Projects to Watch

Projects to Watch

The projects described below are highlighted on the NCTSN website and retrieved (2010) from a roster of organizational NCTSN members arranged by state — including current grantees as well as affiliated members. For each site the funding periods(s) by Federal fiscal year, abstract, and contact information are listed. This roster will change as the funding status of these sites changes. Current information and updates.

As this tutorial is prepared (2010), the projects below represent a sampling of those funded to address trauma affecting young children birth to five and their families. Some focus on dissemination of models of assessment, early intervention, and treatment. Some focus on developing treatment models and intervention approaches. Others focus on preparing the workforce to help young children and families recover from trauma. These are some projects to watch — developing the field and providing models for service delivery and intervention

Childhood Violent Trauma Center, Yale Child Study Center
The Childhood Violent Trauma Center (CVTC) at the Yale Child Study Center develops and disseminates models of assessment, early intervention, and secondary prevention for children at high risk of posttraumatic difficulties based on their exposure to potentially traumatic events. The CVTC will further develop its work to meet challenges of underserved poor and ethnically diverse children and communities by: 1) disseminating the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention (CFTSI) for children affected by physical and sexual abuse, violence exposure, and acute physical injury; 2) creating versions of CFTSI for young children and other populations; and 3) serving as a resource for communities interested in the Child Development-Community Policing (CDCP) and Domestic Violence Home Visitation Intervention models of police-mental health response to childhood violent trauma.

Since the Network’s inception, the CVTC has taken a leadership role, and the center will continue its efforts including: chairing the Acute/Early Intervention and Domestic Violence Working Groups, working with NCCTS to expand and adapt the Core Data Set to more effectively capture acute and early intervention activities throughout the Network, and serving as a resource for sites interested in establishing police-mental health collaborative response programs.

Contact: Steven Marans

Children’s Relief Nursery Child Trauma Center
The Children’s Relief Nursery (CRN) Child Trauma Center, based on the nationally successful relief nursery model designed to stop child abuse, provides comprehensive trauma-informed treatment to abused children aged birth to 3 and their families. Drawing on research from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, CRN’s model is characterized by early intervention, provision of multiple services, center-based preschools, home visitation, respite care, parent support, and counseling. CRN services work to: 1) ameliorate the effects of trauma on young children in terms of children’s affect, behavior, and self-regulation; 2) reverse developmental delays resulting from child abuse and neglect; 3) prepare fragile children for successful entry into preschool; and 4) enhance parenting skills and capacity through parent education, parent-child relationship building, coaching, role modeling, and stress reduction.

Contact: Chris Otis

Early Trauma Treatment Network
The Early Trauma Treatment Network (ETTN) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is a collaborative of four national programs that pioneered early trauma treatment, training, and dissemination. Continuing their work in this grant period, ETTN will better equip systems serving children aged 0-5 exposed to abuse, domestic violence, and traumatic loss, and their families, to meet their needs. A new focus will be on young children of military families at risk due to deployment, parental injury, and parental death. ETTN will address the training and service gaps by promoting workforce development; creating culturally competent products, resources, and training protocols; and building mechanisms for intersystem collaboration across the mental health, pediatric care, child welfare, judicial, and military systems. The lead agency is the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program, a multicultural program engaged in training, model building, clinical research, and direct service in San Francisco; the other sites are Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, Child Violence Exposure Program at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, and Infant Team at Tulane University Medical Center. ETTN sites will serve approximately 100 children per year—assessing the effectiveness of Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) with multiple populations and monitoring the effectiveness of modifications to the model. Among the projects ETTN will do to improve access to services and raise the standard of care for traumatized very young children are: creating educational and training materials for parents, childcare providers, service providers for families in the military, pediatric providers, child welfare professionals, judges, and foster care providers; and collaborating with the Network and NCTSN centers in cross-site evaluation, training, and dissemination.

