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THAC – The Human Aspect · Pilot · Version 7 · October 2026
Trauma-Informed Organisational DevelopmentExample values Self-assessment of duty of care, protection and organisational learning
For organisations whose own work can expose staff to traumatic strain, for example through violence, accidents, deployments in crisis areas or distressing material, and for organisations that work with people who may be traumatised: police, justice, health, schools, asylum and migration, social work, emergency services, humanitarian aid. For leadership, organisational development, HR and staff-care leads and committed staff.
The tool brings together organisational responsibilities for staff care and trauma-informed principles. THAC's Relational Systems Framework (RSF) provides a conceptual framework for examining organisational conditions, relationships and opportunities for development together.
Your data: Your answers stay in your browser only. THAC collects no data and produces no analysis of you or your organisation. You can copy the result or save it as a PDF and share it yourself.
Pilot: Not yet validated. The tool is not a diagnostic test, not a certificate and not proof of legal compliance or of actual protective effect. Feedback helps us develop the tool: peter.aeberhard@thac.ch (subject «[TIO-Pilot] Feedback»).
1 Questionnaire2 Result3 Next steps
1 Self-assessment questionnaireFirst fill in the details and choose fields of work, then answer each question. Individuals may complete it; the result then counts as a single perspective. It is most meaningful when leadership and staff complete it separately and compare. Differences are a result in themselves.
Organisational unit assessed
Period
Perspective of the person completing it
Documents and experience considered
Add the block «Service users». Our organisation works with people who may be traumatised: service users such as victims, witnesses, patients, refugees, children or relatives. The block is activated automatically when a field of work with contact to service users is selected.Add a field of work (optional)
Deepen intercultural cooperation and diversity. Four additional questions on cultural understandings, language, equal protection for all groups and working across conflict lines.
The levels form a qualitative order; the steps between them are not equal. A policy alone gives level 2; from level 3, what counts is what can be observed in everyday practice. «Not applicable» and «Cannot yet be assessed» are valid answers.
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Trauma-Informed Organisational Development
2 Result
With many questions, the table «Status and gaps» is more informative than the chart.
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The saved comparison is based on different questions. A comparison only makes sense with the same question profile and is therefore not shown.
3 Next steps – recommendations with sourcesOrdered by field of action: who acts, what the next step is and how implementation can be recognised. The basis for each recommendation can be expanded.
THAC supports organisations in all three fields of action: Work with THAC
Our three next priorities
Choose up to three open points and record who is responsible and when it will be reviewed.
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Show the full matrix with all level texts
Method
What is assessed: organisational conditions and practices, not the strain of individuals. No diagnoses are derived from behaviour.Four blocks: The development dimensions Empower people, Strengthen systems and Build trust concern the organisation and its staff. The block «Service users» looks separately at how the organisation deals with the people it works for. The recommendations are ordered by THAC's three fields of action: Leadership & Strategy, Governance & Resilience, Dialogue & Conflict Transformation.Levels: a qualitative order, not a measurement scale; no overall score, no averages. Mapping to the five levels of the source model as a simplified transfer: Ad hoc ≈ Initial, Defined ≈ Structured, Practised ≈ Defined, Learning ≈ Measured and Optimised.Areas of duty: Information, Prevention, Monitoring and Intervention serve as orientation from the Duty of Care Maturity Model. Not every question can be derived directly from Art. 328 of the Swiss Code of Obligations; employment-law duty of care, data protection, victims' rights, child protection and sector duties are distinguished. The basis is Swiss law; for public-law employment and other countries, local law must be checked. The model can be adapted to other legal systems.Protection-relevant questions (⚑): At level 1, the result shows a separate note on responsible bodies.Limits: Pilot, not validated. Whether the levels are assessed reliably and the recommendations work must be shown in testing.
Three foundations
Foundation Role Limit
Duty of care Establishes organisational responsibility for protection, prevention and support. Does not fully cover the rights and experiences of external people affected. Trauma-informed approach Specifies how safety, trustworthiness, choice, participation, support and avoiding renewed harm are put into practice. The label alone proves neither implementation nor effectiveness. Relational Systems Framework (RSF) THAC's conceptual framework for the interplay of conditions, relationships and opportunities for development. Not an independently validated assessment standard for this tool; the questions are not mapped individually to the RSF.
