Manchester City Council’s Public Health team is leading both the strategic direction and operational delivery to position Manchester as an ACE-aware, trauma-informed, and trauma-responsive city by 2027.
This vision is of a city that takes a coordinated approach to reducing exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, where practitioners across all sectors work alongside residents to prevent and mitigate the impacts of trauma. It prioritises strengthening resilience in children, families, and communities, while improving outcomes through consistently trauma-responsive practice.
A Guidance Document for Trauma Responsive Manchester Organisations
The document provides guidance for voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) organisations in Manchester to become trauma responsive. It explains the benefits of trauma responsive practice, such as creating safe, inclusive, and culturally sensitive environments that support mental wellbeing and community empowerment.
The guidance outlines the structure of Trauma Responsive Community Hubs, which are community-led and tailored to local needs, offering activities like mindfulness, peer support, arts, and practical services. It introduces a charter with three accreditation levels: Trauma Aware, Trauma Informed, and Trauma Responsive, each with specific criteria for staff training, community engagement, policy development, and service delivery.
Organisations are supported by a Trauma Responsive Development Worker and must undergo annual monitoring and evaluation, with accreditation lasting three years and requiring regular evidence submission and review. Additional resources and support contacts are provided.
TR Manchester Charter Supporting Information
The document provides guidance for organisations in Manchester on adopting trauma-informed and trauma-responsive approaches.
The document offers step-by-step guidance for establishing a TRCH, including engagement, proposal development, funding, launch, and ongoing evaluation.
An "Easy Read Charter" defines three levels of trauma awareness for hubs, with criteria for staff training, community involvement, and policy development. The role of a "Hub Ally" is explained, along with available training and resources. The document concludes with acknowledgements and a testimonial on the positive impact of trauma-responsive hubs on wellbeing and community connection.
Trauma Responsive Manchester
Our Priorities
Programme objectives
Public Health is leading a city‑wide effort to help organisations weave ACE awareness and trauma‑informed practice into everyday work, rather than treating them as add‑ons. Training is the foundation: by October 2024, more than 7,000 Manchester staff had completed ACEs and trauma‑informed practice training, creating a common language and baseline for change across services.
This programme spans key sectors. In Adult Social Care, it is aligned with the Better Outcomes, Better Lives (BOBL) transformation, supported by a one‑page toolkit, identified trauma‑informed Champions, and Communities of Practice to sustain learning. In education, practitioners have undertaken the Trauma Informed Schools UK Diploma, sharing emerging practice back into the wider system. Across all areas, a core principle is that people with lived experience of adversity and trauma are meaningfully involved in shaping and improving services.
Public Health has also established the Manchester Trauma and Sexual Violence Network, drawing together partners such as Manchester Women’s Aid, Community Safety, specialist sexual violence services and migrant women’s organisations. The network aims to widen access to trauma‑responsive support, strengthen relationships between voluntary and statutory partners, build a shared map of provision, and reduce the risk of re‑traumatisation for survivors. Creative, community‑led approaches are central: for example, work through the Manchester Age Friendly Board supported “Dark, Chaste and Beautiful – it’s easier to support a child than mend a broken adult”, a theatre piece developed from women’s lived experience in Wythenshawe and used as part of a wider workshop programme.
On the ground, trauma‑responsive community hubs in neighbourhoods such as Ardwick, Blackley, Cheetham Hill, Clayton, Longsight and Moston provide safe, inclusive spaces that foster connection, wellbeing and resilience. Each hub is different but all prioritise person‑centred, compassionate support. The M8 Collective Hub in Cheetham Hill, for example, combines advice on immigration, disability and finances with activities like art, gardening, chair‑based yoga and volunteering, working alongside partners including North Manchester Community Partnership, health and wellbeing providers and local VCSE groups.
Equality, diversity and inclusion run through the work. Public Health has co‑designed a culturally responsive trauma course with Bollyfit and Dignifi, informed by engagement with the Pakistani Sounding Board and local communities, covering topics such as the normalisation of trauma and coercion, recognising trauma responses, shame‑sensitive practice, and emotional regulation. The ACEs and Trauma team also advises the Oglesby‑funded Families of the World project, which supports sanctuary‑seeking families with young children through welcome, inclusion, cultural exchange and better access to civic and cultural spaces. To keep the programme evidence‑informed, case studies from sectors including education, health visiting, primary care, community safety, arts and the VCSE sector have been developed, and Manchester is working with Liverpool John Moores University and the Greater Manchester Trauma Responsive Group to test a system‑wide evaluation framework and logic model that track progress toward a trauma‑responsive system.
