The University of Missouri-St. Louis houses Children's Advocacy Services of Greater St. Louis, an accredited Child Advocacy Center embedded within a university. As a long time member of NCTSN, our site focuses on direct service delivery of trauma informed forensic and clinical care as well as workforce development. Our current Category II project, Project ASSIST (Access, Skills and Support for Implementation Science in Trauma-informed Training) will broaden access to trauma-informed care for youth by increasing child-serving professionals' access to competent trauma-informed trainers. ASSIST will support and sustain trainers by improving their training skills and increasing their access to resources. A primary component of Project ASSIST will be to implement Trainer Enhancement Cohorts aimed at improving trainers' skills with adult learning principles, expanding their pedagogical and online training strategies, integrating a DEI lens throughout their trainings and preventing secondary traumatic stress in their learners. ASSIST will host several Communities of Practice, including one specifically aimed at mentoring trainers from underrepresented minorities and those with lived experiences. We will continue to train facilitators in FORECAST problem based learning simulations by hosting learning collaboratives for teams across the country. Additionally, ASSIST will develop a Simulation Studio to convene and collaborate with others interested in creating and distributing additional problem based learning simulations relevant to the child-serving workforce. Finally, ASSIST will host a Resource Repository for trainers and a Trainer Access Map for organizations seeking trainers in trauma-informed models and practices.
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 Missouri St Louis-Project ASSIST
University of Montana National Native Children's Trauma Center
The NNCTC will pursue two goals: 1. Provide culturally centered, evidence-based, trauma-informed training and technical assistance (TTA) along the full spectrum of needs/readiness in Tribal communities and across all types of Tribal child-serving systems; and 2. Enhance our center infrastructure to increase scale of training/education dissemination, to fill gaps in product offerings, to broaden access to resources, and to promote data-driven program improvements. Our project's population of focus consists of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and youth at a national level, both in Tribal reservation communities and in urban areas. This population is disproportionately affected by trauma exposure and disproportionately lacking in access to effective mental health services. Our project seeks to address these disproportions by supporting youth-serving agencies in Tribal communities as they troubleshoot their resource limitations. Since the time of our initial funding as a Category II NCTSN TSA Center in 2007, we have developed numerous trauma-focused interventions and products for tribal communities, including an array of foundational trainings, culturally adapted clinical interventions, and non- clinical curricula enabling wide-scale dissemination of trauma supports.
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Addressing Childhood Trauma through Intervention, Outreach, and Networking (ACTION)
The Addressing Childhood Trauma through Intervention, Outreach, and Networking project (ACTION) supports the University of New Mexico Children's Psychiatric Center (UNM-CPC) by providing and maintaining access to outpatient trauma-focused treatment and offering a wide range of training and consultation opportunities for providers and trainees. ACTION serves youth ages 6-21, and their families, living in the Albuquerque Metro Area, providing integrated evidence-based treatments including: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency for complex trauma (ARC), and Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET). Special emphasis is placed upon culturally responsive, contextually driven service delivery given the high percentage of historically underserved, ethnically and culturally diverse families who seek trauma-informed services at UNM-CPC. In particular, ACTION is committed to serving youth and families who have experienced oppression-based trauma or come from communities historically reluctant to engage in mental health treatment, and who suffer from ongoing health disparities, including Native American, African American and Black-multiracial youth, as well as LGBTQIA+ identified youth. ACTION also provides training and consultation in trauma-informed practices, culturally responsive care, and evidence-informed strategies to address secondary traumatic stress (STS) at individual and organizational levels of care within the UNM system. In addition, ACTION is committed to the dissemination of the ARC model of complex trauma treatment throughout New Mexico, given the scarcity of service providers who are trained in evidence-based treatments for trauma.
University of Rochester, Mt. Hope Family Center (Category II)
Sustaining Change provides training, consultation, and technical assistance for child- and family-serving organizations and systems to improve dissemination and implementation of evidence-based child trauma treatment models. Focusing on organizational supports for sustainability promotes longer-term accessibility to services and enhances supports for best practices in child-serving systems. Goals of Sustaining Change include to: 1) expand access to evidence-based trauma treatment and assist organizations in adopting and sustaining evidence-based interventions, 2) support organizations in identifying evidence-based interventions that fit their populations' needs, and in achieving successful evidence-based implementation through Implementation Science principles, 3) facilitate sustainability of evidence-based interventions through consultation and Leadership Forums, and 4) assist organizations in embedding trauma-responsive care within their organizations and systems. Evidence-based training for clinicians in Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents and Child-Parent Psychotherapy will improve access for traumatized youth with depressive symptoms and children under age six and families. Through a partnership with the TRANSFORM National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Sustaining Change synergistically leverages existing resources that translate research into best practice. Consultation on trauma-informed organizational transformation supports reflective supervision, improves prevention of secondary traumatic stress, and changes agency climate to enhance workforce development and integrate SAMHSA's trauma-informed principles into practice.
