The Children’s Place is Kansas City’s specialized trauma treatment center for children age birth to eight years old. The agency opened its doors in 1978 in response to a significant need in Kansas City: children in this community were identified as victims of abuse and neglect, but there were very few resources to help them heal, and preventative programs were virtually nonexistent. Forty years later, the mission remains: to help vulnerable children and families heal from life’s deepest hurts. Through a commitment to building relationships and evidence-based treatments, The Children’s Place is a place of healing for the youngest citizens in this community. The programs provide a continuum of treatment needs, including an intensive Day Treatment for preschool-aged children, outpatient developmental screenings and mental health assessments, outpatient individual and family counseling and in-home family support services. The staff specializes in working with the child welfare systems, school personnel, medical providers and other community agencies. The Children’s Place works to equip children and their families with the coping skills needed to transcend the hardships of the past and to thrive within their everyday lives.
Network Members
This listing of NCTSN members includes current grantees as well as NCTSN Affiliates, former grantees who have maintained their ties to the Network.
The Children’s Place
The Family Center
Brooklyn Action for Child and Teen Success 2 or Brooklyn ACTS 2 is our child trauma program, addressing the prevalent and often unrecognized impacts of trauma on children ages 5-18 in our community. Brooklyn ACTS 2 staff are trained to identify and treat symptoms of trauma in children and to support parents and caregivers in understanding and addressing the struggles that their children are facing. Working with the child and their parent or caregiver, our evidence-based interventions help children manage and reduce symptoms and help families recover. Our services are available virtually and in our office. Services include:
Screening and Assessment
Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Psychiatric evaluation and, if indicated, medication management
Case management and advocacy to ensure families have the services and benefits that they need
Groups for parents including Parenting Journey and Caring for Children Who Have Experienced Trauma: Resource Parenting Curriculum
Strengthening Family Coping Resources (SFCR) multi-family group
Strengthening Family Coping Resources (SFCR) Peer 2 Peer group for caregivers
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)
Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS) group for teens
The Family Place Utah
The Trauma Resiliency Project of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho (TRP) is a SAMSHA funded grant for years 2021-2026. We are a program within The Family Place Utah that seeks to raise awareness about traumatic stress in children and families. For this next five year cycle, TRP has a goal to provide services to individuals from Spanish-speaking countries, refugees and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We enjoy fostering healthy, collaborative relationships with local school districts, police officers and other community officials to serve our communities and mitigate the impacts of traumatic stress upon children, families and minority groups. We are working on incorporating new Care Process Models from Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City that will help us better serve the youth and families in our community through a stratified approach. Each member of The Family Place Utah is aware of the components of trauma-informed care and the importance of client-centered care. Each employee at The Family Place Utah is trained on the Attachment, Regulation and Competency model, a trauma-informed model that teaches helps parents support children who have been impacted by traumatic stress.
The Mental Health Center of Greater Manchester
The New York Center for Trauma-Informed Child Welfare Practice
The proposed New York Center for Trauma-Informed Child Welfare Practice (NYCTICWP) will improve outcomes for children who have experienced trauma through the direct implementation of the evidence-based Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) model, the dissemination of evaluation findings and wider partnership with the NCTSI network, training provided to our partners throughout the child welfare system in New York City, and ultimately, policy and practice influence at the national level. The project will serve children between the ages of 5 and 21 residing in New York City who have been directly impacted by trauma, either as a victim or a witness, with a focus on those who are most at risk (families living in poverty, racial/ethnic minorities, and those living in communities with a high incidence of violence). Overall, expect that at least 45-50% of youth who complete TST within the system or community will see a decrease in functional impairment. The Foundling has engaged in partnerships with the NYU Center for Child Welfare Practice Innovation which is led by PI Glenn Saxe M.D. and is a NCTSN Category II site, as well as the Haven Academy, a charter school in the Bronx that serves a majority population of child welfare involved youth, and Good Shepherd Services, a child welfare agency.
