Our Category II site at LIJ Medical Center is promoted by our STRYDD Center which as its name implies defines our mission: Supporting Trauma Recovery for Youth with Developmental Disabilities. We seek to increase the capacity of communities in awareness, cross systems collaboration and trauma informed intervention on behalf of youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families who have been impacted by trauma. We strive to create a best fit in terms of community needs with an individualized dissemination plan to include increase in knowledge of trauma & IDD (by means of Road to Recovery Toolkit, Core Curriculum on Childhood Trauma IDD case examples), enhancing trauma informed clinical care (consultation on screening/assessment, training in TF-CBT) and advanced training for tailoring trauma informed intervention for youth with IDD. We encourage all network members to become familiar with the unique challenges impacting this vulnerable population by accessing our several fact sheets for providers and caregivers on the NCTSN website. Additionally, clinicians can review a series of webinars on adapting trauma based interventions for these youth. Our goals for this current funding cycle include the construction of various clinician guides to accompany our advanced trainings in Tailoring TF-CBT, Adapting Evidence-Based Trauma treatments more generally, and Trauma-Informed ABA. Additionally, we are implementing a school based approach in Stress First Aid (SFA) in support of the impact of COVID-19 on the school community, especially involving those serving special education students.
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.
Long Island Jewish Medical Center
Medical University of South Carolina
The Telehealth Outreach Program for Traumatic Stress (TOP-TS) will support wide-scale knowledge, implementation, resources, and sustainability of a telehealth service delivery model for Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for underserved youth (i.e., racial/ethnic and/or linguistic minorities, rural, low SES) in the mainland US and Puerto Rico. TOP-TS will provide 1) education about telehealth, 2) training and technical assistance with ongoing consultation and support, and 3) culturally/linguistically competent resources, national guidelines and best practices to support the mental health workforce in the implementation of TF-CBT via telehealth. Populations Served: The TOP-TS team will provide education, training and technical assistance (TTA) services and resources to the mental health workforce delivering TF-CBT via telehealth in Child Advocacy Centers, Community Mental Health Clinics, schools, juvenile justice, and other child-serving agencies targeting rural and underserved trauma-exposed youth and families in the mainland US and Puerto Rico. TOP-TS will promote equitable access to care for racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse children and families through the use of a telehealth service delivery model. Strategies and Interventions: TOP-TS will increase knowledge of telehealth protocols and best practices to deliver telehealth TF-CBT through educational webinars about telehealth best-practices and adaptations for unique service settings and populations. We will create a series of protocols, training materials, and resources to aid implementation. We will offer evidence-based TTA and ongoing implementation support with the goal of wide-scale implementation of telehealth delivery of TF-CBT.
National American Indian and Alaska Native Child Trauma TSA Center, Department of Community and Behavioral Health, University of Iowa
The National American Indian and Alaska Native Child Trauma Center TSA, Category II, located in the University of Iowa College of Public Health, Department of Community and Behavioral Health, within the Native Center for Behavioral Health. The Center's main focus is to increase national infrastructure for the Native and non-Native workforce to effectively prevent and reduce childhood trauma and increase wellness and resiliency among AI/AN children, adolescents, and their families. American Indian and Alaska Native people face traumas resulting from abuse, neglect, and household stressors. In addition, AI/AN children are also affected by racism, poverty, and the legacy of insidious historical oppression and trauma. Despite the elevated risk, there is limited empirical information to guide culturally appropriate treatments of trauma and related symptoms for this population. The National AI/AN TSA Center aims to identify, adapt, disseminate, and provide implementation support to the workforce serving AI/AN youth and their families impacted by trauma. We will offer support for service systems (e.g., schools, juvenile justice, child welfare, and healthcare settings) working with children. Anne Helene Skinstad, Ph.D., clinical psychologist educated in Norway, with focus on Childhood mental health disorders and trauma and have 25 years of experience working with behavioral health workforce, including substance use and mental health disorders in Native communities. Teresa Brewington, MBA, MEd, an enrolled member of The Coharie and descendent the Lumbe tribe, has worked for many years in the K - 12 school system as a teacher, counselor, and principal of a Native School and have experience working with Native children who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences.
