Affiliate Member Organizations and Individuals

The Louisiana Rural Trauma Services Center (LRTSC) provides and enhances urgently needed crisis and mental health services for underserved children, adolescents, and families in rural Louisiana who have experienced traumatic stress as a result of disasters, community and family violence, accidents, loss of family members, and medical conditions. LRTSC works directly with rural hospitals and with school districts to conduct professional trainings that are developmentally sensitive and specific to aspects of crisis response. In schools, LRTSC professionals train staff to recognize the signs of trauma exposure, to differentiate children's responses to crisis situations, and to mitigate the impact of trauma. In 2004, at the request of the Louisiana 24th Judicial District, LRTSC expanded its mission to include work with trauma-exposed children and families who present in court. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, LRTSC has been providing services to children and families evacuated from New Orleans and now residing in rural parishes. Community advisory boards comprising community stakeholders provide input to LRTSC and collaborative partners for the LRTSC including the Louisiana State Department of Education, the Office of Mental Health, and public and community hospitals. Refunded in 2008, LRTSC will provide and evaluate a continuum of care of trauma-focused trainings, interventions, and services for children and adolescents aged 3?{18, including children of military families, in schools in Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes that were heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Due to the extent of the devastation and the complexity of recovery, training and service models will be adapted, modified for cultural sensitivity, and implemented to meet needs at this time. LRTSC has a strong commitment to providing culturally competent, evidence-based services, collaborating with Network members in meeting the goals of the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative. Services are offered within school and preschool settings with parent, student, and school support. LRTSC will work at consensus building with input from families, school and military personnel, community, service providers, and other stakeholders in modifying trauma-focused practices and services with sensitivity to cultural competence.

La Rabida Children's Hospital's Chicago Child Trauma Center (CCTC) serves inner-city African Americans and other Chicago-area children exposed to the full range of traumatic events including medical trauma and complex trauma. Refunded, the CCTC now expects serve a total of 1,350 children, and will evaluate the effectiveness of interventions for urban African American children. Effective practices will then be disseminated to major child service system stakeholders. Given the CCTC's emphasis on resiliency and consumer involvement, expertise in child trauma, experience in the NCTSN, regional and national reputations, and existing collaborative relationships, the center expects to increase and enhance services to traumatized children in the Chicago area. As the only Community Treatment and Services Center in the NCTSN whose primary mission is serving urban African American children living in poverty, the CCTC brings to the Network a sophisticated understanding of societal, cultural, and multigenerational factors that shape children's responses to and recovery from exposure to trauma. Among the ten goals are: increasing capacity to provide Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), disseminating complex trauma interventions, and working with the Illinois Childhood Trauma Coalition to build trauma-informed service systems across the state.

Community-Based Refugee Trauma Treatment (Community-Based RTT) is a program of International FACES (Family, Adolescent and Child Enhancement Services) at Heartland Health Outreach, which provides services to refugee children, adolescents, and families in Chicago suffering from trauma-related distress or emotional stress resulting from and exacerbated by the refugee experience. More than half of the refugee children seen at International FACES are diagnosed with anxiety disorders, including PTSD, and experience a variety of other trauma-related problems including persistent fears of death, violent memories and nightmares, insomnia, depression, behavior disorders, developmental delays, or poor performance in school. International FACES will expand its culturally and linguistically appropriate, trauma-informed service model to include adaptation and application of the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS). IFACES, in collaboration with World Relief-Chicago's (WRC) Horizons Clinic, will provide in-school CBITS programming to help refugee students and their families manage the symptoms of trauma, develop their capacity to self-soothe, and improve their social and school functioning. Community-Based RTT services will be delivered to 200 children in four public schools located in multicultural neighborhoods on the north side of Chicago; in participants' homes; and on-site at International FACES and WRC's Horizons clinic.

The Chaddock Trauma Initiative of West Central Illinois (CTIWCI) will provide trauma-informed services to under-served children and adolescents who live in the rural community of Quincy, Illinois, and the surrounding tri-state area (Illinois, Iowa, Missouri). Using school and community settings, the project will focus on treating traumatic stress, and will also provide training for parents, foster parents, educators, and other professionals. The project will serve more than 1,780 clients, aged 0-19, and their families who have experienced trauma due to child abuse and neglect, violence, poverty, catastrophic events, and/or separation and loss, particularly among families of military personnel who have been deployed to the Middle East. The project's training component will serve approximately 1,500 adults each year. The goals are to: 1) infuse the tri-state area with specialized evidence-based practices including Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), and Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS); 2) train parents and child-serving professionals to implement specialized trauma services; and 3) further develop best practice models of trauma-related services through collaboration and coordination with local, state, and national organizations.