Evaluation Reports
Healing Together Impact Report
Healing Together is a programme that provides early trauma informed support to children affected by domestic abuse. This report outlines the impact of delivery by Early Help staff providing evidence-based interventions.
> Read the Healing Together Impact Report
Sue’s Space and MASH trauma informed practice training evaluation
Manchester City Council commissioned MASH – Manchester Action on Street Health to provide a training programme that reflects the experiences of women who sex work. The training was developed by Sue’s Space, MASH’s lived experience advisory panel.
> Read Sue’s Space and MASH trauma informed practice training evaluation
Healing together programme evaluation working with Manchester City Council supporting children affected by domestic abuse.
> Read the programme evaluation
Yellow Beacon mindful resilience pilot impact report
Manchester City Council commissioned Yellow Beacon to deliver an 8-week programme for patients at the West Gorton Medical Centre.
> Read the Yellow Beacon programme for evaluation
Does having a trauma informed workforce at place level improve outcomes for local residents?
Research and evaluation of the Pilot Adverse Childhood Experiences Project in Harpurhey. Illustrates the extent to which the investment and activities have logically led to improved outcomes for residents.
MCC Health Committee scrutiny reports
September 2025
Following the report presented to the Health Scrutiny Committee in October 2024, this report provides an update on the progress made in Manchester becoming an ACE aware, trauma informed and trauma responsive city. This report outlines the steps that are being taken to deliver the strategic objectives within the programme of work.
October 2024
This report is an update to a report considered at the meeting of the committee on 19th July 2023. The report details progress towards delivering the programme objectives, together with good practice examples from the Health Visiting Service and the Street Engagement Hub.
July 2023
This report is an update to a report considered at the meeting of the committee on 7 September 2022 on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Trauma Informed Practice. The report provides an update on the work done to strengthen the ACEs programme objectives, through extensive engagement and consultation with stakeholders, to ensure that the programme is fit for purpose following the impact of COVID-19 and within the context of Making Manchester Fairer. The report also provides an update on the ACEs and Trauma programme of work across the city including a good practice example of culture change from Manchester Housing Services and a collaboration between Z-Arts and the Burnage Academy for Boys.
Manchester is a vibrant city, but not everyone has the same chance to live a healthy life or achieve their full potential, and this leads to avoidable gaps in health between different groups of residents. Making Manchester Fairer is the city’s five‑year action plan to reduce these health inequalities now and over the longer term. The plan is shaped by what local residents and staff from many organisations have said, together with national and local evidence on what works to tackle unfair differences in health. Work on Making Manchester Fairer will continue to be developed and delivered in partnership with communities and organisations, so that the people who know the city best remain at the heart of the approach.
> Read Making Manchester Fairer
September 2022
This report is an update to a report considered at the meeting of the committee 21 July 2021 on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Trauma Informed Practice. The report covers the wide range of activities to deliver the stated ambition of Manchester being an ACE aware, trauma informed and trauma responsive City. Dr Lucie Donlan, a GP from West Gorton Medical Centre, and Juanita Margerison, the Director of the Resonance Centre will attend the committee to answer questions on the case studies included in the report.
Manchester City Council is actively promoting organisations across Monachester to become trauma responsive. Several organisations have joined us on this journey. The case studies below reflect some of the steps taken along this journey. If you are interested in reasing about more case studies within Manchester, and across Greater Manchester explore the TRGM Story Map.
The Monastary Manchester
The Monastery in Manchester as a secular community hub focused on heritage, health, wellbeing, sustainability, culture, and peace-building. It highlights trauma-responsive practices and collaboration with Manchester City Council to foster supportive, inclusive values.
Key initiatives include the Men's Shed, which helps participants build confidence, skills, and social connections, often leading to personal growth and employment, and the Green Team, where volunteers revitalize neglected land, promoting inclusion, skill development, and well-being.