National Child Trauma Workforce Institute, Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
The National Child Trauma Workforce Institute (NCTWI), hosted at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience, has a vision of raising the standard of care for trauma exposed children and families by raising the standard of trauma education and training of those who serve them. NCTWI will address the national child-serving workforce's need for trauma education by providing training, consultation and technical assistance to expand the use of the Core Curriculum on Childhood Trauma (CCCT), an evidence-based trauma training curriculum. The goals of UCCS-NCTWI are to 1) build the trauma response capacity of the US mental health workforce by expanding the number of trained CCCT facilitators across the NCTSN; 2) integrate the CCCT into trauma education within Psychology and Child Psychiatry training programs and across the professional lifespan; and 3) increase the impact of CCCT training on improved trauma-informed clinical and organizational practices by expanding long-term evaluation and identifying key training components and strategies.
National Crime Victims Research & Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina
Our NCTSI-II Center, Enhancing Equity, Quality and Impact of evidence-based Practices for Trauma using Technology (EQUIPTT), is housed within the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. EQUIPTT aims to increase equitable access and quality of trauma-focused evidence-based interventions (EBIs) across diverse youth and families by (1) developing, disseminating and implementing technology-based scalable products and (2) serving as a national resource for training, education and technical assistance. EQUIPTT has four goals: (1) increase availability of technology-enhanced, evidence-based resources across the NCTSN; (2) build workforce capacity to deliver Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT) and Risk Reduction through Family Therapy (RRFT) for youth with traumatic stress and high-risk behavior; (3) disseminate technology-based resources to improve sustained delivery of trauma-focused EBIs; and (4) expand access to trauma-focused EBIs across service systems. Our strategies are to (1) support efforts to develop and disseminate technology-based products by providing consultation and creating a Technology Development Toolkit (TDT) for national dissemination; (2) build workforce capacity by conducting Learning Collaboratives supplemented by technology-assisted training and provider assistance tools in TFCBT, RRFT, and traumatic grief (CTGWeb) to address grief and loss, which has been exacerbated by COVID; and (3) launch mobile app-based EBIs to address PTSD and depression among disaster-affected youth and adapt to a broad array of traumatic events. Dissemination efforts will prioritize partnerships to expand reach into underserved populations.
National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development at UNC School of Social Work
The National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development at the UNC School of Social Work is committed to better enable mental health treatment providers to use common trauma-informed practice elements (CTIPE) in their treatment of traumatized youth and their families. The objectives are to (1) increase the capacity of clinicians at all NCTSN Category II and III sites to employ common trauma-informed practice elements in their treatment of traumatized youth and their families; (2) annually increase this capacity via a new course at 15-20 schools of social work reaching; and (3) strengthen and expand the national impact of the Center's initiatives through broad collaborations with NCTSN Centers, among mental health professionals, and across disciplines. These collaborations will further disseminate information about and best practices for trauma-related care among developers, practitioners, service providers, and consumers with a focus on reducing health disparities. To achieve these goals, we will develop a new intervention product, a case-based curriculum examining common trauma-informed practice elements that will form the foundation of 1) a free online training resource for mental health providers and 2) a 3-credit clinical graduate course for MSW programs. The new intervention product will build on existing resources in the NCTSN, specifically the Core Concepts training and common trauma informed practice elements and will prioritize agencies with a majority BIPOC client population and MSW programs in HBCUs. The national impact will be activated by a diverse 14-15-member Advisory Board consisting of representatives from youth trauma survivors and family members, students, faculty, practitioners.
Network for Enhancing Wellness in Disaster-Affected Youth (NEW DAY)
The Network for Enhancing Wellness in Disaster-Affected Youth (NEW DAY) provides national expertise, training, and technical assistance on the behavioral health needs and intervention of youth in disaster-hit and disaster-prone communities. Under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Comer, NEW DAY works to improve professional knowledge, skill, adoption, and implementation of evidence-based, trauma-focused disaster services and supports for youth, with a primary emphasis on meaningfully reducing racial and ethnic disparities in post-disaster behavioral health and service provision. NEW DAY engages with school systems, youth-serving professionals, families, community agencies, stakeholder partners, and technology to broaden the reach and sustainability of supported behavioral health programs for trauma-exposed youth, including Psychological First Aid (PFA), Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR), and Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE).
