroscience and social work to understand the impacts of war-related trauma and the healing process. Using the TICBI model, this book not only emphasizes experience but also highlights the vital role of culture in survivors’ healing journey. By emphasising culture alongside neuroscience and social work, this model offers a distinctive intervention approach that prioritises localised and needs-based support for multicultural and multiethnic refugees seeking services.
Trauma-Informed, Culturally Based Intervention: Integration of Neuroscience and Social Work in Supporting Refugees aims to assist social workers and clinical practitioners in their work with survivors by providing a step-by-step guide for intervention. Each chapter is designed to deliver actionable insights that practitioners can use as a guide or an additional resource when working with survivors. At the end of each chapter, readers can reinforce their learning through comprehension questions. Graduate students in social work, psychology, nursing, and public health, as well as community practitioners, will find this book to be an invaluable resource.

Nimo Bokore, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She previously taught at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and at Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly known as Ryerson University, before joining Carleton University. Nimo has worked with community organizations and health centres that serve immigrants and refugees. Over the past fifteen years, she has taught undergraduate and graduate students, conducted both local and international research focused on refugees. She is a member of Carleton’s “Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN),” which promotes refugee protection and durable solutions. In the past six years, as the lead for student training at LERRN, she has taught and mentored graduate, postgraduate, and early-career researchers with a focus on cross-cultural and cross-border research methods.
In her research, Nimo, a survivor of war, concentrates on issues related to refugees, forced displacement, trauma, mental health, trauma transference, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and post-traumatic growth (PTG). She has led and co-led several research projects and published multiple papers, as well as two book chapters on war, trauma, and refugee resettlement: “Understanding the Refugee Experience in the Canadian Context". In: Sethi, B., Guruge, S., Csiernik, R. (eds.) Syrian Refugee Reflections on Canada’s Sponsorship Programs. Palgrave, and “Forced Migration, Memory and Testimony". In: Meerzon, Y., Dean, D., McNeil, D. (Eds.) Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.