Child HELP Partnership Treatment and Services Adaptation Center - The Center will train and support the delivery of evidence-based, culturally adapted trauma services and interventions for children exposed to disaster, sexual abuse, family violence, race-based and immigration trauma (e.g., unaccompanied minors), COVID-19, and traumatic deaths. Major stakeholders in children’s mental health–school personnel, parents, and mental health providers–will work in partnership to create a continuum-of-care at 18 sites nationwide. The Center aims to serve underserved children (ages 4-17) from culturally diverse backgrounds (e.g., people of color, LGBTQ+) who have been exposed to trauma and are experiencing diverse mental health responses. Each site’s trauma team will have representatives from schools, parents, youth, mental health clinics, and other social systems (e.g., police) and be responsible for implementing a tiered approach to services and interventions. Tier 1 is system-level psychoeducation (i.e., Trauma 101) to create a trauma-informed culture and provide a foundation for trauma EBIs. Tier 2 is early intervention delivered after trauma (i.e., Skills for Psychological Recovery) to prevent the development of mental disorders. Tier 3 is treatment for traumatized children and their caregivers (i.e., Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Alternatives for Families-A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy). After being trained and implementing the interventions, school counselors and mental health supervisors will participate in train-the-trainer programs to train others (e.g., teachers, clinicians). Center goals are to: (1) increase collaboration in local, state, and national school-family-mental health partnerships, (2) increase the size of the trauma trained workforce that can identify traumatized children, assess level of need, and provide interventions that prevent and treat trauma-related mental disorders, (3) increase the number of children who receive trauma-specific services and EBIs, and (4) decrease children’s trauma symptoms. Completion of training in the model takes 2.5 years. In the first 2.5 years of the project, the Center will train 8 Launch sites that have school-mental health partnerships in culturally and geographically diverse areas with large behavioral health disparities. Simultaneously, the Center will build and beta-test a new online training platform and innovative professional networking application for widespread dissemination and sustainability. In the last 2.5 years of the project, the Center will train 10 new Rollout sites using the web-based platform and provide technical assistance to the Launch sites as they use the platform to train their community partners. Launch sites will educate 34,600 students, parents, and staff in Year 1, and add 20% (3,382) each of 4 years for a total of 62,359 over the 5 years of the project. Rollout sites will have 25% more students, parents, and staff than Launch sites, and add 20% each year for an estimated total of 56,000. Between Launch and Rollout sites, more than 118,000 youth, parents, and staff will receive Tier 1 services and more than 23,500 youth and their parents will receive Tier 2 early intervention and Tier 3 treatment.