The Catholic Charities Hawaii program Hawaii - Interventions, Mentoring, and Partnerships Aimed at Child Trauma (HI-IMPACT) on Oahu will provide clinical treatment for children and adolescents who have experienced traumatic events as victims and/or witnesses of domestic violence.

HI-IMPACT will utilize Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) in the treatment of children, adolescents, and their families. In addition, the HI-IMPACT program will provide community based trainings to educate state agencies, the military, schools, clinicians, and service providers on TF-CBT and working with traumatized children.

Through Project ETC.: Enhancing Services to Traumatized Children, Gateway Community Services will expand and enhance its trauma-focused services to children living in Northeast Florida who have symptoms of PTSD, or who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event or series of events producing sub-threshold symptoms of PTSD. The children served through Gateway include 1) young children aged 0-12 accompanying their parent to residential substance abuse treatment; 2) adolescent males aged 12-18 under the supervision of the Department of Juvenile Justice and placed in a secure residential program; 3) adolescents aged 12-18 who are in residential treatment for a substance use or co-occurring substance and mental health disorder; and 4) adolescents who are receiving substance abuse outpatient treatment in a community setting. The project plans to serve 120 youth annually (80 the first year) for a total of 440 for the life of the funding. Goals include: 1) implement and evaluate effective trauma-focused and trauma-informed treatment and services for children at Gateway Community Services; 2) facilitate local use of trauma-informed and trauma-focused services in youth serving agencies in Northeast Florida; and 3) promote community awareness of the need for trauma-informed services for children in Northeast Florida.

Directions for Mental Health, Inc. is a community mental health center in Clearwater, Florida, serving children and adolescents, aged birth to 18, who present with mental health symptoms and a history of trauma. Healing the Hurt is a partnership with Hospice of the Florida Suncoast and Family Service Centers, organizations that provide interventions to children and adolescents who have recently experienced trauma related to death or serious illness of a family member, or from sexual assault. Healing the Hurt works closely with the local school board, Safe Start Initiative, and the juvenile justice system; and participates in a replication of the Child Development-Community Policing program. In addition to expanding services and improving access, Healing the Hurt focuses on increasing community awareness of the effects of trauma on children and on training other providers in the region.

The Wendt Center for Loss and Healing is a nonprofit agency that has been providing mental health services to children and families since 1977. The Wendt Center serves people throughout the Washington D.C., metropolitan area who have experienced the death of a loved one or are living with life-threatening illness. Individual counseling, grief support groups, a summer grief camp for children, and training for mental health professionals are at the heart of the Wendt Center services. The Wendt Center started the D.C. Homicide Coalition in the city and now operates the D.C. Crisis Response Team, which has more than seventy volunteers and responds to all homicides. In 1999 the Wendt Center created the first program in the United States to provide on-site grief counseling to families who must visit the city morgue to identify a deceased loved one. Through this work the Wendt Center has developed an expertise in serving children from families who have experienced a traumatic death.

Through the Delaware Division of Prevention and Behavioral Health (DPBHS-recipient of the Child Traumatic Stress Center grant), the state's Children's Department expands statewide capacity to identify and assess child traumatic stress and increases access to effective, community-based, trauma-specific treatment for traumatized children and adolescents served by the public children's behavioral health, child welfare/protection and juvenile justice systems. DPBHS collaborates locally with families, providers, schools, the family court, and others to increase its capability to identify, assess, and effectively treat children with traumatic stress. As an established, statewide provider and community-education program, DPBHS facilitates the transfer of best practice across Delaware, advancing the goal to make evidence-based child trauma treatment available to children with traumatic stress in Delaware and their families.

Through a subsequent SAMHSA Child Mental Health Initiative grant (2009 – 2014), DPBHS continues to support TF-CBT, particularly for use with very young children, and is disseminating Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) statewide, further increasing access to evidence-based treatment. In addition, DPBHS now offers Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, Teacher Child Interaction Training (TCIT) and CARE (Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement, 6 hr. workshop for non-clinicians).

Through the Identifying Child and Youth Trauma in the Court System Project, Denver Juvenile and Family Treatment Accountability for Safer Communities and the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect will develop and implement a standard protocol to identify, screen, assess, and treat children and adolescents who have been exposed to trauma and who are children of a court-involved, substance-abusing parent. The project will serve a target population of 200 Denver families with children and youth aged 4-17, as part of a comprehensive prevention and intervention approach for families involved in the city's justice system. Services to the target population—55% Latino, 20% African American, 23% Anglo, and 2% other—will include Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) to treat trauma and trauma-related symptoms. The project will also work collaboratively in Denver and across the Network to develop and promote effective practices and services including trainings for and collaboration with Denver's treatment, law enforcement, and justice communities.