Affiliate Member Organizations and Individuals

The New Jersey CARES Institute Center for Children's Support is a nationally recognized facility for its leadership in the development of evidence-based services for children who have suffered child abuse. Through this initiative, the institute disseminates Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), enhances public and professional efforts toward early identification and protection of potential abuse victims, and improves children's access to evidence-based and developmentally and culturally sensitive treatment services. Through collaboration with local constituencies and NCTSN members, the institute helps increase awareness of, identify obstacles to, and improve access to effective mental health services for children who have suffered abuse or other violent crime. New Jersey CARES has also developed and tested an intervention for physical abuse. In addition, the institute provides ongoing training and consultation on TF-CBT and physical abuse to mental health staff at New Jersey's three other Child Abuse Diagnostic and Treatment Centers and to centers associated with the NCTSN.

Since 1918, the International Institute of New Jersey has been the gateway of resettlement for hundreds of thousands of immigrants arriving in America. Low-cost and confidential, all programs aim to accelerate each new immigrant's journey to self-sufficiency. The International Institute of New Jersey Cultural Adjustment and Trauma Services program promotes the well-being of refugee and immigrant children and their families in northern New Jersey through culturally and linguistically accessible holistic services designed to mitigate the effects of trauma associated with the refugee and immigrant experience and acculturation in resettlement. Intervention is offered at multiple levels to children and their families in their homes, schools, and communities to encourage individual and systemic understanding of the cultural and psychosocial challenges facing refugee children and families, and to foster pathways to healing and adaptation.

As a Community Treatment and Services Center since 2005, the Dartmouth Trauma Interventions Research Center (DTIRC) has trained mental health center clinicians in evidence-based practices for traumatized adolescents and has disseminated these practices to each of the ten lead community mental health centers in New Hampshire. Refunding will enable DTIRC to establish the New Hampshire Bridge Project, which will integrate trauma treatment services across several state systems that serve New Hampshire youth and families who have been exposed to abuse, neglect, and/or trauma. The Bridge Project targets three care systems of key importance in the lives of abused and at-risk children: child protective services (New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth & Families), juvenile justice (New Hampshire Division for Juvenile Justice Services), and the judicial branch (New Hampshire Judicial Branch Family Division). DTIRC will provide statewide training for approximately three hundred key personnel in principles of trauma-informed services. And to increase statewide capacity to treat traumatized children, DTIRC will train forty-two providers in evidence-based practices congruent with state division goals, staffing, and population characteristics. Division personnel, including nonclinicians, will also become conversant with evidence-based trauma treatment options. Initial steps will involve needs assessments, education, and evaluation of progress toward enhancing trauma-sensitive services. DTIRC staff will prioritize service coordination and follow case disposition and treatment progress, as these children often move back and forth multiple times among divisions, residential placements, and treatment providers. Emphasis will be on collaboration among service providers, divisions, families, and communities as well as on strength-based, resiliency-oriented interventions.

Trauma Recovery for Youth (TRY) was established by Catholic Charities and a constellation of Mississippi state government and nonprofit organizations to serve a wide range of primarily rural and geographically isolated child trauma survivors. Based on the lessons learned through participation in a Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) Learning Collaborative in its first funding period, TRY implemented a Gulf Coast TF-CBT Learning Collaborative to build capacity in agencies to treat children and families affected by trauma after the region's devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

In the current funding period, TRY is developing a statewide trauma-informed system of care to meet the needs of children and families throughout Mississippi. Evidence-based practices are disseminated to public mental health clinicians via the Learning Collaborative model, with an emphasis on systems serving those least likely to have access to quality mental health care. TRY is collaborating with NCTSN experts to provide at least four TF-CBT Learning Collaboratives, three Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS) Learning Collaboratives, and three Learning Collaboratives on the treatment of physically abused children. TRY is also working on providing an assessment protocol, training, and consultation to at least 200 clinicians in Mississippi, and on establishing a training unit within Catholic Charities to ensure that further dissemination of these interventions is a part of Mississippi's continuum of care.

