The Fast and the Furious: The Rapid Implementation of Tele-mental Health Practices Within a Children's Advocacy Center.

We work at a large, urban children's advocacy center (CAC) that provides treatment and services to approximately 2000 children and families each year who have experienced child abuse and other forms of trauma. While the complexity and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both physical and mental health are only beginning to be understood, families with histories of abuse and other traumatic experiences are particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of isolation due to the extended lockdown. When the COVID-19 pandemic was identified as a public health crisis, the team of providers at the CAC pivoted to meet the newly emerging needs of the children and families served.

Assessing the effects of trauma in children and adolescents in practice settings.

Assessment is a critical part of understanding and addressing the needs of children and adolescents exposed to trauma. A comprehensive approach to assessment that measures a range of traumatic exposures and domains of impact and uses multiple informants and techniques over time is needed to best capture the complexity of needs and presentations of traumatized youth. This approach provides a pathway to effective treatment planning.

Promising practices and strategies for using trauma-informed child welfare practice to improve foster care placement stability: a breakthrough series collaborative.

This paper will provide information on a recent Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) conducted by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network on Using Trauma-Informed Child Welfare Practice to Improve Foster Care Placement Stability. Information on this particular BSC will be provided, followed by initial findings gathered from an evaluation of the BSC and metrics gathered by each of the nine participating teams throughout the BSC process. Specific trauma-informed promising strategies adopted by teams are presented along with recommendations for next steps.

Creating trauma-informed child welfare systems using a community assessment process.

This article describes a community assessment process designed to evaluate a specific child welfare jurisdiction based on the current definition of trauma-informed child welfare and its essential elements. This process has recently been developed and pilot tested within three diverse child welfare systems in the United States. The purpose of the assessment is to identify strengths and barriers related to trauma and child welfare in each site, to make tailored recommendations to help the sites better understand, and to address the impact of trauma on the families served and on the child welfare system itself.

Linking child welfare and mental health using trauma-informed screening and assessment practices.

An abundance of research suggests that children in the child welfare system (CWS) have experienced numerous traumatic events and are exhibiting traumatic stress symptoms. Therefore, it is critical that the CWS work closely with the mental health system to ensure that these children receive the appropriate trauma screening, trauma-focused assessment, and referral to the appropriate trauma-focused mental health services. This paper will begin by providing a concrete definition of trauma-focused screening and highlighting how that differs from a more comprehensive trauma-focused assessment process and a psychological evaluation.

Managing traumatized children: a trauma systems perspective.

Purpose Of Review: To review the current research on trauma-informed child-serving systems. Research on this topic, although sparse, is critically important because most children who come into contact with systems, including the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, have experienced at least one traumatic event.

Recent Findings: Very little research has actually been done on this topic area.