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.

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.

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.

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.