Terms
Psychosocial strain: Working conditions and demands that can be psychologically taxing.Potentially traumatic events: Events that can involve serious threat or injury.Effects of trauma: Possible effects of varying intensity; not an automatic consequence of every strain.Indirect exposure: Strain from, for example, accounts, files, images and videos.Moral strain: Strain from acts or omissions that contradict one's own values; not to be equated with trauma or PTSD.Trauma-informed organisation: Shapes conditions and services taking possible effects of trauma into account; does not replace professional treatment.Those affected: Depending on the question: staff, service users (e.g. victims, witnesses, patients, refugees, children), relatives or people harmed by misconduct.Origin and own contribution
The work started from the DCAF study on trauma-informed policing (2024, lead author Peter Urs Aeberhard) and the DCAF guide on assessing and addressing trauma in the security sector that builds on it. To transfer the topic to organisations in general, the Duty of Care Maturity Model offered a suitable structure; it was developed in 2018/2019 by a working group of the Swiss Security Network with GISF and cinfo, of which Peter Urs Aeberhard, then at Caritas Switzerland, was a member. Questions and structure were reorganised with the support of AI (Claude, Anthropic); content and responsibility lie with THAC. Maturity models themselves are older and come from quality management (Crosby 1979; Capability Maturity Model, from 1991). Adopted are the four areas of duty as orientation and the maturity logic, simplified to four levels. Newly developed by THAC (2026) are the focus on effects of trauma, all questions and level texts, the blocks, the fields of action, the modules and the recommendations. No institutional endorsement by cinfo, DCAF or other sources can be inferred from the origin or the sources. The two tools have different emphases: the trauma-informed self-assessment looks at an organisation's care, protection and learning practice. The RSF Assessment examines the interplay of relational conditions and functions, and indications of development or erosion. Document review is one possible way in.
Sources
Each recommendation names its basis with its verification status. The assignment is THAC's own selection: the sources support the direction of a recommendation, not every wording. Where there is no specific basis, it says «THAC proposal».
Show list of sources DCAF 2024 : Aeberhard, P. (lead author), Robinson, A. and Hales, D. (2024). Addressing trauma as a missing element in security sector governance and reform: Perspectives on trauma-informed policing. Geneva: DCAF. (Conceptual study; content checked, page references open) Anderson 1999 : Anderson, M. B. (1999). Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. (Background work; background; not for specific procedures) Antares : Antares Foundation. Managing stress in humanitarian workers: Guidelines for good practice. Amsterdam. Checked: April 2005 version; 3rd edition 2012 not checked. (Guidance; verified (2005 version)) Bangalore Principles : Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct (2002), Value 5: Equality. (Professional ethics standard; partly verified (principle and application 5.1)) Comas-Díaz et al. 2019 : Comas-Díaz, L., Hall, G. N. and Neville, H. A. (2019). Racial trauma: Theory, research, and healing. American Psychologist, 74(1), 1–5. (Research (special issue introduction); bibliographically confirmed; content not checked in full text) Creamer et al. 2012 : Creamer, M. C. et al. (2012). Guidelines for peer support in high-risk organizations: An international consensus study using the Delphi method. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 25(2), 134–141. (Research (Delphi consensus); bibliographically confirmed; content not checked in full text) Dekker 2007 : Dekker, S. (2007). Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability. Aldershot: Ashgate. (Conceptual work; not checked in full text) EU Victims' Rights Directive : Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, Art. 18–24 (not binding for Switzerland; used for orientation). (Legal act (orientation); verified) Edmondson 1999 : Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. (Research; not checked in full text) ECRI GPR 11 (2007) : European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (2007). General Policy Recommendation No. 11 on combating racism and racial discrimination in policing. (Council of Europe recommendation; core themes verified (overview); full text not checked) ECtHR Wa Baile 2024 : European Court of Human Rights (20 February 2024). Wa Baile v. Switzerland. Violation of Art. 14 in conjunction with Art. 8 ECHR (racial profiling in an identity check in Zurich). (Case law; content verified via expert commentary; judgment itself not read) Herman 1992 : Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books. (Background work; background; not for specific procedures) Hobfoll et al. 2007 : Hobfoll, S. E. et al. (2007). Five essential elements of immediate and mid-term mass trauma intervention: Empirical evidence. Psychiatry, 70(4), 283–315. (Research review; not checked in full text) IASC 2007 : Inter-Agency Standing Committee (2007). IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings. Geneva: IASC. (Guideline; not checked in full text) ILO Convention 169 : International Labour Organization (1989). Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169), Art. 8–10. (International standard; not checked in full text) ILO C190 : International Labour Organization (2019). Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190). (International standard; not checked in full text; check Swiss ratification status) ISO 13611 : ISO 13611:2014 (revised 2024). Interpreting – Guidelines for community interpreting. (Standard; existence confirmed; content not checked (paywalled)) ISO 45003 : ISO 45003:2021. Occupational health and safety management – Psychological health and safety at work – Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. (Standard; not checked in full text (paywalled)) Keeping Children Safe : Keeping Children Safe. International Child Safeguarding Standards (English version 2024). (Standard; verified (four standards)) Kirmayer et al. 2014 : Kirmayer, L. J., Gone, J. P. and Moses, J. (2014). Rethinking historical trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 299–319. (Research (concept); not checked in full text) Litz et al. 2009 : Litz, B. T. et al. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans. Clinical Psychology Review, 29(8), 695–706. (Research (concept); not checked in full text) NICE NG116 : National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2018). Post-traumatic stress disorder (NG116). London: NICE. (Clinical guideline; verified) Rachlinski et al. 2009 : Rachlinski, J. J., Johnson, S. L., Wistrich, A. J. and Guthrie, C. (2009). Does unconscious racial bias affect trial judges? Notre Dame Law Review, 84, 1195–1246. (Research (experiment with judges); findings verified via secondary source) DCAF guide : Robinson, A., Hales, D. and Stark, E. (n.d., file 2026). Guide on assessing and addressing trauma in the security sector. Geneva: DCAF. ISBN 978-92-9222-801-9. (Guide; verified; year of publication not stated in the document) SAMHSA 2013 (courts) : SAMHSA (2013). Essential Components of Trauma-Informed Judicial Practice. Draft for consultation. Rockville, MD. (Guide (draft); verified) SAMHSA 2014 : SAMHSA (2014). SAMHSA's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach. HHS Publication No. (SMA) 14-4884. (Guidance; not checked in full text) SAMHSA 2023 : SAMHSA (2023). Practical Guide for Implementing a Trauma-Informed Approach. Publication No. PEP23-06-05-005. Rockville, MD. (Guide; verified) Smith & Freyd 2014 : Smith, C. P. and Freyd, J. J. (2014). Institutional betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575–587. (Research; bibliographically confirmed; content not checked in full text) SCJN protocols : Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, México. Protocolo para juzgar con perspectiva intercultural: personas, pueblos y comunidades afrodescendientes y afromexicanas (file 2022); and the protocol for Indigenous persons, peoples and communities. (Judicial guide; existence and title verified; content not checked in full text) CC Art. 314c–314d : Swiss Civil Code (CC), Art. 314c–314d (rights and duties to report in child protection); cantonal requirements. (Legal basis; content not checked in full text; check scope) CrimPC / VSA : Swiss Criminal Procedure Code (CrimPC), incl. Art. 117, 152–154 and 305; Victim Support Act (VSA). (Legal basis; check scope and exact articles) Art. 6 EmpA : Swiss Employment Act (EmpA), Art. 6, and Ordinance 3 to the Employment Act (health protection); Art. 328 CO. (Legal basis; check scope (public-law employment relationships differ)) CSMPA 2016 : Swiss Federal Act on Compulsory Social Measures and Placements prior to 1981 (CSMPA), 2016. (Legal