Drawing upon the expertise of 5 of the country’s leading complex trauma treatment developers, the Complex Trauma Treatment Initiative (CTTI) at Adelphi University’s Institute for Adolescent Trauma Treatment & Training intensively trains multidisciplinary providers to implement and deliver evidence-based Complex Trauma treatments to culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse justice-involved youth (JIY), refugee/asylum-seeking minors (RASM), and trauma-exposed youth in urban and rural high-risk schools; adapts existing interventions and develop innovative and specialized multi-media resources (e.g. youth-led videos, web-based and in-person workshops) for RASM and JIY; promotes sustainability of these practices through the development and refinement of processes and protocols (including clinician certification and creation of internal and national training teams) to embed interventions within child-serving systems. It is well-established that high levels of trauma exposure place youth at greater risk for academic failure and incarceration, yet despite documented findings that JIY, RASM, and youth in rural and urban high poverty areas are among the most trauma-exposed, many of these youth do not receive any trauma-specific interventions.
Adelphi University - Institute for Adolescent Trauma Treatment & Training
Adelphi University - The Complex Trauma Training Consortium
The Complex Trauma Training Consortium (CTTC) is a national trainer-training and workforce development initiative that establishes 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 creates 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. 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.
Alaska Behavioral Health - Rural Child Trauma Center
The Rural Child Trauma Center at Alaska Behavioral Health raises the standard of care and improves access to evidence-based treatments for rural children impacted by child trauma. The Center will provide training in rural communities to improve identification of child trauma and training to mental health professionals to improve the quality and accessibility of child trauma treatment in rural areas. The Rural Child Trauma Center will use four strategies; (1) rural community training on child trauma to improve local awareness, identification and responsiveness to child trauma (2) training and ongoing professional consultation on evidence-based treatments to mental health professionals serving rural areas (3) training on the provision of child trauma treatments using telehealth, to extend services to areas with mental health professional shortages (4) rural child trauma-focused Learning Communities to improve professional and organizational rural-service competency (5) an annual Rural Child Trauma Institute to disseminate best practices in rural child trauma treatment nationwide. The Rural Child Trauma Center will provide training to over 10,000 persons living in, or serving, rural areas over the project period. The sought outcomes of the Center are increased identification of child trauma in rural areas, improvement in the availability of evidence-based trauma treatments in rural areas and improvement in access to those services for children and families in rural communities.
Allegheny General Hospital Center for Traumatic Stress in Children & Adolescents
Allegheny General Hospital's Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents' Treatment and Service Adaptation Center has national expertise in Evidence-Based Treatments for Traumatic Stress Reactions. The developers of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Alternatives for Families: A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (AF-CBT) will address behavioral health disparities for children with traumatic stress reactions including: 1) African American children who experience racial trauma; 2) children with parental substance abuse; and 3) children with COVID-19-related childhood traumatic grief (CTG). African American youth experience high rates of racial trauma, traumatic stress reactions, and are over-represented in child welfare and juvenile justice systems. We will conduct a learning community with Community Treatment and Services (CTS) Centers to adapt TF-CBT for racial trauma and develop related implementation products. Children with parental substance abuse (PSA) are at increased risk for child maltreatment and for developing traumatic stress reactions including traumatic separation and/or CTG. We will conduct a learning community with CTS Centers in order to adapt TF-CBT for youth with PSA and develop related implementation products. Thousands of children with COVID-19-related CTG have unique clinical manifestations that are under-recognized and under-treated. We will develop training products and train professionals in an integrated approach to recognize and respond to COVID-19-related CTG. We will increase TF-CBT and AF-CBT dissemination and sustainability by 1) training new TF-CBT supervisors and trainers, 2) developing a new online AF-CBT training course; and 3) providing TF-CBT or AF-CBT training, consultation or technical assistance.
Arizona State University - Office of Community Health, Engagement, and Resiliency
The Office of Community Health, Engagement, and Resiliency (OCHER) in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University works in partnership with community members and organizations to address social issues and promote resiliency among populations of the Southwest region of the U.S. There is a pressing need for training and education on early intervention, mental health promotion, and prevention of long-term consequences of childhood trauma given (a) high rates of poverty, (b) the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and (c) documented gaps in programs addressing family resilience. There are several unique challenges surrounding trauma treatment and service delivery in systematically marginalized communities, including historical trauma leading to mistrust of medical and mental health professionals, absence of culturally appropriate trauma prevention and intervention services, and lack of access to treatment in rural areas. Due to their comprehensive understanding of barriers to services, and the sociocultural context of underserved populations, Community Health Workers (CHWs) are a promising strategy for the delivery of health and mental health services, especially among Black, American Indian, and Latinx populations. OCHER works to build on the existing potential of CHWs by adapting evidence-based trauma treatments and co-developing trauma training in partnership with the community, with an emphasis on cultural relevance, appropriateness, effectiveness, and sustainability. With technical assistance from OCHER, CHWs can take existing, technical health information, and culturally and linguistically tailor it to the intended community. Through this work, OCHER builds resiliency among CHWs through specialized training, informational webinars, a trauma and resilience toolkit, and a CHW certificate program centering on healing and resilience from trauma.
