Can entire systems change? Yes, of course, how else could we explain human progress across the centuries. But systems, like individuals, do not change rapidly and do not change all at once unless there is destructive, traumatic change. That is one way to think about trauma - that it is something that suddenly shifts a person, a program, a region, or an entire society toward less organization, less complexity, and more fragmentation.
The Sanctuary Model is designed to be a methodology for organized, systematic, and trauma-informed change in human groups including all human systems. It is designed to help groups of people evaluate where they are in the present along a continuum of health or dysfunction and then make conscious decisions to change their organizational culture so that everyone that is a part of that culture can move toward more health.