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                 March 2013 Newsletter
IN THIS ISSUE
CTA WELCOMES NEW FELLOW
TWO NEW ORGANIZATIONS BEGIN CERTIFICATION TRAINING

QUICK LINKS 
BORN FOR LOVE

NMT & EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE



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Greetings!
 

This week we held the third session (of five) of the inaugural NME (Neurosequential Model in Education) Training Series, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.  We receive new contacts on a weekly basis from educators interested in learning more about this approach to working with students, and we are very excited about the progress of ongoing NME projects at the Minot Public Schools (North Dakota), Dorothy Moses School in Bismarck,ND, and in Australia with our Take Two Berry Street Partners.  Meanwhile NME Project Director Steve Graner continues to teach and connect with people across the US and Canada through onsite trainings, expanding the NME network month by month.  We are looking forward to further development and progress of our NME program in the coming months, including a Train-the-Trainer process of interested educators.  Take a few moments this month to read about other additions to the CTA Learning Network.  

KWard
Kirk Ward Joins CTA Group of Fellows

Kirk Ward, LCSW, is Clinical Director of Mount Saint Vincent Home, a residential treatment center for children based in Denver, Colorado. Mr. Ward has worked in various capacities at Mount Saint Vincent since 1984, becoming Clinical Director in 1999. He has over 28 years of experience working with children who have experienced trauma, abuse, and neglect, and at MSV, he has overseen the development and implementation of NMT across all agency programs. MSV offers a wide variety of programs including residential, day treatment, therapeutic preschool, and intensive in-home that serve children ages 3 to 14.  Read more about Kirk Ward and MSV on our website.

Challenge of Generating "Evidence" in Complex Clinical Groups: What is the evidence base for treatment in childhood trauma?
     One of the major shifts in mental health, child welfare and juvenile justice in the last ten years is the push by funding organizations and third-party payers to demand the use of "evidence-based" treatments.  This is a reasonable effort, yet in disciplines and programs that serve complex children and families with multi-dimensional problems, the number of "evidence-based" treatments with well-characterized populations and well-controlled protocols is scant (see the recent report on a meta-analysis of effectiveness of interventions that demonstrated minimal to limited evidence for ANY current published therapy for child trauma).  Indeed in the effort to conduct "controlled" studies (including those in the studies of the meta-analysis just described), maltreated children (who have multiple confounding co-morbid mental health and physical health issues) are often excluded from treatment outcome studies.  Even the basic clinical phenomenology associated with child trauma is still poorly characterized (consider the recent debates during the development of the DSM V). This is not surprising considering the heterogeneous nature of the developmental outcomes following various patterns of genetic and epigenetic risk, intrauterine insult, neglect, chaos, attachment disruption and trauma that may play a role in the development of a maltreated child. 
     The only solution to this challenge is to begin to collect quality descriptive phenomenology (e.g.,
extensive developmental history and current functioning using psychometrics in multiple domains) to create relatively homogeneous groups to then compare; a child with minimal developmental risk and then a single traumatic exposure, for example, is different from a child with significant developmental chaos and neglect who is then exposed to the same traumatic experience, yet they are often included in the same "group" in an outcome study.  In order to create more homogeneous "groups" to better understand the phenomenology - and to begin hypothesis-driven outcome studies - access to large numbers of children is required. 
     This is one of the ongoing goals of the ChildTrauma Academy's NMT Research Network.  Programs and organizations using the NMT have the capacity to pool data and help "create" the large data sets necessary to begin the ongoing process of better characterizing these children and allowing the development of better evidence for our field - both on outcomes from various treatment models and in the basic understanding of the impact of the timing, nature and pattern of adversity (and potential buffering factors) on the development of the child. To date we have over 8000 children in the NMT master dataset - and more are added each day.  A brief overview of the current status of NMT as an "evidence" based practice can be seen at this link
 
CTA Welcomes Two New Organizations to NMT Site Certification 
 
We are very pleased to welcome two fantastic organizations from Texas to our NMT Site Certification Program. Read more below about Dallas Children's Advocacy Center and St. Peter - St. Joseph's Children's Home in San Antonio.
 
 
DCACDALLAS CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER

The mission of the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center (DCAC) is to improve the lives of abused children in Dallas County and to provide national leadership on child abuse issues. DCAC coordinates the investigation and prosecution of the most severe cases of child abuse in our community.  Last year, DCAC served more than 2,400 children (and their non-offending family members) who were sexually abused, severely physically abused, or who had witnessed a violent crime. DCAC provides a warm, child-friendly environment to help children who are referred by law enforcement or CPS. Our average client is a 9-10 year-old girl, sexually abused by someone she knows and trusts.  

   

ST. PETER - ST. JOSEPH CHILDREN'S HOME

St. Peter - St. Joseph Children's Home, affectionately referred to as St. PJ's, has been helping children and their families for more than a century. Originally founded as an ophanage by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1874, today St. PJ's is an independently governed non-profit. Trauma informed care is provided to children from birth to age 17, who have suffered from abuse and/or neglect.  St. PJ's is licensed to provide emergency shelter, up t 90 days, for 59 children and to provide long-term residential care for a maximum of 84 children. Transitional living "apartments" are available for youth ages 15 - 17 who are preparing for adult living upon "aging out" of the child welfare system.  Each year, St. PJ's cares for hundreds of children with a priority of caring for sibling groups. St. PJ's is licensed as a child placing agency for foster family care and adoption.  St. PJ's couseling program provides trauma assessment, counseling and other supports for residents, individuals and families in crisis. Victim services include assistance with basic needs and case coordination.
 
Learn more about these Sites and all of our NMT Partner organizations here.  

 

In closing, we want to remind you that it's not too late to enroll in our current NME or NMT Training Series: our Recordings Only packages provide access to all sessions and materials for a full year from date of purchase.  Learn more here.
 
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Sincerely,


Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
The ChildTrauma Academy