Title: The University of Massachusetts Child Trauma Training Center
Dates: 9/30/2016-9/29/2021
Funder: Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Funding: $2,000,000
PI: Jessica L. Griffin, Psy.D.

Description: This project allows the UMass Chan Medical School Department of Psychiatry to maintain, expand, and enhance the Child Trauma Training Center (CTTC) with the aim of improving identification of childhood trauma, increasing trauma responsiveness among youth-serving professionals, and expanding access to evidence-based practices (EBPs) (e.g., Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy). The CTTC’s population of focus will be children and adolescents who have been exposed to trauma, ages 0-21 years, throughout the Commonwealth . Our priority population is Court-Involved Youth and the project will focus its efforts on the most underserved and high risk groups within and across our population of focus: transition-age youth, youth with substance abusing parents, lesbian, gay, transsexual, bisexual, and questioning (LGTBQ) youth, commercially sexually exploited children, and youth in military families. The CTTC has three primary goals: (1) to provide trauma-informed care training to develop, enhance, and strengthen the capacity of 10,600 front-line youth-serving professionals (e.g., within pediatrics, courts and other local and state agencies) to identify, screen and/or assess for childhood trauma, to implement trauma-responsive practices, and to provide referrals to EBPs; (2) to strengthen and enhance an innovative and EBP neutral, statewide Centralized Referral System (LINK-KID) to improve access to care for traumatized youth by providing referrals, statewide, to EBPs for approximately 4,000 youth during the grant period; and, (3) to provide Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy to youth ages 3-21 by training clinicians statewide through intensive learning communities.