The case studies illustrate the Monastery's role in supporting isolated individuals, improving mental health, and building community through accessible, inclusive projects that help people rebuild their lives and find purpose.
Homelessness partnership
This Homelessness Partnership case study illustrates how the Rough Sleeper Support Service and partners at the Street Engagement Hub supported an individual. Kindly supplied by Phil Doherty from the Entrenched Rough Sleeper Social Work Team at Manchester City Council.
As part of the Better Outcomes Better Lives transformation programme, work was carried out with colleagues in Adult Social Care to produce a one-page aide memoire for use by practitioners.
Rough Sleeping Videos - Ellie Atkins the Manager & Safeguarding Lead for the Rough Sleepers Social Work Team at MCC has produced 3 insightful videos. You can view these on the TRGM Resources page.
Health Visiting Case Study
A 31‑year‑old first‑time mother with a significant history of childhood trauma, mental health diagnoses (bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder), substance use, unsafe housing, and sex work was repeatedly referred to services around pregnancy and early parenting, with short episodes of Children’s Services involvement and poor engagement with talking therapies and inpatient care. Her child often had to stay with the grandmother when the mother’s mental health deteriorated, and cannabis use remained her chosen coping strategy despite stopping alcohol and class A drugs.
Within a trauma‑informed, health‑visiting approach, health visitors provided consistent, holistic support over time, focusing on the mother’s strengths, humour, and existing attunement to her child, and helping her develop healthier self‑regulation and coping strategies such as art, mindfulness and meditation. They supported her to understand her behaviour through the lens of trauma (rather than pathology), to take “healthy risks” such as disclosing childhood abuse to her own mother, to distance herself from harmful relationships, and to build new, supportive connections with neighbours, other parents, and siblings. Over time she moved to a safer home, decorated it with her daughter, studied A‑level psychology, and came to see that her diagnosis did not define her but could help her identify and access the support and strategies she needed, illustrating the impact of collaborative, relational, trauma‑informed practice on safety, resilience and life chances.
> Read the case study
Families of the World at The Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery’s Families of the World project creates space for families with under 5’s seeking sanctuary in Manchester.
The project is rooted in: the spirit of welcome; a focus on refugee children and families; improved access and inclusion to cultural and civic spaces; a trauma-informed dimension to cultural activity; cross cultural learning and sharing, including food.
Working in partnership with Sure Start, Read Manchester/National Literacy Trust, Manchester’s ACEs & Trauma Informed Practice team and the City of Sanctuary, the project welcomes displaced families who are living in Home Office hotels and other accommodation across the city to a weekly Stay and Play session.
At this joyful playgroup families are connected to vital services and signposted to other cultural venues and the city's amazing offer for our youngest residents.
The project has been shortlisted for a ‘Museums Change Lives’ Museum Association Award.
> Visit their website
Coop Academy New Islington Primary School
Coop Academy New Islington Primary School became the first school in Manchester to achieve the Trauma and Mental Health Informed award from Trauma Informed Schools UK and the Centre for Child Mental Health.
The school have invested in creating calm, decluttered classrooms with calm corners in each one; established a Forest School to provide all children with the opportunity to connect with nature; invested in chickens and a school dog to help children regulate; deliver a nurture timetable offering some children bespoke forest school and music therapy.
All staff are trained in trauma-informed practice, the power of empathy and how to have supportive and restorative conversations with children. Weekly circle time models, builds and maintains positive peer-on-peer interactions. The report and a short video are in the Manchester section.
> Reade report
Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in general medical practice
A pilot to determine whether screening for ACEs works in General Practice. Screening for ACEs is currently not performed in UK primary care. Can trauma-informed training for the practice team and an ACE screening tool improve patient management?
Trauma Responsive Manchester
This series of videos has been produced to showcase the work Manchester City Council are leading on to become a trauma informed and trauma responsive City.
You will see examples of the great work taking place at Corpus Christi Catholic Academy Trust, the Street Engagement Hub, West Gorton Medical Centre, MASH (Manchester Action on Street Health), the Welcome Centre and Bollyfit.