basis; not checked in full text) FADP Art. 5 : Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), Art. 5(c) (sensitive personal data, incl. on ethnic origin). (Legal basis; not checked in full text) Art. 4 GEA : Swiss Federal Act on Gender Equality (GEA), Art. 4 (sexual harassment). (Legal basis; check scope) VSA : Swiss Federal Act on Victim Support (Victim Support Act, VSA), incl. counselling, immediate and longer-term help; CrimPC Art. 305 (informing victims about victim support). (Legal basis; check articles and scope) Art. 8 Cst. / Art. 14 ECHR : Swiss Federal Constitution, Art. 8 (equality before the law, non-discrimination) and Art. 29 (procedural guarantees); ECHR Art. 6 and 14. (Legal basis; check scope) Federal Council 2025 (Yenish) : Swiss Federal Council (20 February 2025). Press release: persecution of the Yenish and Sinti under the «Hilfswerk für die Kinder der Landstrasse» recognised as a crime against humanity. (Official acknowledgement; verified) FDPIC / Art. 328b CO : Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC): data processing by employers; Art. 328b and Art. 362 Swiss Code of Obligations (CO). (Official guidance, legal basis; verified) cinfo/SSN/GISF 2019 : Swiss Security Network, GISF and cinfo (2018/2019). Duty of Care Maturity Model (matrix). Biel: cinfo; GISF version 2018. (Guidance (learning tool); verified) CERD GR 31 (2005) : UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2005). General Recommendation No. 31 on the prevention of racial discrimination in the administration and functioning of the criminal justice system (A/60/18). (Treaty body interpretation; verified) CERD GR 36 (2020) : UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2020). General Recommendation No. 36 on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials. (Treaty body interpretation; existence confirmed; content not checked in full text) CERD concl. obs. CH 2021 : UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2021). Concluding observations on the combined 10th to 12th reports of Switzerland (CERD/C/CHE/CO/10-12). (Country recommendations; verified) UNHCR Beyond Proof 2013 : UNHCR (2013). Beyond Proof: Credibility Assessment in EU Asylum Systems. Brussels: UNHCR. (Study; existence confirmed; content on trauma and memory not checked in full text) UN Legal Aid Principles 2012 : United Nations (2012). Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems (A/RES/67/187). (International standard (soft law); existence confirmed; content not checked in full text) WHO PFA 2011 : WHO, War Trauma Foundation and World Vision International (2011). Psychological first aid: Guide for field workers. Geneva: WHO. (Guide; not checked in full text) WHO 2022 : World Health Organization (2022). WHO guidelines on mental health at work. Geneva: WHO. (Guideline; recommendation areas checked; wording and certainty of evidence open) Wu 2000 : Wu, A. W. (2000). Medical error: the second victim. BMJ, 320, 726–727. (Conceptual paper; not checked in full text) Further background:
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. New York: Viking. Mollica, R. F. (2006). Healing Invisible Wounds. Orlando: Harcourt (Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma). Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1981). Getting to Yes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (Harvard Negotiation Project). Lederach, J. P. (2003). The Little Book of Conflict Transformation. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Glasl, F. (1980). Konfliktmanagement. Bern: Haupt (regularly reissued). Crosby, P. B. (1979). Quality is Free (Quality Management Maturity Grid). New York: McGraw-Hill. Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (from 1991). Capability Maturity Model. Aeberhard, P. U. (2026). The Relational Systems Framework (RSF). THAC, Bern. https://thac.ch/relational-systems-framework/ (THAC's own conceptual framework, not independently validated). Pilot and feedback
Version 7, October 2026 · Concept and content: Peter Urs Aeberhard, THAC GmbH. Feedback by e-mail to peter.aeberhard@thac.ch with the subject «[TIO-Pilot] Feedback». The tool does not set standards; it serves learning and comparison over time.
Cite as: Aeberhard, Peter Urs (2026). Trauma-Informed Organisational Development: Self-assessment of duty of care, protection and organisational learning. Pilot, Version 7. THAC, Bern. · Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (attribution, non-commercial, share alike). © 2026 Peter Urs Aeberhard / THAC GmbH.