Kritii Tikku

I am writing to express my interest in the Post Graduate Diploma in Trauma-Informed
Care offered by the Department of Human Ecology at the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences. With a professional background spanning over eight years in child
protection and mental health, I am now seeking to deepen my theoretical and clinical
understanding of trauma-informed practices. I believe this course aligns perfectly
with my interest and commitment to child-mental health and systemic advocacy.
Over the last eight years of my professional career, I have spent approximately 3.5
years working in Delhi and Bihar with survivors of child trafficking through Bachpan
Bachao Andolan, a non-governmental organization founded by Nobel Laureate Shri
Kailash Satyarthi. In my role there, I worked closely with survivors, their families, and
communities—supporting both the rescue process and facilitating rehabilitation.
This experience allowed me to immerse myself in the lives of trauma survivors and
understand the numerous challenges they face while navigating protection, judicial,
and mental health systems, or undergoing rehabilitation. What stood out most during
this time was the lack of trauma responsiveness within these systems, often resulting
in secondary traumatization and further victimization. Moreover, interventions for
survivors rarely included trauma assessment and therefore lacked crucial elements
of healing or the reclamation of selfhood following traumatic experiences. These
interventions primarily focused on connecting survivors and their families to material
resources or social security schemes, often minimizing their lived experiences and
entirely overlooking their need for psychosocial support and specialized trauma
interventions to process their experiences and re-author their trauma narratives.
These realizations sparked a strong interest in the field of child mental health,
particularly in trauma, loss, and grief. I subsequently spent approximately 5 years at
SAMVAD (Support Advocacy and Mental Health Interventions for children in
Vulnerable circumstances and Distress), an initiative under the Ministry of Women
and Child Development, located in the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
at NIMHANS. SAMVAD is one of India’s largest national initiatives and integrated
resources on child protection, mental health, and psychosocial care, engaging in
transdisciplinary work across mental health, education, child protection, and law and
policy. At SAMVAD, I got an opportunity to learn and bring transdisciplinary
approaches my practice and to enable the understanding amongst various
stakeholders and systems of context-based and trauma-informed interventions for
any real transformation or service.
Under the mentorship of Dr. Shekhar Seshadri, I engaged in therapeutic work with
children and adolescents as part of the OPD services at NIMHANS. I also realized
as I worked across the country, through my engagement with stakeholders that
trauma is a universal experience and for every child who may reach a tertiary
hospital there are a majority of them who would not, either because of lack of
awareness or general understanding reach a tertiary setting and get the treatment.

Those who make it to the hospitals, will not have a chance, to share their
experiences and voices. Children’s perspectives and their experiences or narratives
of trauma, are rarely ever heard from their point of view, their preoccupations,
questions and confusions therefore remain unaddressed, leading to a long term,
sometimes even lifetime of carrying trauma residues. This also led to the
conceptualization of our module on Trauma in the Classrooms for school teachers
and counsellors.
I had the opportunity understand trauma in different contexts as in 2023 I worked
with children and adolescents in Manipur reaching out to almost 246 children in relief
camps to better understand child psychosocial care and protection issues, as they
existed in the ongoing conflict situation and thus provide direct, first-level
psychosocial assistance to the affected children, focussing on loss, grief and trauma
experiences. I also contributed to evidence gathering using forensic techniques in
response to the Hon’ble High Court of Allahabad’s directives in a case involving
alleged sexual abuse of 23 children in a child care institution. Additionally, I also had
an opportunity to engage with field workers and community members, with MV
Foundation, to understand the model for social change pivoting the child protection
intervention on the imperative for accessing education, where several stories of
trauma emerged in context of caste and gender discrimination, and therefore, once
again a need to integrate the trauma interventions in community work for healing.
As I started engaging with children in all the above-mentioned context for therapeutic
work, I understood more and more, the profundity with which children think and feel,
and how adverse childhood experiences can fundamentally change their world
views. As I entered their emotional worlds, I felt challenged more and more and was
posed with questions about what to tell a 6-year old whose mother died and has
been told that she will return from the market soon? Or a child of 11 years being
harassed by the media, pushed and forced to make choice between the birth mother
and his foster parents? A 16 year old sexually abused for 8 years, says I love
sleeping with older men and married men because it gives me power…because they
choose me when there is so much at stake for them…and so on.
These engagements have often left me uncertain, wondering what have all these
children made of their recent life experiences? The years of deprivation or abuse at
home or in institutions they live in, sometimes even in the absence of family and
psychosocial support, the rescue operation, followed by displacement, relocation,
for many and then the months of investigation and questioning by law enforcement
agencies… participation in an intense trial process, with having to recount (yet
again), in extreme detail their experiences of sexual abuse, through courtroom
procedures not designed for children… Would they able to heal and recover, not only
from the primary abuse experiences, but from their aftermath too? What would
justice mean for children? More importantly, do they feel that I as a mental health
professional, and the institutions and processes established for provision of justice

for them, are fair to them? What should a mental health professional’s role be in
preserving the mental well-being, identity, and personhood of a client?
These many experiences have shaped me as a therapist, and influenced my
practice, I believe that the therapeutic space is a space where stories and ideas are
exchanged, and where the child, no matter the situation, takes the lead as the
therapist handholds the child through processes of transformation. I believe in
creating a space that is absolutely child-centric. While those who are engaged with
the child may be important and may have concerns and agendas, the primary
agenda and narrative that resonates in the therapeutic space is that of the child. The
focus is on breaking any power hierarchies that children usually experience when
interacting with adults, including the therapists, giving the child the space and
respect to share their story the way they want.
I also believe in pushing boundaries and moving beyond the clinical settings to
advocate for child clients to engage with systems, and their families and sometimes
taking positions and stands that are unconventional or not that may make the
parents or the systems unhappy, to ensure the wellbeing of the child.
My approach to working with clients is eclectic, drawing from various kinds of
psychotherapy styles such as narrative methods, creative art, and play-based
methods and techniques, using cognitive behavioral techniques. The focus is on
creating a nonthreatening, safe vibrant, and dynamic space, with the use of stories,
art, movies, roleplays, games and activities, and discussions.
In addition to clinical work, my responsibilities at SAMVAD included teaching,
capacity building, and developing materials for stakeholders such as schoolteachers,
counsellors, and principals on topics including trauma, loss and grief, sexual abuse,
child custody, adoption, and disability. My focus was on equipping them to integrate
trauma-informed practices into their work and services. I have also been involved in
research related to child and adolescent mental health and have worked with various
systems to support policy initiatives aimed at strengthening child mental health
services.
I am certain, and hopeful that pursuing advanced training in trauma informed care,
will not only help me refine my clinical skills but also equip me to meaningfully
contribute to the development of systemic, trauma-responsive practices across child-
serving institutions and help in bridging the gap between policy and practice,
ensuring that the voices and experiences of children are centered in every
intervention designed for their healing and growth.