Current and Affiliated NCTSN Organizational Members

Center for Safe and Healthy Families at Primary Children's Medical Center improves treatment and services for children who experience trauma related to child maltreatment. It used its grant funds to create and maintain a regional network of child therapists in seven Western states who participated and collaborated in training and consultation. This network is no longer being maintained, but the initiative is being sustained through regional collaboration for training on the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of child abuse. Safe and Healthy Families continues to use evidence-based trauma treatment practices, maintains active collaboration with other centers, and has developed a protocol to help nurses educate parents about evidence-based trauma treatment practices as a part of forensic medical examinations.

The Border Traumatic Stress Response (Border TSR) Project at Serving Children and Adolescents in Need (S.C.A.N.), Inc. will continue work from the previous grant period, developing trauma-informed systems of care in Webb County and in targeted child service systems in the Rio Grande Valley and the state of Texas. The project will also maintain a Youth Trauma Coalition and Steering Committee; collaborate with experts from the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, and from Treatment and Services Adaptation Centers and Community Treatment and Services Centers about available practices for border children and adolescents, and specialized service settings and needed adaptations; implement selected project designs addressing strategic plan objectives and the best evidence-based services; and implement a tailored trauma-informed system for the targeted youth that relies on evidence-based services adapted to meet their cultural and linguistic needs. The target population is almost entirely first-generation Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants who are bilingual or primarily Spanish speaking. Border TSR will serve 300 youth: children and adolescents aged 12-17 with co-occurring substance abuse and trauma who are receiving residential substance abuse treatment at S.C.A.N., and Webb County children and adolescents aged 3-17 who have experienced a traumatic event and who will receive outpatient trauma treatment.

Community PARTNERS (Prevention of Adverse Reactions to Negative Events and Related Stress) at St. John's University developed and sustains a community-wide network of providers implementing trauma-informed, evidence-based services. Primary care personnel provide these services to underserved, inner-city traumatized children throughout Queens and eastern Brooklyn, New York. Each year, more than 29,000 children are screened and more than 1,500 abused and/or bereaved children receive assessment and treatment services. The majority of these children are Latino, African American, Caribbean American, or Asian.

Community PARTNERS worked with members of the local community and NCTSN to 1) adapt screening, assessment, and treatment procedures and components to be culturally informed and language accessible; 2) train pediatrics staff and community providers to screen and refer children for child sexual abuse (CSA), child physical abuse (CPA), and traumatic bereavement (TB); 3) train mental health staff to provide evidence-based, culturally informed assessments and treatment of children exposed to CSA, CPA, and TB; 4) identify leadership staff of the mental health clinics who then inform, promote, and sustain the program; and 5) extend the training on and implementation of trauma-informed, evidence-based services beyond Community PARTNERS into the Queens and eastern Brooklyn communities.

In 2007, the program expanded to include a second site at the Child Abuse Program at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Virginia. The CHKD site is implementing the project with military families. This collaboration allows the NCTSN to gain information on working with traumatized children from military families, and provides the opportunity for creating collaborations among trauma providers and military service providers (e.g., Family Advocacy Program, Portsmouth Naval Hospital, Naval Criminal Investigative Services). Finally, given the mobile nature of military family life, the collaboration will help provide additional information on methods of adapting the evidence-based services to improve access among military children (e.g., cross-site trainings or improved continuity of care among service providers at different commands).

Mid-Maine Child Trauma Network has worked closely with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and private mental health service providers/agencies to strengthen the infrastructure of rural community services to children who have experienced traumatic stress and their families. Network membership is open to organizations that serve traumatized children and their families. Network activities include: 1) identifying community resources, needs, and coordination opportunities among foster care, domestic violence, emergency health care, mental health, and terrorism/disaster response services; 2) piloting triage assessment and outcome evaluation protocols in the above areas; 3) providing training and consultation to increase trauma assessment and intervention resources; and 4) facilitating interagency development and coordination of child trauma services.