Philadelphia Alliance for Child Trauma Services: Fortifying the Future
The intent of this application is to change the trajectory for trauma impacted youth and families by building an expanded, more responsive, and more nimble citywide trauma services infrastructure. We will accomplish this by building infrastructure support to expand and enhance the trauma providers’ networks and by ensuring access to universal trauma screening and treatment for youth and families. Our focus is on the most vulnerable youth, ages 3-21, who experience trauma and interpersonal or community violence, commercial sexual exploitation, and traumatizing racism and discrimination. We will assess 500 youth/year for trauma, totaling 2,500 in 5 years; and provide EBP trauma services to 500 youth/year, with a total of reaching 2,500 youth over 5 years. We will implement three EBPs. 1) Universal Screening using the Trauma History Questionnaire throughout all Philadelphia youth serving providers. 2) Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, an intervention used with youth and parents/caregivers to decrease the negative behavior patterns and
emotional responses that occur as a result of sexual abuse, physical abuse and other traumas. 3)Stress-Less, an evidence-informed trauma intervention for clinicians who provide youth trauma services. Four major goals will guide our work. 1) Expand and build sustainability in the public mental health system’s capacity to provide evidence-based trauma treatment to underserved youth and families. 2) Increase parity of access and quality of services for LGBTQ+ identifying individuals and Black, Indigenous and people of color, youth and families impacted by trauma. Incorporating an anti-racism lens into our trauma-informed approach and specifically training clinicians to engage in culturally responsive and anti-racist evidence-based trauma care. 3) Develop youth and community trauma leadership through building on the power of social capital and the role that trusted individual community members and grassroots organizations play in building trust and reputation. We will build a network of grassroots partners and youth advocates to help re-shape
the mental health system, while raising awareness and utilization of trauma screening, TF-CBT, Stress-Less and other EBPs. 4) Increase local and national partnerships by increasing our partnerships by 30%. The expansion will include youth serving agencies, such as the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Child Welfare, to refine, strengthen and support the development of an effective referral process for trauma services and to provide trauma education opportunities. We will expand and develop new partnerships with NCTSN centers in order to contribute to product development and model adaptations.