Trauma Informed Disaster and Evidence-Based Services (TIDES) will develop proficiency in evidence-based trauma practices and will treat Katrina survivors by centrally organizing staff to be prepared for inevitable hurricanes. The target population is children of military personnel living on the two military bases on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The project will address other therapy needs specific to this population including incorporating Child Parent Conjoint-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CPC-CBT) and Trauma Assessment Pathways (TAP) for assessing and addressing already traumatized populations, and Psychological First Aid (PFA) for preparing for future disasters within their site. Clinicians will educate the community on trauma and formally centralize crisis response for future events. TIDES staff will continue training to become trauma-based experts, and will sustain gains made in TF-CBT by continuing to provide therapy to a traumatized region while working with TF-CBT co-developer Esther Deblinger to modify the therapy to include trauma specific to military families. Four TIDES therapists currently trained in TF-CBT will be developed as experts for the region.

Project Return Home will expand the reach and impact of Bethany Christian Services' existing child trauma center to serve urban Grand Rapids and the metropolitan Kent County area of West Central Michigan. The target population is traumatized children aged 3-18 who have been removed from their homes due to child abuse, neglect, or maltreatment, and who live in foster care or other out-of-home placement. Trauma treatment will also be delivered to their parents, most of whom struggle with their own unresolved sources of childhood trauma. The project will adapt/replicate an empirically based trauma-informed treatment model to help foster children achieve four measurable outcomes: 1) reduce behavioral problems extending from childhood trauma; 2) increase the rate and timeliness of child-family reunification; 3) reduce the number of disrupted foster placements; and 4) reduce the rates of recidivism for repeat out-of-home placement of children.

Bethany will partner with the Child and Adolescent Traumatic Stress Center of Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA, to replicate the Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) model for foster children, and will draw on the resources of its own Child and Family Traumatic Stress Center that has successfully implemented two other U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-funded clinical models for treating traumatized adopted youth and youth aging out of the foster care system.

The National Collaborative for Homeless Children and Trauma was formed by the National Center on Family Homelessness in partnership with the Trauma Center and the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies. In conjunction with three community-based domestic violence and homeless agencies, the collaborative provides trauma-related services to homeless children and their families, and builds on local work to increase knowledge within NCTSN and beyond about the range of trauma experienced by homeless children and their parents (e.g., physical and sexual assault, witnessing violence, abrupt separation). The collaborative also helps develop effective cross-system partnerships that meet survivors' needs; creates effective services in Boston area shelters; and advocates locally and nationally to improve society's response to homeless families.

The Adolescent Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse (ATSSA) program is housed within the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD) at Boston University. ATSSA's mission has been to improve the standard of care for adolescents with co-occurring traumatic stress and substance use through the identification and development of treatment and service approaches for this underserved population. An integrated intervention for traumatic stress and substance abuse was developed, piloted, and implemented among several Network sites. The resulting intervention—Trauma Systems Therapy for Adolescent Substance Abuse (TST-SA)—employs a socioecological approach to address emotional regulation and environmental stability needs of youth and families.

In collaboration with NCTSN centers, the ATSSA program has led the development of Understanding the Links between Adolescent Trauma and Substance Abuse: A Toolkit for Providers. The Adolescent Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse Treatment Center at CARD continues to provide evidence-based treatments for youth and families with a wide range of anxiety disorders. In addition, CARD continues to make significant contributions to the understanding of anxiety disorders, as well as the development, evaluation, and dissemination of effective treatment programs.

The Kennedy Krieger Family Center (KKFC) is a program of Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Johns Hopkins University-affiliated specialty hospital internationally recognized for improving the lives of children and adolescents with developmental disabilities through patient care, training, research, and special education. Located in an urban community in Baltimore, KKFC has three programs: outpatient mental health, therapeutic foster care, and early Head Start. The KKFC Integrated Trauma Approaches program is being implemented in the outpatient program, a high-volume clinic that provides comprehensive, trauma informed, culturally sensitive mental health evaluation and treatment to children and families who are survivors of simple or complex trauma.

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.