Caitlin Ryan, PhD, ACSW is a clinical social worker, researcher and director of the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) who has worked on LGBTQ health and mental health for more than 40 years. She conducted the first research on LGBTQ youth and families and developed the first evidence-based family support model to prevent risk and promote well-being for LGBTQ children and youth. FAP's family support model helps ethnically, racially and religiously diverse families to support their LGBTQ children to prevent risk and promote well-being in the context of their families, cultures, and faith communities. Her work shows how specific family rejecting and accepting behaviors contribute to risk and well-being for LGBTQ children and youth and helps caregivers understand the traumatic impact of family rejecting behaviors that many parents use to try to change, prevent and minimize their child's LGBTQ identity to try to help their LGBTQ children fit in, stay connected with their cultural and faith traditions and be accepted by others. FAP's approach to increasing family support for LGBTQ children and youth was designed to be implemented across systems, including behavioral health, school-based services, primary care, out-of-home care and pastoral care. Dr. Ryan collaborated with Allegheny General Hospital's Center for Traumatic Stress in Children & Adolescents and the developers of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) to integrate FAP's family support model and TF-CBT to develop a new integrated family-based treatment model for care of LGBTQ children and youth who have experienced trauma. She has developed multilingual evidence-based family education resources and trains on this work across the U.S. and in other countries.

The Border Traumatic Stress Response Center is a program of Serving Children and Adults in Need (SCAN) in Laredo, TX. The Center provides individual counseling services to youth that have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event including sexual and physical abuse, traumatic grief, and exposure to family, community or school violence. The target population is trauma exposed youth ages 3 to 17 including children of military families, children involved in the child welfare system, children of caregivers with substance use disorders who receive outpatient trauma treatment, children receiving shelter services through SCAN's Emergency Youth Shelter, and adolescents ages 12 to 17 with co-occurring trauma and substance abuse that are involved in the juvenile justice and/or child welfare systems and are receiving residential substance abuse treatment at SCAN. The target population is composed almost entirely of first-generation Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants who are bilingual or primarily Spanish speaking. The evidence-based interventions being implemented include TF-CBT and ICARE, with cultural modifications made to ensure that all services are culturally and linguistically relevant. The Center partners with community stakeholders representing local school districts, law enforcement, juvenile justice, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment, and child welfare.

The Complex Trauma Training Consortium (CTTC) is a national trainer-training and workforce development initiative that will establish sustainable expertise in complex trauma understanding, assessment, and treatment within each of the 50 US states, the 5 territories, DC, and the four largest US metropolitan areas. The CTTC will create a self-sustainable network of over 200 state and territory-based trainers across 60 affiliate organizations nationwide, increasing access to resources and addressing behavioral health disparities in underserved areas with historically limited NCTSN presence. The 20-module, 40-hour CTTC curriculum spans a comprehensive range of topics, including the intersection of complex trauma with such adverse life experiences such as ancestral trauma, systemic racism, and substance abuse, and emphasizes the effects of complex trauma on high-risk and marginalized groups including immigrants, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ youth and families. The CTTC will conduct over 1,000 training events, delivering training to over 20,000 multidisciplinary providers, consumer and allied professionals nationwide. The CTTC is a partnership between Adelphi University, Alaska Behavioral Health, the Foundation Trust, and the University of Chicago, and is comprised of a faculty of over two dozen subject matter experts diverse in race, culture, language, geography and lived experience.