Contact: Chandra Ghosh Ippen

Project BRIGHT, Institute for Health and Recovery
The Institute for Health and Recovery, Inc—in collaboration with Jewish Family and Children’s Service’s Center for Early Relationship Support and Boston Medical Center’s Child Witness to Violence Project—will create Project BRIGHT, designed to address traumatic stress in children aged 0-5 and their parents in recovery from substance use disorders (SUDs) and co-occurring disorders (CODs), at eight Family Residential Treatment (FRT) programs across Massachusetts. Project BRIGHT’s goals are: to address complex trauma symptoms and build resilience in young children through therapeutic interventions focused on building the parent-child relationship, and to train staff at the FRT programs in these interventions. Trained clinicians will provide Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) to 100 young children and families on-site at the FRT programs, providing therapeutic support to children and their parents in building new understandings and behaviors that promote developmental progress, resilience and emotional stability. Older children will be offered the evidence-informed WELL Child group intervention. Project activities, interventions, and implementation will be evaluated for effectiveness by Boston University.

Contact: Norma Finkelstein

Promoting Positive Pathways, Mt. Hope Family
Center Promoting Positive Pathways, a project of the Mt. Hope Family Center, will provide services and evaluate the effectiveness of three evidence-based, trauma-informed treatments on fostering resilience in 270 aged 0-6 traumatized children in foster care, with an expected additional 450 family members served. With input from local stakeholders and the NCTSN, this project will provide Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). Goals also include reducing the risks of further maltreatment and trauma, improving coordination of trauma services, and developing training materials for CPP. Promoting Positive Pathways will establish the Mt. Hope Family Center as the only member of the NCTSN in Western New York, and, in collaboration with other NCTSN members, the project will develop training materials and protocols for CPP that can be disseminated nationally. Building on existing collaborative efforts of a multidisciplinary team of community stakeholders working to improve the lives of children in foster care, the project also has important implications for policy makers and practitioners. Project results will be disseminated to members of the court system, pediatricians, caseworkers, educators, and mental health providers. And Promoting Positive Pathways supports the county’s strategic plan to make evidenced-based, trauma-informed programs in Monroe County, N.Y., more accessible.

Contact: Jody Manly

UC Davis – PCIT Training Center, University of California, Davis
[Funding period: 2009 – 2012]
The UC Davis – PCIT Training Center project will further the dissemination of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) by developing and testing a web course (PCITWeb) designed to inform professionals who may want to acquire and/or enhance PCIT skill involvement. The center will also develop a Learning Collaborative that focuses on the use of PCIT with young traumatized children and their families; and will create several products to enhance and support clinicians’ use of PCIT in a broad range of settings (e.g., community mental health centers, private practice, in-home services providers). Three pathways will be used to disseminate knowledge and skills related to the application of PCIT: 1) create a 10-hour culturally competent web course for mental health providers who serve traumatized children and their families; 2) enroll ten agencies in PCIT Competency Achievement Training to deliver PCIT services and train them to use the 10-hour web courses in their communities; and 3) develop PCIT products that will support the effective use of PCIT.

Contact: Anthony Urquiza

Safety Net Program for Families with Young Children, The Children’s Center
The Safety Net Program for Families with Young Children will transform access to care and the availability and delivery of trauma services in Utah for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and early-elementary-aged children suffering from trauma—ranging from sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect, to witnessing severe domestic violence or the death of a primary caregiver. Using Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), the program will expand services to growing populations of minority children, to refugee children and their families suffering from the loss of their home, and to families with children of deployed military personnel suffering from loss or the return of impaired caregivers. Under the direction of the Children’s Center, which serves the mental health needs of families with very young children in Salt Lake City, the Safety Net Program will provide evidence-based trauma treatment for families who reside in four metropolitan counties: Salt Lake, Davis, Utah, and Weber. Approximately 325 children and their families will receive treatment. Goals include enhancing community awareness about the presence and effects of trauma on young children; increasing organizational readiness and delivery of trauma-informed practices; identifying appropriate clinical treatments for children and families who have suffered complex trauma; and improving child and family outcomes.

Contact: Doug Goldsmith

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This product was developed [in part] under grant number 1H79SM082070-01 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA or HHS.