Many children experience trauma exposure and adversity, including physical and sexual abuse, domestic or community violence, racism/discrimination, and accidents or natural disasters. The support of caregivers and other trusted adults is critical for helping children communicate about their experiences, feel safe, and to promote a healthy recovery from exposure to trauma. Evidence-based trauma-focused treatments for children are increasingly available to those children who need additional support.
Unfortunately, the majority of children suffering from traumatic stress are not identified and do not receive the trauma-focused services they need to recover. Often, even parents, caregivers, teachers, doctors, and other caring adults are unaware of a child’s trauma history or traumatic stress. Screening children for trauma is currently limited outside behavioral health settings.
Trauma ScreenTIME is a five-year initiative to improve child trauma screening across child-serving systems in Connecticut and nationwide. Screening children for trauma in everyday settings such as schools, child care, and primary care can play an important role in identifying and supporting children who have experienced trauma. Professionals in child-serving systems are often reluctant to implement screening due to a lack of knowledge about how to do it effectively and uncertainty about managing disclosures, how to support children and families, and where to refer children to treatment.
Trauma ScreenTIME helps child-serving professionals and systems implement trauma screening by developing and disseminating online training courses on trauma screening best practices. These courses were developed in collaboration with families and national experts and were designed to be useful for any staff working with children and youth, not just those in clinical positions. They will help schools, pediatric primary care, child welfare, juvenile justice, and early childhood systems:
ScreenTIME is part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) and is funded through a five-year federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant to CHDI.
The Trauma ScreenTIME Core Course, Schools Course, Pediatric Primary Care Course, and Early Childhood Course are now available FREE at www.traumascreentime.org.
Continuing education credits from the APA, NBCC, NASW, and ABP are available - please see the ScreenTIME website for details and requirements.
*Courses specific to child welfare, and juvenile justice will launch at a later date.
Trauma ScreenTIME utilizes a Connecticut-based Advisory Board and a National Expert Faculty with expertise in child trauma and each of five child-serving systems (schools, early childhood, pediatric primary care, child welfare, and juvenile justice) to develop the trainings and make them available in Connecticut and nationally.
Partners working to ensure ScreenTIME improves systems in Connecticut include:
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Expert faculty developing content for ScreenTIME include:
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Other professionals were consulted during the development of the ScreenTIME courses. Learn more about those involved.
Read CHDI's news release announcing the ScreenTIME grant.
To learn more about CHDI's Trauma ScreenTIME, please contact:
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Jason Lang (PI - Project Director) - Chief Program Officer jlang@chdi.org 860-679-1550 |
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Kellie Randall (Co-Project Director) - Associate Vice President of Quality Improvement krandall@chdi.org 860-679-8098 |
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Brittany Lange - Senior Associate blange@chdi.org 860-679-8791 |
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