The Pediatric Approach to Trauma, Treatment and Resilience (PATTeR) is a multi-site project. The three project sites include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the University of Massachusetts Medical School and UCLA's Section on Developmental Studies. The focus of PATTeR is to develop curricula focused on trauma and resilience specifically for pediatricians who are the first child professionals family encounter and the most frequent gate-keepers to subspecialty care, including trauma-informed mental health care, and to supportive community-based services. During year one, we will focus on developing two levels of curricula: Trauma Aware and Trauma Informed. Through the AAP, which is the professional home of over 60,000 pediatricians across the United States, we will recruit pediatricians serving children and families in a variety of settings but focus on those serving certain high risk groups: those living in poverty, involved with child welfare or social services, those living in resource-poor areas and military families. Case-based learning designed to lead to practice change will occur in a group on-line format (using ECHO Technology) with an expert panel. Trauma Aware training will occur over 6 sessions. Pediatricians seeking to become trauma training resources in their own communities or AAP chapters will complete the more detailed Trauma-Informed training over 12 sessions. We will also recruit residency program leaders through the Academic Pediatrics Association to engage in both curricula since they are the educators who will transform pediatric residency education. We will also infuse curricula into multiple AAP education venues and anticipate reaching thousands of pediatricians during the grant cycle.
University of California, Los Angeles (Szilagyi)
University of California, San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Areas of expertise is infant/early childhood trauma, including child maltreatment, domestic violence, loss of a loved one; community violence; traumas related to undocumented migration and refugee status; war and terrorism. We focus on the impact of early childhood trauma on child-parent relationship and family functioning as a risk factor that derails healthy developmental trajectories and increases the likelihood of mental health problems. Activities involve developing, testing, implementing, and disseminating evidence-based and promising relationship-based trauma treatments and interventions, including Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Perinatal Child-Parent Psychotherapy (P-CPP), Attachment Vitamins, and Semillas the Apego. The site has specific expertise in Latinx populations. It provides services and develops materials and products in English and Spanish.
University of Connecticut Health Center
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.
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, 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.