The Trauma and Grief Center at The Hackett Center for Mental Health
The Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center was established to raise the standard of care for bereaved youth and families through the dissemination of trauma- and bereavement-informed, developmentally attuned, and culturally appropriate best practices. The TAG Center coordinates and conducts trainings focused on bereavement-informed risk screening and assessment. Additionally, the TAG Center organizes and convenes Learning Collaboratives dedicated to implementing and evaluating bereavement-informed interventions for grieving youth in a variety of contexts (e.g., grief support centers, hospice and/or palliative care settings, schools, academic medical centers). Through the TAG Center's collaboration with NCTSN sites and other national organizations, a primary goal is to raise public awareness regarding childhood bereavement, age-related manifestations of adaptive versus maladaptive forms of grief, the interplay of PTSD and grief, and bereavement-informed best practices. Special attention is given to disseminating these practices in high-risk populations, including military families and underserved minority youth, as well as in the aftermath of natural disasters (e.g., Hurricane Harvey) mass shootings (Santa Fe school shooting), and public health crises (COVID-19 pandemic). With Houston as our hub, we continue to build upon ongoing dissemination efforts across a highly diverse network of cities, each with high prevalence rates of youth bereavement. Primary partnering organizations include those located in Houston and San Antonio, TX; Detroit and Southfield, MI; Atlanta, GA; New Orleans and Baton Rouge, LA; Durham, NC; and St. Louis, MO.
The Trauma-Informed Juvenile Justice Program
The Trauma-informed Juvenile Justice Program is a Category III (community practice) center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network based at Bellevue Hospital Center. Funded by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and partnered with the New York Office of Children’s Services (OCS) and the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), our program focuses on improving the quality of care in juvenile justice facilities in New York City and State and, eventually across the United States.
Youth in the juvenile justice system have very high rates of trauma exposure and, sometimes, this trauma exposure is expressed in the violent behavior for which children were adjudicated. The Trauma-informed Juvenile Justice Program aims to address this serious problem by providing the following to detention facilities in the juvenile justice system:
- High quality screening tools to identify a child’s trauma history and its impact on his or her functioning.
- Training programs for correction officers in detention facilities so that they may be best equipped to help the youth in their facilities.
- Intervention programs to address the traumatic stress problems of youth who reside in detention facilities
- Consultation programs to help administrators of detention facilities best organize and manage their program to address the needs of traumatized children in their facilities
- Legal advocacy programs to educate judges and others in the legal system about the relationship between violent behavior and traumatic stress in some children who commit crimes.
The Village For Families and Children
As a designated Collaborative Trauma Center, The Village has expertise in trauma informed screening and treatment for children, youth and families. Recognizing that each individual who has experienced trauma responds in unique ways to treatment, the Trauma Center offers several treatment models, including: Attachment and Regulation Competency (ARC), Bounce Back, Child and Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma or Conduct Problems (MATCH), and Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT). These treatment models are offered through a variety of our residential and outpatient programs and trauma history screening is provided. All of our residential and extended day treatment programs are implementing the Children and Residential Experiences Program Model.
The Trauma Center also helps to expand the capacity of schools and other child serving organizations by providing information, training, leadership development and other assistance on trauma informed care in order to strengthen the broader system of care for children affected by trauma.
The Wendt Center for Loss and Healing - Resilient Scholar's Project
The Resilient Scholars Project (RSP) provides therapy and case management services to DC children/adolescents and their families affected by trauma and/or loss. RSP collaborates with youth, their families, and community partner staff to improve their understanding of trauma/loss and allow them to develop coping skills that are healthy and practical. Weekly sessions provide youth and their families the space to process their experiences and discover their innate resilience. RSP-Family Services are designed to supplement RSP-School Services by engaging entire families in the treatment process. Using the trauma adapted family connections (TA-FC) model, Culturally Modified Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CM-TFCBT), and/or Let's Connect (a caregiver focused model). RSP clinicians also aim to help families improve access to needed resources, increase safety skills, reduce youth absenteeism from school, and/or improve youth grades over a period of six months. RSP clinicians build on the treatment models used in RSP-School Services by incorporating principles from narrative therapy, motivational interviewing, and family systems therapy to work toward goals established with each family. By participating in activities, games, and conversations that help families learn about trauma/loss, families also work toward improving communication and family cohesion.
Thompson, Emily, MS
Emily Thompson is the Vice President of Community Programs with CHRIS 180, Inc. in Atlanta. She began her work with NCTSN in 2017. She has extensive experience in behavioral health program development and uses the ARC model in all program implementation and grant work. She serves over all foster care/adoption, TAY reentry and high-fidelity wraparound programs which are community-based. She also focuses on various federal grants addressing areas such as the opioid crisis and infant and early childhood mental health. Emily remains involved with Trauma Substance Abuse and Justice Consortium NCTSN groups.