The Center for Treatment of Developmental Trauma Disorders (CTDTD) brings together developers of leading evidence-based trauma treatments (EBTT) for children victimized by developmental trauma and professional and lived experience experts on culturally responsive trauma-informed services, to enhance clinical and peer providers therapeutic competence nationally and to enhance public understanding of and reduce stigma associated with DTD.Over the 5-year funding period, CTDTD will expand, and develop training curricula based on, its groundbreaking 35-webinar series Identifying Critical Moments and Healing Complex Trauma providing experiential training that will enhance the ability of more than 25,000 peer and professional counselors to treat more than 125,000 children safely, culturally responsively, and effectively for DTD-as well as creating a permanent archive of the Critical Moments webinars showing films with professional or peer therapists handling moment-to-moment therapy crises with dramatized child/family clients of diverse ethnoracial/cultural backgrounds who are recovering from developmental and historical trauma. CTDTD will produce and disseminate nationally: (a) 25 webinars with new films of dramatized crisis therapy sessions (and post-session commentary), (b) a companion set of 25 dramatized multi-disciplinary family service planning session films including parents/caregivers, teachers, child welfare workers, probation officers, healthcare providers, and mentors; (c) a companion set of 50 Digital diary films highlighting key developmental dilemmas and evidence of youths' resilience; (d) a Core Skills Checklist based on the filmed therapy sessions; (e) annual updates of the the DTD Clinician Toolkit and DTD Assessment & Treatment Update.
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.
University of Connecticut Health Center
University of Connecticut Health Center/Psychiatry
The Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice (CTRJJ) provides training and education to initiate and enhance trauma-informed services and treatment for youth in or at risk for involvement in juvenile justice that is: (1) grounded in implementation science; (2) supports active partnership with youth and families; (3) prioritizes racial/ethnic and identity-related diversity, equality, and inclusion; and (4) enhances systemic engagement of system stakeholders in change process via three elements. (E1) Trauma-Informed Resource Enhancement and Development for Youth and Families (TI-READY): disseminating NCTSN resources to enhance knowledge of trauma-informed practices. (E2) Trauma-Informed System Engagement (TI-PREP): a system-level engagement model utilizing innovative trauma-informed trainings including Think Trauma and needs assessment and strategic planning using the Trauma-Informed Juvenile Court Self-Assessment (TI-JCSA). (E3) Trauma-Informed System Transformation (TI-ATTAIN): supporting collaboration between behavioral health and juvenile justice providers and organizations to effect trauma-informed system change through implementation of evidence-based practices with youth and families including, Trauma Affect Regulation-Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET) and Trauma and Grief Components Therapy for Adolescents Grief Modules (TGCTA-GM). CTRJJ will provide resources, training, and technical assistance to more than 2000 youth/family serving programs and 10,000 professional/peer service providers to enable them to more effective serve > 50,000 traumatized youth and family/caregivers, as well as provide more than 400 public and professional TIJJ training, education, prevention, and mental health promotion products and presentations.
University of Illinois at Chicago, Urban Youth Trauma Center, Institute for Juvenile Research
The Urban Youth Trauma Center (UYTC) at the University of Illinois, Chicago, is a Treatment Service Adaptation Center that promotes and disseminates comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated care for multi-problem, high-risk youth affected by trauma and community violence. UYTC aims to increase awareness about the needs youth who are affected by community violence, youth with co-occurring substance abuse, disruptive behaviors, and those who are involved with court, juvenile justice, and law enforcement systems, while emphasizing the enhancement of community resources and service system collaboration. UYTC disseminates trauma informed intervention models designed for multi-problem youth experiencing traumatic stress, violence exposure, and co-occurring substance abuse (using Trauma Systems Therapy for Adolescent Substance Abuse or “TST-SA”) and disruptive behavior problems (using S.T.R.O.N.G. Families and Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S.) as well as prevention training and programming which promotes the use of best practices for trauma-informed violence prevention among youth service providers within targeted communities. Through its newly funded grant, the Innovative Guidance for Neighborhood Initiatives for Trauma-Informed Effectiveness (IGNITE) aims to provide specialized training, education, and consultation to youth-serving providers enabling evidence-based intervention and prevention approaches across the continuum of behavioral health needs of underserved urban youth - especially low-income ethnic minorities - who are impacted by traumatic stress, community violence, and co-occurring conditions of internalizing substance abuse and externalizing behavior problems.
