The one-to-one meeting is the backbone of support work in homelessness services. It is the time set aside for a worker and a person they support to talk, review, plan — to do the work of the relationship. But how often do those meetings feel genuinely useful, for both people in the room?
For people with complex trauma histories, a one-to-one meeting can feel very similar to experiences they would rather not repeat: a powerful person asking questions, making notes, deciding things. Even with the best intentions, a poorly structured or relationally unsophisticated one-to-one can replicate some of the dynamics of those earlier experiences.
A psychologically informed one-to-one is not simply a regular meeting conducted with kindness. It is a meeting that has been thought through — in terms of its structure, its physical setting, its pace, its power dynamics, and its focus — to create the best possible conditions for a productive, trusting conversation.
This module draws on Homeless Link's 7-Minute Briefing on Psychologically Informed 1:1 Meetings. It is a Developing-level module within Subject 2: Trauma-Informed Practice and PIE.