Trauma-informed Youth Work: an educational toolkit and online training for youth workers working with vulnerable youth

<< Background >>Through this project, we wanted to address the urgent need for accessible, engaging, and culturally sensitive tools that help youth workers support children and adolescents affected by trauma. Many young people face adverse childhood experiences, and youth workers—especially those working with refugee youth, children in poverty, or unaccompanied minors—often lack the training and tools to respond effectively. Mobile School initiated this project to develop a hands-on, multilingual toolkit combining play-based materials and online training. Minor-Ndako joined to build on previous collaboration and saw the value in translating their trauma expertise into concrete, accessible resources to support counsellors from day one. SolidarityNow contributed its long-standing field experience in trauma-informed care for vulnerable youth in Greece, ensuring the materials reflected real-life needs. Save the Children Romania participated in filling a gap in trauma-sensitive methodologies and strengthening youth worker capacity through practical, scalable tools. Together, we aimed to make trauma-informed youth work more available, impactful, and sustainable across Europe.<< Objectives >>Our objective was to equip youth workers with the knowledge, skills, and practical tools needed to recognise and respond to trauma in children and adolescents in a sensitive and inclusive way. We aimed to improve the quality of youth work interventions, particularly for vulnerable young people who are at higher risk of experiencing trauma due to factors such as poverty, discrimination, displacement, or violence. By developing a comprehensive, culturally sensitive toolkit—including play-based educational materials, engaging training courses, and accessible audio materials—we wanted to create a shared foundation for trauma-informed practice across different countries and contexts. All materials are freely available in multiple languages to ensure accessibility and scalability. Ultimately, we sought to support the social inclusion, emotional well-being, and empowerment of trauma-affected youth, while also providing youth workers with tools for self-care to prevent burnout and secondary traumatic stress.<< Implementation >>We began by researching trauma and trauma-sensitive approaches, and partners exchanged relevant knowledge within their organisations. This informed the development of educational posters, activities, and audio materials. Multiple testing and feedback sessions were organised to ensure the materials met the needs of diverse target groups. Based on this feedback, as well as expert input, we designed five online learning programmes with several interactive learning methods. After completing the materials in English, we conducted a cohort testing phase involving 10 organisations. The feedback led to further improvements. We then translated the full toolkit into Dutch, French, and Spanish, and additionally, the manual into Romanian and Greek. Audio materials were also translated into Romanian, Greek, Ukrainian, and Arabic. Once all materials were finalised, we disseminated them through a series of live events and webinars in Belgium, Greece, and Romania.<< Results >>We realised the following outputs:-10 educational posters, downloadable for free-64 non-formal activities: 24 linked to the posters and 40 stand-alone activities such as art, mindfulness, physical and decision-making exercises, gathered in a game manual available in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian and Greek-10 how-to-play videos, explaining the poster activities-5 audio stories illustrating how adolescents experience and cope with trauma in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Romanian, Arabic and Ukrainian, linked to one of the posters, listened to 539 times on Spotify and Apple Podcasts-6 audio instructions to guide youth workers in organising self-care activities in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Romanian, Arabic and Ukrainian, linked to the Self-Care City poster, listened to 650 times on Spotify and Apple Podcasts-A research report on trauma and trauma-informed practice in youth work-5 online learning programmes with 21 courses in total (of which 5 good practice courses) with 1910 course enrolments recorded, 608 awarded course certificates and 61 programme certificates-6 webinars, 8 live events with 996 people attending across Belgium, Romania and Greece