University of Kentucky Secondary Traumatic Stress Innovation and Solution Center
The Secondary Traumatic Stress Innovations and Solutions Center (STS-ISC) is housed at the University of Kentucky Center on Trauma and Children. The STS-ISC will provide workforce development and protection assistance to NCTSN centers, and other child-serving sites to address the impact of Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) on trauma professionals so they can provide effective and quality care to children with traumatic stress conditions. This STS-ISC will support wide scale dissemination and implementation of existing and to be developed evidence-informed intervention products to address STS, and expand the application of these interventions to a new population, resource parents, who have high levels of untreated STS. This will be accomplished via the following activities: 1) Implementing workforce development and protection initiatives to create STS informed workplaces by developing an organizational change package and implementing data driven, organizational STS change processes; 2) Increasing supervisors’ abilities to serve as STS change agents and boundary spanners by creating training and assessment strategies; 3) Providing professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to manage STS using evidence-based interventions and an advanced, web-based, STS curriculum.; 4) Providing resource parents with the skills needed to manage STS by creating a targeted training curriculum; and 5) evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions on STS at the organizational and individual level. A full evaluation protocol including process and outcome measures of performance is fully integrated into the work of the center. The project will provide, direct, intensive training and support to 1040 professionals, but will create publically available, free tools and resources available that are accessible to an unlimited number of people in the larger, global community of trauma workers and resource parents.
University of Maryland School of Medicine, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Baltimore-Network of Early Services Transformation (B-NEST) will strive to prevent and support recovery from traumatic stress in very young children through 1.) collaborative care and integration of early childhood trauma prevention, detection and intervention in pediatric primary care, 2.) evidence-based early childhood trauma interventions, and 3.) partnership with families, community elders and cross sector providers to raise awareness and prevent and respond to symptoms of traumatic stress in children ages 0-5 and their families in Baltimore City. We will implement HealthySteps in the University of Maryland Medical Center’s pediatric primary care program and innovative trauma screening, education and attachment-based, developmental guidance tools. We provide two-generational, evidence-based trauma treatment (Child Parent Psychotherapy, TF-CBT) and attachment-based and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) parent education interventions (Attachment Vitamins, ACE Interface). By applying implementation science strategies and creating interprofessional training, we will increase the primary care sites capacities and future workforces to provide child and family traumatic stress resources and implement trauma informed practices in the primary care setting through partnerships with NCTSN Category II Centers (Child Trauma Research Program, Family Informed Trauma Treatment Center, Pediatric Integrated Care Collaborative and NCTSN Core Curriculum on Childhood Trauma). In partnership with local grandparents, our community health worker and community programs will increase community engagement and access to family education and public awareness through community-based, peer-led engagement interventions and workshops to promote social and racial inequities in health promotion.
University of Maryland, Baltimore, Family Informed Trauma Treatment (FITT) Center
Family Informed Trauma Treatment (FITT) Center (a National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative (NCTSI) - Treatment and Service Adaptation (TSA) Center comprised of team members from the University of Maryland Schools of Medicine (UMSOM) and School of Social Work (UMSSW) and the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress at Kennedy Krieger Institute (CCFTS)) will use a multi-tiered, ecological approach to increase access to and impact of family interventions, share power and decision making with all stakeholders, and further advance trauma- and resilience-informed resources needed to address the complex of needs of families Over the past 9 years, The FITT team has advanced scientific discoveries, clinical innovation and dissemination efforts in trauma responsive family interventions by elevating family voices and strengthening the role of families in recovery from child traumatic stress by providing access to resources and family interventions. FITT interventions are delivered in clinics, homes, and communities, or are embedded in systems (e.g. interpersonal violence (IPV), drug courts, schools and social services) and are designed to be flexible, attuned to families’ readiness for change and safety needs. FITT Interventions include Strengthening Families Coping Resources (SFCR), Trauma Adapted-Family Connections (TAFC) and Family Assessment of Needs and Strengths (FANS). In addition to these clinical interventions, the FITT Center will led Breakthrough Series Collaboratives and the development of peer to peer interventions (SFCR Peer to Peer Model) and training resources (Climbing Out of Poverty) as well as disseminate NCTSN products in multiple workforce initiatives in universities and across the child and families services to increase capacity to address the needs of families who experience chronic trauma related to poverty and discrimination.
