Betsy McAlister Groves was the former director of the Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, and site director for Boston site of the Early Trauma Treatment Network. She served on the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Education for 12 years, teaching classes on child trauma and advocacy. She is now a consultant on integrating early childhood mental health into pediatric primary care at Boston University School of Medicine. She remains involved with NCTSN activities focused on early childhood trauma, domestic violence and collaborations with pediatric professionals. 

My background is in comprehensive assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with specialized expertise in trauma-informed care as well as developmental disorders. I have  held positions of lead psychologist assessing children for autism and other pediatric mental health disorders, behavioral health intern, and fellow in child-trauma settings (e.g., NCTSN site child advocacy center, child inpatient hospitals, grant-funded outpatient behavioral health centers) delivering mental health services to youth. 

My current role is that of an Assistant Clinical Professor and the Clinic Director of the USM Behavioral Health Clinic (BHC) training clinic which fosters core experiential training for trainees (i.e., doctoral and master level students in the School of Psychology at USM) as well as and low-cost service to underserved youth, families, and adults. In my current role, I am also the Co-Investigator of ACCESS: Advancing Community Connections to Enhance Services and Success, an HRSA grant-funded program aimed at increasing the cultural competency of providers working with underserved youth, integrating mental healthcare into nontraditional settings, and advancing the quality of mental healthcare in rural, South MS. My responsibilities with ACCESS include providing training and supervision of graduate student clinicians in both trauma-informed care and evidence-based psychological and developmental screenings, in two of the three ACCESS settings (i.e., child advocacy center and pediatric office).

The Mental Health Disparities Among Trauma-Exposed Youth Center is located within the Mental Health Disparities and Diversity Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. Our center focuses on increasing access to, engagement in, and completion of culturally- and linguistically-appropriate, evidence-based treatments (EBT) for trauma-exposed African American, Latino, economically-disadvantaged, and rural/urban children and adolescents residing in 9 counties across South Carolina. We have a particular focus on utilizing specialized service modalities with evidence of reducing barriers to care, in particular community-based treatment and telemental health. The center seeks to (1) increase access to EBTs, among underserved populations through community-, telemedicine-, and office-based service provision modalities; (2) increase capacity of therapists to provide EBTs (Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Culturally Modified-TF-CBT (CM-TF-CBT)) through learning collaboratives on EBTs; and (3) increase completion of services through reducing barriers to care and the provision of culturally-tailored treatment aimed at increasing engagement and reducing premature drop-out. Services are provided in a variety of community locations, including local child advocacy centers, schools, and pediatric primary care locations.

The Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver - Trauma Treatment Project (GRID-TTP) in Denver, Colorado, will target youth aged 11-17, primarily African American and Latino/Latina, who are gang involved or at risk of gang involvement, and who reside in three Northeast Denver neighborhoods with high rates of community, domestic, and gang-related violence. GRID-TTP will be part of a citywide effort to reduce gang violence and to address the impact of this violence on city residents, especially Denver's youth. The project, implemented by a consortium of Denver government, community, and faith-based agencies, led by the Mental Health Center of Denver (MHCD), is based on the Comprehensive Gang Model developed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. GRID-TTP will deliver two primary interventionsCognitive Behavioral Interventions in Schools (CBITS) and Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS)in three middle school, one high school, and five recreation/community centers in the targeted Denver neighborhoods. During the two-year project period, 140 unduplicated youth will be served, some of whom, along with their families, will be referred to other MHCD services.

Prior funding to the Mental Health Center of Denver supported the Family Trauma Treatment Program, which providd access for low-income children and families to community mental health services through a network of more than thirty locations throughout the Denver area. The program improved services and treatment for children who experienced trauma by implementing and evaluating evidence-based interventions in a variety of community settings including schools, shelters, juvenile detention centers, day care centers, and neighborhood clinics.