Catholic Charities, Inc. and a constellation of Mississippi State government and nonprofit organizations joined the NCTSN to serve a wide range of urban, rural, and geographically isolated child trauma survivors. The first funding period was dedicated to providing evidence-based trauma training to Catholic Charities clinicians in home-based, residential, therapeutic foster care, unaccompanied refugee minor, and outpatient (Solomon) centers, and to providing cutting edge information to the community at large. 

Based on the lessons learned through participation in a trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) learning collaborative in its first funding period, TRY implemented a Gulf Coast TF-CBT learning collaborative to build capacity in agencies to treat children and families affected by trauma after the region’s devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Catholic Charities went on to develop a statewide trauma-informed system of care to meet the needs of children and families throughout Mississippi. Evidence-based practices were disseminated to public mental health clinicians via the Learning Collaborative model, with an emphasis on systems serving those least likely to have access to quality mental health care. Catholic Charities collaborated with NCTSN experts to provide TF-CBT learning collaboratives and Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS) learning collaboratives, as well as participating in training on the treatment of physically abused children. Currently, Catholic Charities clinicians serve as trauma experts in Mississippi and continue providing direct services to adults and children affected by trauma.

Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress is a program of Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Johns Hopkins University-affiliated specialty hospital internationally recognized for improving the lives of children and adolescents with pediatric developmental disabilities and disorders of the brain, spinal cord and musculoskeletal system, through patient care, special education, research, and professional training. Located in an urban community in Baltimore, the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress provides high-quality, culturally sensitive, comprehensive clinical programs and community-based services for children and families who experience or may be at risk for trauma related to maltreatment and exposure to violence. The Center offers a range of evidence-based and trauma-informed services, including prevention, treatment, specialized foster care, community outreach, advocacy, research and training through four main programs and services: Outpatient Mental Health Program, Therapeutic Foster Care Program, Early Head Start, and the Trauma Training Academy. The Outpatient Mental Health Program is a winner of one of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration's (SAMHSA) 2009 Science and Service Awards in the category of"Treatment of Mental Illness and Recovery Support Services" for its implementation of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. Since its participation in the NCTSN, the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress (CCFTS) is dedicated to providing quality clinical services using evidence-based and evidence-informed assessment and treatment practices. As an affiliate member, the Center remains involved with NCTSN activities focused on child sexual and physical abuse, complex trauma, trauma and substance abuse, early childhood trauma, traumatic experiences on parents, trauma-informed child welfare practices, secondary traumatic stress, cultural competence, family systems, policy and partnering with youth and families.

The Center for Pediatric Traumatic Stress (CPTS) addresses health-related traumas in the lives of children and families. Tens of millions of children in the US each year face injury, illness, pain, and frightening treatment experiences. Medical traumatic stress includes child and family responses to these medical events.  The Center’s mission is to reduce medical traumatic stress by promoting trauma-informed health care and ensuring that health care providers are knowledgeable and skilled in trauma-informed care with diverse youth and their families. The Center develops and disseminates practical evidence-based tools that can be integrated into pediatric medical care.  CPTS is unique in the Network in its core focus on secondary and tertiary health care settings, i.e., hospitals, emergency departments, and subspecialty medical care.

CPTS’ work in the NCTSN focuses on three goals / key constituencies: 1) Helping health care providers and health care systems  improve outcomes for children and families at risk for medical traumatic stress by promoting evidence-based trauma-informed health care services. 2) Helping mental health and psychosocial providers become proficient in evidence-based interventions for ill and injured children and their families. and 3) Ensuring that children and families across the US have access to evidence-based resources and interventions that address the impact of medical traumatic stress for children’s health and wellbeing.  The Center promotes awareness of medical traumatic stress and trauma-informed pediatric health care via www.HealthCareToolbox.org. 

The Center for Success and Independence’s “Survival Through Empowered Mindfulness” (STEM) project expands the reach and scope of treatment and services to adolescents in the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department's residential facility, known as Youth Village, in Seabrook, Texas. Through the STEM project, the Center is filling an unmet need for trauma-focused therapy and trauma-informed services among this population, providing culturally and age appropriate, medically sound, and evidence-based treatment and services to trauma victims ages 12-17. The services include individual, family, and group therapy. The interventions provided are Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Trauma-Focused CBT, and EMDR. The STEM project goals are the following: (1) to expand access to trauma-focused treatment and trauma-informed services—previously available only to a small subset of girls—to all juvenile justice involved adolescents in long-term residential placement, including boys; (2) to improve the quality of treatment and services provided by integrating an efficient evidence-based therapy to currently used evidence-based therapies—including adding EMDR to current therapeutic options for PTSD treatment; and (3) to sustain expanded access and quality improvement beyond the life of the project, in part through extensive staff training to improve staff understanding of trauma.