Impact of Trauma-informed Programming on Financial Well-being and Multidimensional Resilience
Authors:   , Weida Emily Brown , Chilton Mariana M 
Published: August 2022

Families with low-to no incomes are inherently resilient, surviving and adapting in the face of economic adversity, institutional racism and often times exposure to community and interpersonal violence. As trauma affects multiple domains of resilience, or the ability to adapt well and thrive in the face of trauma and adversity, solutions should be approached in a multidimensional way. Many resilience measures do not include financial health as a key component of well-being; an oversight which fails to acknowledge the interconnected nature of financial, physical and mental health. Additionally, though trauma disproportionately impacts families in poverty, public assistance programs aimed at reducing poverty fail to address trauma and its impacts. One program in particular, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), not only fails to address trauma, but also does not allow for or promote the economic stability needed for families to thrive.1,2 Although its stated goals are to "help needy families achieve self-sufficiency",3-5 most TANF programs promote 'work-first' policies which incentivize states to push people into the workforce (often low-wage, short-term jobs) and do not attend to the health and wellness of participants, despite knowledge that major barriers to work include disability and other major social and behavioral adversities.6,7 The belief behind 'work-first' policies are that 'self-sufficiency' for families is achieved solely through participation in the workforce. This does not account for any other well-established factors that contribute to economic stability (including long-term savings and overall financial health, and the interrelated domains of physical, mental and social well-being). For example, even if someone is employed, they might have physical ailments which lead to large medical bills - simply being employed would not 'solve' this. Social support networks are critical not only for mental health, but also financial stability (including but not limited to having a financial safety net, somewhere to stay if one's housing situation changes, childcare options), again, something that employment alone does not address. In order to demonstrate an alternative to traditional TANF programming, the Building Wealth and Health Network (The Network) was created. The Network was built into the TANF program in Philadelphia and uses trauma-informed financial empowerment programming to improve the wealth and health of low-income caregivers via matched savings accounts, financial education, and peer support. This dissertation is divided into three separate but interconnected aims. First, I evaluated the impact of participation in The Network on two measures of financial well-being (Aim 1). Next, I introduce a novel multidimensional resilience scale which includes financial health as a domain and examined the distribution of this scale among baseline participants from The Network (Aim 2). Finally, I evaluate the impact of Network participation on the novel multidimensional resilience scale, and provide policy recommendations (Aim 3). The results from these aims provide foundational evidence for the need for not only a multidimensional approach to resilience for public assistance programming, but also highlight existing strengths among a low-income population. Additionally, this dissertation emphasizes the importance of financial health both for understanding resilience and for developing effective interventions. Effective trauma-informed policies and programs should build upon existing resilience of the families they serve, providing opportunities for enhancement. These approaches would not only preserve human dignity, but also allow for families to thrive.