Northwestern University/Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Systems Integration
The Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services, and Systems Integration (CCTASSI) at Northwestern University offers national expertise on addressing the complex, developmental effects of trauma for system-involved youth and developing trauma-informed, child-serving systems and agencies. Our target population includes frontline and other providers in child welfare and juvenile justice and the youth and families served, focusing on minority youth and subpopulations at-risk due to systemic oppression and racial trauma. This includes racial and ethnic minority immigrants and refugees (I/R), multisystem involved youth (MSIY), transition age youth (TAY), and commercially sexually exploited (CSE) youth. Our goals are: 1) Increase awareness, knowledge, and skill of frontline providers to identify and respond to complex, developmental effects of trauma; 2) Develop comprehensive, system-wide trauma-informed services in child-serving settings; 3) Increase capacity for trauma-informed, cross-system coordination for MSIY; 4) Increase providers' awareness, knowledge, and skills to prevent and respond to youth and families impacted by systemic trauma, including oppression, disparities, racism, and other forms of identity-based discrimination; 5) Increase provider understanding of and responsiveness to the unique needs of subpopulations of youth and families impacted by complex, developmental trauma, including I/R, CSE, and TAY. Our activities focus on adaptation and dissemination of evidence-supported, trauma-informed approaches and curricula (including Think Trauma), and specialized training/consultation to support systems transformation. We also work to increase provider knowledge and enhance responses to systemic trauma and oppression through our films on TAY and Race & Trauma.
Residential Child Care Project/College of Human Ecology
The “Creating Conditions for Change - Therapeutic Foster Care” project strives to improve the quality of therapeutic foster care (TFC), an essential undertaking as the Family First Prevention Services Act restrictions will increase the number and acuity of children placed in TFC. The goals are: 1) increase Therapeutic Foster Parents (TFPs) access to training that improves their capacity to meet their children’s trauma-specific needs, 2) increase the capacity of agency staff to support and mentor TFPs as they apply new skills and knowledge regarding trauma-informed care, and 3) increase the capacity of voluntary and public agencies to train, support, and retain qualified TFPs in their TFC programs. Two existing programs – the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention for Families (TCIF) and Children and Residential Experiences: Creating Conditions for Change (CARE) - will be adapted, integrated, and updated based on a review of current scientific literature and stakeholder focus groups. CARE, a trauma-informed, evidence-based program model provides a set of evidence-informed principles that emphasize building developmental relationships, maintaining trauma-sensitive environments, and working effectively with biological families. TCIF is an evidence-informed curriculum that prepares foster parents to therapeutically prevent, de-escalate, or manage challenging behaviors. To improve accessibility, both TFP and Staff trainings will include materials to facilitate learning in three modalities: in-person training, live virtual training, and self-paced E-learning. Training a cadre of 240 3C-TFC Trainers will accelerate the adoption of this new trauma-informed, relationship-focused program in agencies nationwide.
School of Social Work
The Complex Trauma Training Consortium (CTTC) is a national trainer-training and workforce development initiative that will establish sustainable expertise in complex trauma understanding, assessment, and treatment within each of the 50 US states, the 5 territories, DC, and the four largest US metropolitan areas. The CTTC will create a self-sustainable network of over 200 state and territory-based trainers across 60 affiliate organizations nationwide, increasing access to resources and addressing behavioral health disparities in underserved areas with historically limited NCTSN presence. The 20-module, 40-hour CTTC curriculum spans a comprehensive range of topics, including the intersection of complex trauma with such adverse life experiences such as ancestral trauma, systemic racism, and substance abuse, and emphasizes the effects of complex trauma on high-risk and marginalized groups including immigrants, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ youth and families. The CTTC will conduct over 1,000 training events, delivering training to over 20,000 multidisciplinary providers, consumer and allied professionals nationwide. The CTTC is a partnership between Adelphi University, Alaska Behavioral Health, the Foundation Trust, and the University of Chicago, and is comprised of a faculty of over two dozen subject matter experts diverse in race, culture, language, geography and lived experience.