Over the past two decades, our center has developed, adapted and disseminated evidence-informed trainings, resources, and intervention models with refugee and immigrant youth that support providers across diverse community and service-system settings. This includes Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R), an evidence-based multi-tier intervention that is effective in both engaging and treating traumatized refugee and immigrant youth. The purpose of this project is to provide national expertise on trauma-informed services for refugee and immigrant children and their families, and to support the continued adaptation and widespread dissemination of Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R), an empirically-supported clinical and organizational treatment model. The TCRC will provide widely-accessible training on trauma-informed best practices with refugee and immigrant children, and serve as a resource for providers working with other traumatized populations.
Trauma and Community Resilience Center
UAMS Project ARBEST
Arkansas Building Effective Services for Trauma (ARBEST) is a state-funded program at the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute which aims to improve outcomes for traumatized children and families through excellence in clinical care, training, advocacy, and evaluation. We work closely with child advocacy centers and other partners in the state to build a trauma-informed mental health system, and are best known for providing training to mental health professionals in treatments that are effective in helping children and families recover from trauma. We are actively training mental health professionals in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Through this training– in addition to direct services, technical support, and outreach in the community– we are transforming the delivery of mental health services in Arkansas, so that children and families who have experienced trauma can recover and move forward with their lives.
UC Davis Early Psychosis Programs, Department of Psychiatry
Comorbid trauma and psychosis are common yet under-recognized in juvenile justice (JJ), child welfare (CW), and community mental health (CMH) settings; and recognized youth do not receive appropriate services. The Trauma and Adolescent Mental Illness (TAMI) Services Project triples the capacity of service providers in Sacramento County, CA, to provide evidence-based services for youth (age 12-22) with comorbid trauma and psychosis in JJ, CW, and CMH settings. Project goals are: 1) Increase capacity of child-serving systems to identify and appropriately link youth experiencing trauma and psychosis symptoms by implementing a universal screening and referral protocol in Sac County JJ and CW settings; 2) Increase the capacity of Sac County CMH services to provide evidence-based trauma-focused care for youth with comorbid trauma and psychosis by implementing a curriculum that addresses the training needs of CMH providers. TAMI services comprise Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (TI-CBTp; Folk et al., 2019), developed in collaboration by the UC Davis (UCD) SacEDAPT clinic and UCD CAARE Center. We implemented TAMI services in the SacEDAPT clinic in 2014, have provided care to over 65 youth, and built capacity for 25 cases per year. Unfortunately, an estimated 100 system-involved youth need TAMI services annually in Sac County, and SacEDAPT is the only Sac County provider of TAMI services. This project will increase TAMI service capacity in Sac County by expanding to 6 additional CMH sites. Our team is uniquely positioned carry out this work: the SacEDAPT clinic and CAARE Center have an established partnership and are nationally recognized leaders in the development and implementation of EBPs for youth with trauma and psychosis in diverse settings.
UC Davis/ Pediatrics/ CAARE Diagnostic & Treatment Center
For more than 25 years, UC Davis CAARE Center has provided evidence-based treatment to maltreated children in Sacramento County and contributed to the evidence base supporting the use of these interventions with this vulnerable population. While mental health services are available to children in foster care, they can take months to begin, they may not receive services without obvious symptoms, and services targeted at the child rarely include the biological parent. Additionally, birth parents are often reluctant to seek help for difficult visits for fear that it will reflect poorly upon their parenting or extend the child's time in care. Resource caregivers also receive limited support for navigating the biological parent-resource parent relationship and may struggle with helping children cope with conflicted feelings and difficult visit interactions. The current Category III project screens children for trauma and comorbid disorders and provides an adaptation of the brief (7-session) Parent-Child Care (PC-CARE) intervention to all biological parents of children aged 1-10 years participating in visits. The adaptation combines three services: PC-CARE with biological parents to increase access to services and support good quality visits, consultation to resource parents around the visitation process and children's responses to trauma, and an online PC-CARE resource to promote generalization of skills to support children's well-being. PC-CARE offers a novel approach to supporting reunification and reducing children's trauma-related symptoms by providing empirically supported coping and parenting skills at a key point during the family's transition, without the family's need to seek out or wait for a referral for intervention.
UCLA - Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (CA)
The UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the Duke University School of Medicine jointly host the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (NCCTS), leading the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) in transforming treatment and services to meet the needs of traumatized children and their families across the United States. Through extensive expertise, resources, organizational experience, and vision, the NCCTS guides and supports the NCTSN. The NCCTS also provides strong technical assistance to support Network data collection, cross-site collaborative activities, product development and dissemination, training, adoption and adaptation of interventions, communications, policy analysis and initiatives, and program evaluation.
UCLA - Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (NC)
The UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the Duke University School of Medicine jointly host the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (NCCTS), leading the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) in transforming treatment and services to meet the needs of traumatized children and their families across the United States. Through extensive expertise, resources, organizational experience, and vision, the NCCTS guides and supports the NCTSN. The NCCTS also provides strong technical assistance to support Network data collection, cross-site collaborative activities, product development and dissemination, training, adoption and adaptation of interventions, communications, policy analysis and initiatives, and program evaluation.