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Lifeline for Kids
The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School Lifeline for Kids, formerly the Child Trauma Training Center (CTTC), was developed by the Department of Psychiatry to improve identification of trauma, to increase trauma-sensitive care, and to increase access to evidence-based, trauma-focused treatment for at-risk and underserved children and youth through age 18 throughout Massachusetts — including court-involved youth and youth in military families. During the grant period CTTC: 1) trained over 30,000 child-serving professionals in trauma-sensitive care; 2) reached approximately 450,000 children/youth with trauma-informed services; and 3) provided TF-CBT to more than 4500 children/youth. Additionally, the CTTC created a centralized referral system that includes a network of agencies with documented training in evidence-based trauma treatment. Along with providing trauma-informed training, the CTTC will offer training for first responders (e.g., police) in trauma-sensitive practices, and disseminated culturally competent trauma screening tools to pediatricians, juvenile courts, and schools.
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School-Department of Psychiatry
The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School Department of Psychiatry proposes to establish the Resilience Through Relationships Center aimed at closing a critical gap: educating professionals and caregivers to promote resilience through caregiving relationships in order to respond to disrupted caregiving due to parental substance misuse, parental mental health challenges, and child neglect. The Resilience Through Relationships Center’s target population includes youth ages 0 to 21 impacted by disrupted caregiving, as well those intersecting with youth impacted by disrupted caregiving: medical professionals, MH professionals, substance use disorders counselors, and caregivers, including foster parents and parents in recovery. The Resilience Through Relationships Center will be housed within the existing UMass Chan Medical School's Lifeline For Kids. Currently, there is no national center that houses the body of expertise, training, and products to promote safe, stable, and nurturing relationships (SSNR) and address disrupted caregiving. Although we know it is the critical component of TIC and EBTs, there is a lack of training resources on attachment and caregiver support. Expanding on established infrastructure and partnerships, our proposed Resilience Through Relationships Center, with its team of national experts, seeks to shift this paradigm.
University of Minnesota
The Collaborative for Resilient Kids and Families in Minnesota is a partnership between The University of Minnesota School of Social Work, Watercourse Counseling Center, Somali American Parents Association, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio, Minneapolis Public Schools, and Boston Children's Hospital Trauma and Community Resilience Center. This collaboration aims to provide trauma-responsive, culturally, and linguistically relevant mental health support to East African and Latinx children, youth, and their families in Minneapolis. Specifically, the project objectives include (1) engaging Latinx and East African communities in trauma-responsive mental health services at all services levels; (2) improving psychosocial outcomes for East African and Latinx children attending MPS; (3) increasing capacity in Minnesota to address refugee and immigrant trauma that reflects cultural needs; and (4) utilizing outcome evaluation data to increase support and sustainability for the model statewide.
University of Missouri Columbia
The overarching goal of the Central Missouri- Child Trauma Initiative (CM-CTI) is to provide, and increase access to, trauma-focused, evidence-based practices (EBPs) for trauma-exposed children (ages 0-18) and their families throughout central Missouri. Our work is housed at the University of Missouri School of Medicine Psychiatry Department, with collaborators from the University of Missouri- St. Louis. Specific aims of the CM-CTI project are to: 1) increase children’s access to three leading trauma-focused, EBPs: Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Trauma and Grief Component Therapy (TGCT), and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT); 2) significantly mitigate children’s trauma-related symptoms by post treatment as well as reduce trauma symptoms among caregivers receiving CPP. 3) Build a sustainable child trauma workforce in central MO by hosting Learning Total Collaboratives (LCs) for each of these EBPs (i.e., CPP, TGCT, and TF-CBT) for mental health professionals). Our current work also includes the SOAR (System Offering Actions for Resilience in Early Childhood) project, which is committed to building community awareness and developing programs to promote the social-emotional wellness of children age 0-8 and their families in Boone County. Our focus is on early child wellness, universal developmental screening, information/referral, workforce development and treatment services. As a Center of Excellence in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health we provide a continuum of services and supports and partner to create a collaborative system that promotes social emotional well-being of young children and their families.