Our Manchester in Action: Adverse Childhood Experiences
There is strong evidence linking adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to poorer physical, mental, and behavioural health outcomes across the life course. Manchester has set an ambition to become the UK’s first trauma-informed city, recognising that an estimated 47,000 to 65,000 residents have experienced four or more ACEs.
Trauma Responsive Manchester Newsletters
This June 2025 Trauma Responsive Manchester newsletter highlights new resources, events, and policy developments around trauma, ACEs, and inclusion.
A new Trauma and Gambling‑Related Harms Toolkit for Professionals has been launched by Manchester Public Health and Chapter One, offering guidance on the links between trauma and gambling, how to raise concerns in a trauma‑informed way, and where to signpost for support.
It signposts a 25‑year review of ACEs research and practice (ACAMH special edition), and shares several training opportunities, including a UK Trauma Council webinar on trauma and learning disabilities and Kazzum Arts’ arts‑based trauma awareness training, plus Volume 10 of the International Journal of Nurture in Education on nurturing approaches in schools.
Resources on racism’s impact on child development, a VAMHN webinar “Why Should Our Rage Be Tidy?” on mental health and trauma among Black and minoritised women, and Gendered Intelligence’s guidance on maximising trans inclusion following a Supreme Court judgement.
Other items include a children‑led anti‑vaping poster project at Heald Place Primary School, and a Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium report on the harms of wrongly assessing separated children as adults, alongside a reminder to visit the Trauma Responsive Greater Manchester website and contact details for contributing future news items.
This September 2025 Trauma Responsive Manchester newsletter shares recent programme highlights, training offers, and opportunities to get involved.
It reports that ACEs and trauma work was showcased at Manchester City Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee, where Gareth Nixon, Shamime Jan (Bollyfit) and Catherine Wilson (Chapter One) presented citywide progress and the Trauma and Gambling Harms Toolkit.
It promotes Mums Matter, an 8‑week Manchester Mind course for mums with a child under two, focusing on emotional wellbeing, peer connection and confidence building, with referrals encouraged from professionals.
Additional features include free trauma and food insecurity training for community food organisations, a BBC Future article on the long‑term impact of Covid‑19 on children, Manchester Central Foodbank’s “Ghostbuster List” of key support organisations, and an online learning series on parenting infants and toddlers.
The newsletter signposts Manchester Safeguarding Partnership multi‑agency training, NHS “Bonding Beginnings” 1001 critical days training for early‑years practitioners, and a Mel Robins podcast episode on how childhood experiences shape relationships and parenting.
Finally, it introduces a Trauma Responsive Manchester Padlet and call for case studies, and advertises for volunteers at the Blackley Trauma Responsive Community Hub, while inviting readers to visit the Trauma Responsive Greater Manchester website or contact the team with news items.
The December 2025 TRM Newsletter focuses on trauma-informed support for children, young people, and families in Manchester. Key topics include the importance of father involvement (Dad Matters), trauma and trauma-informed practice training, the impact of violence—especially against women and girls in schools—and the need for prevention and survivor support. It highlights projects like teens mentoring toddlers to improve attendance, trauma-informed parenting workshops, and resilience-building activities. The newsletter also addresses children’s mental health in the context of environmental factors such as air pollution, promotes holistic grants for children recovering from trauma, and provides resources for resettling children, new trauma support materials, and funding for International Women’s Day events.
The March 2026 TRM Newsletter highlights major trauma-informed initiatives in Manchester, including up to £20 million in funding for community improvements in four local areas, with resident involvement encouraged. It features upcoming trauma-related training and webinars, with a focus on deprivation, trauma-informed practice, and support for LGBT+ parents and carers. The newsletter promotes professional training, an 8-week trauma resilience workshop, a conference on trauma-informed workplace culture, and the Encounter course for parents. It details community healing circles for South Asian women, support for families affected by child removal, and the launch of the Trauma Responsive Manchester Charter. The Big Life Group’s efforts toward becoming a trauma-informed, anti-oppressive organization are also highlighted, with a focus on racial trauma and organizational development. Resources and contact information for further engagement are provided.
For further information relating to Manchester please contact:
Gareth Nixon
Programme Lead - ACEs and Trauma Informed Practice
Department of Public Health
Email: gareth.nixon@manchester.gov.uk