UCLA-Duke Adolescent Suicide/Self Harm & Substance Abuse Prevention (CA)
The UCLA-Duke Adolescent Suicide/Self Harm & Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) will serve as a resource for information related to safety, suicidal/self-harm behaviors, and substance use among trauma-exposed youths. We prioritize services for emergency/acute care and brief time-limited treatments, adapting for the trauma-exposed population and then disseminating two brief evidence-based interventions for suicide/self-harm risk (Emergency/Family Intervention for Suicide Prevention; SAFETY) and two for substance abuse (Screening/Motivational Interviewing(MI); CBT with MI/optional contingency management). To inform and develop optimal service strategies for improving outcomes for trauma-exposed youths, the Center will also work to develop and strengthen trauma informed care that integrates care for adolescent behavioral health within primary care, emergency, and other medical settings, as well as other mental health, school, and community settings. We will utilize surveillance data on suicide/self-harm and substance abuse risk in the NCTSN population to guide this work. Intervention training and dissemination will include technology-enhanced tools/materials and data-informed supervision systems and clinical dashboards to enhance quality of care and client outcomes. Through trainings/dissemination activities, the Center aims to serve diverse youths, across racial and ethnic groups. sexual identities and orientations, socioeconomic groups, and address needs of youths in military families. Our Center goal is to support providers and service systems in addressing safety issues and substance misuse effectively, thereby enhancing the benefits of other treatments that specifically target post-traumatic stress disorders/reactions.
UCLA-Duke Adolescent Suicide/Self Harm & Substance Abuse Prevention (NC)
The Center for Trauma-Informed Adolescent Suicide, Self-Harm, and Substance Misuse Treatment and Prevention (ASAP) trains health and mental health care professionals in state of the art trauma-informed treatments for self-harm, suicide prevention, substance abuse, and depression with the aim of empowering children, adolescents, young adults, and their families to recover from mental health problems and build lives they want to live. The UCLA-Duke ASAP Center provides national expertise on adolescents affected by trauma, emphasizing services for trauma-affected youth with suicidal/self-harm behavior and substance misuse, and those from underserved marginalized groups. By providing training and information on evidence-based care for trauma, suicide/self-harm, and substance misuse, the Center comprises a national resource, with potential to decrease morbidity and mortality associated with traumatic stress, suicidal/self-harm behavior and substance misuse. We provide trainings on brief evidence-based interventions for acute care and stabilization. These include: 1) SAFETY-Acute (A), a trauma-informed emergency/acute care intervention for suicidal and self-harm behavior (also called Family Intervention for Suicide Prevention), which aims to link youth to trauma-focused or other evidence-based treatments once safety is established; 2) the related 12-week SAFETY intervention for youth requiring additional stabilization after a suicidal/self-harm episode; and 3) motivational interviewing plus cognitive-behavior therapy for substance using adolescents. The ASAP Center also collaborates with other organizations within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and other SAMHSA initiatives to strengthen national capacity and expand and train the workforce for responding to child traumatic stress and reduce risk of associated suicidal behavior, self-harm, and substance use.
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Department of Family and Preventative Medicine (DFPM) Research and Evaluation Division (RED)
UAMS's Department of Family and Preventive Medicine Research and Evaluation Division (DFPM RED) focuses on family and environmental factors linked with poor health, growth, and psychosocial development. We conduct research to test theoretical models, collaborate with community partners to implement and evaluate interventions, train on research-based curriculum, and translate those models into community settings. We partner with communities and community organizations to implement and evaluate programs intended to improve outcomes. Many of our projects take research-based knowledge and translate it into practice. Our training programs target professionals in community-based settings such as early care and education, mental health, home visits, shelters, and substance abuse treatment.
University of CA Los Angeles Department of Pediatrics
Over the past five years, we collaboratively developed PATTeR (Pediatric Approach to Trauma, Treatment and Resilience) as a successful foundation for transforming pediatrics into a trauma-informed and responsive system of care. PATTeR is a partnership of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMass), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Guided by its National Advisory Board (NAB) and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, PATTeR incorporated the latest science from multiple fields (resilience, attachment, parenting, neuroscience, evidence-based trauma-informed mental health interventions) into an evidence-based and practical curriculum for pediatricians. PATTeR developed, implemented and evaluated a novel trauma-informed care (TIC) curriculum for pediatricians; adapted the curriculum to resident education; and piloted a learning collaborative focused on implementing TIC into pediatric practice. PATTeR has introduced 30,000 professionals to TIC and provided in-depth training to 800 physicians, including >100 residents. Completers of in-depth training reported an average increase in proficiency of 1.8 levels on a scale of 1 to 6 on TIC elements (eg, serve and return, predictable compassionate availability, co-regulation). We continue to seek funding to continue the work.