Current and Affiliated NCTSN Organizational Members

The NYU Center on Coordinated Trauma Services (NYU CCTS) in Child Welfare and Mental Health will be developed by the New York University Child Study Center, in collaboration with the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and the New York City Administration on Children's Services (ACS).The NYC CCTS will be an NCTSN Treatment and Services Adaptation (TSA) Center focusing on child abuse services, Child Protective Services, and child welfare. The overarching aims are to provide national expertise, and to support the specialized adaptation of effective treatment and service approaches for children and families with trauma-related mental health needs in the child welfare system across the United States. The four main goals are to: 1) raise public awareness of the scope and serious impact of child traumatic stress on children and families in the child welfare system; 2) disseminate effective services and interventions that improve the standard of care for children and families in the child welfare system; 3) advance the capacity of and improve processes in the child welfare system so that the needs of children and families can be better served; and 4) foster a community dedicated to collaboration within and beyond the NCTSN so that knowledge of the needs of children and families in the child welfare system can be improved over time, and so that interventions and services designed to meet these needs can have the greatest possible impact.

The Center for Child Trauma Assessment and Service Planning (CCTASP) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine will specialize in comprehensive, trauma-focused assessment; training and consultation; and development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions focused on the developmental effects of trauma. The CCTASP will build an infrastructure to more effectively assess the developmental effects of trauma across child-serving systems, develop intervention resources to address identified needs in practice, and enhance widespread dissemination and application of effective interventions. Interventions will be geared toward children, adolescents, caregivers, and providers across a range of child-serving settings with a particular focus on child welfare, residential treatment centers, and juvenile justice. The center will emphasize the dissemination and application of the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths-Trauma (CANS-Trauma) as a trauma-focused and strengths-based comprehensive assessment, treatment, and systems planning tool. Additionally, the CCTASP will translate and apply assessment information in a meaningful way for providers and consumers. The goals of CCTASP are to: 1) enhance education in and skill-building on a range of developmental effects of trauma across child-serving settings; 2) expand dissemination of and increase accessibility to comprehensive trauma-focused assessments on the developmental effects of trauma across child-serving settings; 3) enhance translation of trauma-focused assessments in practice; and 4) integrate and disseminate trauma-focused assessments and service/treatment interventions on the developmental effects of trauma.

The Healing Path: A Trauma Treatment Program for Youth will integrate education, assessment, and treatment of trauma in children into the mental health, substance abuse, schools, and juvenile justice systems in Lake County. An evidence-based approach—Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC)—will be used to treat traumatic stress symptoms in children aged 4–18. Approximately 200 youth with traumatic stress symptoms (20 percent from military families) will be treated during the course of the grant. The program will also serve an estimated 240 caregivers including 120–160 service members or military spouses. Training around implementation of trauma-informed care will be provided to 1,200 professionals during the course of the grant.

Parsons Child and Family Center (PCFC) provides treatment services to children and adolescents in northeastern New York State. The Parsons treatment continuum includes residential and foster care, outreach to schools and day care centers, and mental health and prevention services for children who have been physically and sexually abused, and/or exposed to domestic and community violence. Now refunded, PCFC will establish the HEROES Project (Healing with Emotional Resilience, Opportunities, and Enduring Supports) to engage New York practitioners to develop and implement integrated services with trauma-informed and resiliency-focused strategies that are matched to the resources, risks, and cultural heritage of children and families referred to residential treatment, foster family, and home-based child welfare, as well as to affiliated mental health programs. The HEROES Project will fill critical gaps that often lead to fragmented and ineffective services. Goals include: 1) fostering enduring emotionally supportive relationships that protect children from abuse and neglect, and that help children resume healthy growth and skill development; 2) increasing and maintaining the number of child welfare practitioners in the region utilizing trauma-informed and resiliency-focused interventions; and 3) fostering skills and procedures that mitigate against the consequences of vicarious trauma that is related to working with children and family members who suffer from traumatic life experiences.