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 Illinois at Chicago, Urban Youth Trauma Center, Institute for Juvenile Research
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, 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-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 Missouri St Louis-Project ASSIST
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.
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 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 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.