Arizona State University-REACH Institute
For more than 30 years, researchers from the REACH Institute have developed several evidence-based programs that focus on improving the lives of children and families. The Center for Resilient Families at the REACH Institute will adapt, widely implement and disseminate four of the evidence-based parenting interventions, all of which have been rigorously tested and shown to be effective at strengthening resilience among traumatized families. These interventions are: Adaptive Parenting Tools (previously known as After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools)/ADAPT for first responders, refugee/immigrant families, and military families; Resilient Parenting for Bereaved Families, New Beginnings for high-conflict divorce families, and Bridges for Latinx and African-American inner-city parents. Program developers Drs. Abigail Gewirtz, Nancy Gonzales, Armando Pina, Sharlene Wolchik, and Irwin Sandler, will work closely with communities across the nation to widely disseminate online, self-directed versions of these parenting EBPs. Over the next five years, these interventions aim to serve more than 35,000 people and specifically target isolated families in transition, such as: • refugee and immigrant families • those exposed to the death of a parent • community violence • parental wartime deployment • high-conflict divorce • first responder parents The REACH Institute is thrilled to house the longstanding work of the Center for Resilient Families and its dedication to addressing the public health impact of childhood trauma through a family context, providing education, and training for parents.
Baystate Medical Center - The Child Advocacy Training and Support Center
The Child Advocacy Training and Support Center (CATS) in Baystate Medical Center’s Dept of Psychiatry coordinates and consolidates the vast resources and expertise of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) to support Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) in meeting their mission with the primary goal of increasing access to trauma informed services for children and their families. The CATS Center team, in partnership with national experts on CAC service delivery, evidence-based treatment (EBT) trauma curriculum developers, and stakeholders representing each multidisciplinary team (MDT), disseminates trauma informed care (TIC) training across the CAC system. The CATS Center goals are: 1) Establishing a national training center to support CACs in ensuring their MDT members are trauma-informed and have specialized tools, skills, and resources for effective service delivery. 2) Increasing system capacity and competencies of the CAC MDT professionals’ (i.e., medical, mental health, law enforcement, child-welfare, victim advocates) trauma-informed response using a learning collaborative model and specialized curriculum specific to each discipline. 3. Increasing availability of training in EBTs, such as Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy to mental health professionals within CACs. 3) Supporting sustainability of TIC throughout CAC MDTs by serving as a continuing resource for training, consultation, and technical assistance and providing additional training regarding priority areas such as commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking, problem sexual behaviors, screening and engagement, and secondary traumatic stress prevention. 4) Developing and consolidate NCTSN products specifically for CAC service systems such as factsheets and webinars.
Boston Children’s Hospital - Refugee Trauma and Resilience Center
Over the past two decades, our center has developed, adapted and disseminated evidence-informed trainings, resources, and intervention models with refugee and immigrant youth that support providers across diverse community and service-system settings. This includes Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R), an evidence-based multi-tier intervention that is effective in both engaging and treating traumatized refugee and immigrant youth. The purpose of this project is to provide national expertise on trauma-informed services for refugee and immigrant children and their families, and to support the continued adaptation and widespread dissemination of Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R), an empirically-supported clinical and organizational treatment model. The TCRC will provide widely-accessible training on trauma-informed best practices with refugee and immigrant children, and serve as a resource for providers working with other traumatized populations.
Center for Safe Supportive Schools
The Center for Safe Supportive Schools (CS3) reflects a national-regional partnership between the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the NCTSN Center for Trauma Care in Schools (CTCS; Massachusetts) and the Center for Childhood Resilience (CCR; Illinois), a team of national-regional experts and trainers on the impact of childhood trauma exposure and trauma-informed systems, policies and practices and their fit within multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in schools. The CS3 will address critical gaps by integrating and aligning trauma-informed policies and practices into comprehensive SMH systems nationwide; augmenting existing school trauma approaches by attending to social determinants and injustices that lead to disparities and improving engagement of youth of color and newcomer youth in school-based trauma supports; and, integrating trauma-informed training into pre-service workforce development for educators and behavioral health staff. The CS3 has three goals: Goal 1: Build state and district capacity to deliver multi-tiered, trauma-informed policies and programming, including universal (Tier 1), targeted (Tier 2) and intensive (Tier 3), within K-12 comprehensive school mental health (SMH) systems nationwide; Goal 2: Support training and implementation of school-based trauma interventions that attend to social determinants and injustices and engage and support specific marginalized populations, including youth of color and newcomer (refugee and immigrant) youth; Goal 3: Integrate TIS into pre-service educator and mental health provider preparation.
Child HELP Partnership at St. John's University
Child HELP Partnership will train and support the delivery of evidence-based, culturally adapted trauma services and interventions for children exposed to disaster, sexual abuse, family violence, race-based and immigration trauma (e.g., unaccompanied minors), COVID-19, and traumatic deaths. Major stakeholders in children’s mental health–school personnel, parents, and mental health providers–will work in partnership to create a continuum-of-care at 18 sites nationwide. It aims to serve underserved children (ages 4-17) from culturally diverse backgrounds (e.g., people of color, LGBTQ+) who have been exposed to trauma and are experiencing diverse mental health responses. Each site’s trauma team will have representatives from schools, parents, youth, mental health clinics, and other social systems (e.g., police) and be responsible for implementing a tiered approach to services and interventions. Tier 1 is system-level psychoeducation (i.e., Trauma 101) to create a trauma-informed culture and provide a foundation for trauma EBIs. Tier 2 is early intervention delivered after trauma (i.e., Skills for Psychological Recovery) to prevent the development of mental disorders. Tier 3 is treatment for traumatized children and their caregivers (i.e., Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Alternatives for Families-A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy). After being trained and implementing the interventions, school counselors and mental health supervisors will participate in train-the-trainer programs to train others (e.g., teachers, clinicians).