University of Rochester, Mt. Hope Family Center (Category III)
STRONGER (Supporting Trauma Recovery Opportunities & Nurturing Growing Emotional Resilience) supports trauma-exposed children and families in the Greater Rochester, NY area. STRONGER provides services for unaccompanied refugee, immigrant, and newcomer children, who may experience symptoms of traumatic stress stemming from their experiences. Trauma-responsive mental health services are available for military-affiliated children and families. Addressing the reality of health care disparities, and often limited access to appropriate and sensitive care, STRONGER partners with local child-serving community systems such as child welfare, mental health, early childhood services, refugee supports, school districts, and military-affiliated organizations, to link with our services. Through STRONGER, a total of 750 individuals will be served over the five-year project. We offer Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A), Tuning Into Kids/Teens (TIK/T), and Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R) depending on developmental levels and needs. STRONGER draws on resources from NCTSN and SAMHSA to provide psychoeducation and ongoing dialogue regarding trauma-responsive care with community partners and referral sources. STRONGER collaborates with NCTSI-Category II Centers to develop, advance, or adapt trauma-informed interventions. STRONGER enhances availability of culturally-informed evidence-based trauma treatment services and builds on existing collaborative efforts of a multidisciplinary team of community stakeholders, including a Community Advisory Board and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging team working to improve the lives of children and families exposed to trauma.
University of Southern California Adolescent Trauma Training Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck School of Medicine
The University of Southern California Adolescent Trauma Training Center (USC-ATTC) continues to provide virtual and in-person trainings nation-wide and at our project site in Torrance, California focused on the assessment and treatment of complex trauma in ethnically diverse, socially marginalized adolescents using our evidence-based model, Integrative Treatment of Complex Trauma for Adolescents (ITCT-A). Monthly webinars are provided on specific trauma-related topics and include presentations on trauma treatment using teletherapy, attachment and family systems issues associated with ITCT-A, treating risky and compulsive behavior, addressing impacts of racism in trauma treatment, self-care and secondary trauma, supervision within ITCT-A, and treating trauma with mindfulness. Our website: attc.usc.edu includes training webinars, six treatment and implementation guides, assessment measures, tools, and other resources associated with ITCT-A that can be downloaded free-of-charge. Clinicians can also become ITCT-A certified by attending and presenting cases on the monthly nation-wide consultation conference calls.
University of Tennessee Health Science Center: Center of Excellence for Children in State Custody
The UTHSC Center of Excellence (COE) for Children in State Custody is part of a statewide network of five regional Centers of Excellence dedicated to improving behavioral and physical health services to children in or at risk of state custody by providing both consultative and direct services. Services include case review and consultation; psychological, psychiatric, and speech/language evaluation; and educational advocacy. Referral questions may include mental health, physical health, developmental, medication, or placement issues. The COE also provides training to child welfare personnel, foster parents, and mental health providers in the community.
University of Utah, Department of Pediatrics, Center for Safe and Healthy Families
Pediatric Integrated Post-trauma Services (PIPS) developed the Care Process Model for Pediatric Traumatic Stress (CPM-PTS), the first and only empirically-supported model guiding providers in pediatric settings to screen for trauma, identify risk for traumatic stress and suicidality, and provide a trauma-informed approach that guides referrals for at-risk children to evidence-based trauma treatment as well as targeted, brief in-clinic interventions. As of January 2023, the CPM-PTS has been successfully implemented in >94 separate clinical settings in 21 US states, reaching tens of thousands of youth. For the funding period (2022-2027), PIPS activities center on training and implementation strategies for wide-scale dissemination, adoption, and sustainability of the CPM-PTS in diverse pediatric and advocacy center settings through: 1. Establishment of regional Technical Assistance Centers, 2. Development of enhanced implementation strategies for rural and non-rural service settings, and 3. Adaptation of the CPM-PTS for children in foster care. PIPS partners with national professional organizations, large healthcare systems, and the National Children's Alliance (NCA). Ultimately, the goal of the PIPS center is to remediate mental health disparities by supporting best practice identification and response on a national scale for children at risk for traumatic stress and suicide.
UPMC Western Behavioral Health/Theiss Center for Trauma and Early Childhood Behavioral Health
The University of Pittsburgh's Theiss Complex Child and Adolescent Trauma (CCAT) Project expands access to evidence-based trauma treatment for children in Western Pennsylvania. It aims to improve service access and outcomes for high-need, underserved communities including racial/ethnic minority and low-income populations. It places an emphasis on children impacted by complex trauma, particularly those in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In collaboration with UPMC Western Behavioral Health and its Theiss Center for Trauma and Early Childhood Behavioral Health (Theiss), the CCAT Project's primary goal is to increase access to trauma-related, evidence-based practices (EBPs) in Western Pennsylvania to remediate the impact of complex traumatic stress. This goal will be accomplished by: 1) expanding the age range of Theiss trauma services (up to age 18) through the incorporation of Integrative Treatment of Complex Trauma (ITCT, Child & Adolescent versions); 2) expanding the geographic reach of Theiss by leveraging UPMC's Western Behavioral Health network throughout Western Pennsylvania for the implementation of evidence-based trauma treatments to support children impacted by complex trauma (including ITCT as well as Child Parent Psychotherapy-CPP); 3) facilitating trauma-related training and professional development for the mental health and related workforce (emphasizing the fields of child welfare/juvenile justice); and 4) serving as a resource for high-need, underserved communities by collaborating with local human service agencies to provide prompt clinical consultation and support to meet the complex needs of members of their community experiencing traumatic events.