January 23, 2021 | Volume 2, Number 1
Community Wellness & Resiliency
Featured C-TLC Fellow:
Amy Messenger

Membership is open to individual educators, schools, agencies, and nonprofit
educational institutions in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. 
Editor's Corner
Martha Staeheli, PhD
C-TLC Director
As we begin 2021, we are hopeful for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and a renewed focus on health, equity, and resilience, even as we are still struggling with the challenging lessons of the last year. 

The public health crisis we are facing highlights how important it is to attend to our individual mental and physical health to support our well-being and resilience.
This month, we share with you stories and tips on fostering a community-focused approach to well-being as crucial to our collective recovery and resiliency. 

In that context, how can we imagine and work toward school communities that foster health, courage, and healing, even in times of crisis?

We ask schools to look to the students, families, educators, and others that are integral members of your school community and empower them to participate in community wellness and advocate for decision-makers to bring more attention to community resilience efforts.
By Melody Mann, CEI Intern

The Community Resiliency Model (CRM) is an evidence based practice that focuses on training community members to help one another as a collective in their wider social networks. This skill-based stabilization program helps people understand how to realign the natural balance of their nervous system (Trauma Resource Institute, 2020). CRM calls upon people to come together, regardless of their age, background, or education level to create community. Together, by forming a community, holistic healing and reflection promotes self-care and emotion regulation. Through this collective model, a support group is formed to make the experience worthwhile for all members.
News You Can Use
By Taylor Bryan Turner, SAMHSA Region One Assitant Regional Administrator and Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support

The collective trauma we are enduring with the COVID-19 pandemic, persistent racial injustice, and violence in our nation’s capital and around the country, has led communities to come together to address youth and family mental health, demonstrating community resilience.


The HEART Collective is sharing how powerful community resilience building efforts can be in improving the mental health of all community members.

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support, and Ingrid Padgett, CEI Director of Communications & Development

Who knows better what a school community needs to thrive than the students, families, and educators who serve them? Often, policies, procedures, and important decisions are crafted by administrators at the district, state, and federal level, without any input from students, families, teachers, mental health professionals, or community members who are directly affected.

Schools can take steps to create more opportunities to listen to students and families. And, everyone in the school community can take steps to advocate for their opinions to be included in the decision-making process.

This is a critical time for our country, and indeed, our world. Teachers are overwhelmed by the day-to-day work of education, while time and resources continue to shrink. Many educators figure they’ll leave activism to elected leaders while they focus on schools and classrooms. However, perhaps now more than ever, educators need to band together with students, families, and coalitions of like-minded organizations to ensure they have broad support from community partners to address the issues facing our students.

By Jenna Wyman, CEI Intern

Providence, Rhode Island School District Administrator Amy Messenger has always felt the drive to support others. Starting with volunteer work in high school and college, eventually working professionally as a social worker and in foster care, she is an individual who truly personifies the values of community wellness.

Through these early career experiences, Messenger was a first hand witness to the inequity of mental health resource distribution and the resulting struggles for youth development. She developed an interest in playing an active role in changing the infrastructure that created this inequity and helping individuals on their own journey to improve their situation. After working as a social worker since 2006, Messenger transitioned into a role as the grant coordinator for Project AWARE in the fall of 2020. She works specifically in the Providence district in Rhode Island.
Learn more about the amazing work our Fellows have been doing through the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative and in their school communities in our
Events and Resources
Access and share C-TLC resources:

Date/Time: Tuesday January 26, 2021
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT

Join us for this listening session with Ruth Ettenberg Freeman, LCSW about helping families navigate child therapy and helping clinicians understand how to communicate more effectively with families. The strategies Ruth will provide have been informed by her 30+ years as a parenting educator and as a clinician in private practice.

Date/Time: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT

How well are our child-serving systems addressing the unmet basic, health, and education needs of children? What are some of the challenges? What are some of the opportunities? Join Ann Smith, JD, MBA, Executive Director of AFCAMP - Advocacy for Children for a listening session to answer these questions, and explore ways to meet the needs of children and families more effectively and efficiently.

Stay posted to our Events page for updates and announcements. To view other archived webinars, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
C-TLC School Mental Health Survey

Our surveys allow us to collect quantitative and qualitative data about the successes, challenges, and needs around cultivating compassionate school communities to buffer against and alleviate childhood trauma within schools, in New England and throughout the nation.

To further our work together, please complete our survey. Your feedback is important and it will guide our dialogue and program implementation efforts.
Healthcare workers & Educators Addressing and Reducing Trauma
The Healthcare workers & Educators Addressing and Reducing Trauma (HEART) Collective is a New England regional effort designed to help school communities and community healthcare centers collaborate intentionally and concretely around best practices that enhance and improve youth mental health supports.

This regional initiative is a collaboration with:

  • The SAMHSA Region 1 Office
  • The Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Office of Regional Operations (Region 1),
  • The New England MHTTC, and
  • New England FQHCs and school community stakeholders.
Our goal is to map, document, and analyze processes, resources, and strategies that advance youth mental health supports by establishing and strengthening collaborations between schools/districts and community health centers.
“For a community to be whole and healthy, it must
be based on people’s love and concern for each other.”
~ Millard Fuller, Founder of Habitat for Humanity

Over this last year, we have seen communities come together to support each other in many ways, both small and large. Within the C-TLC, we are constantly reminded of the diverse and innovative ways people can work together to solve problems and provide connection.

From advocacy to coalition-building, from trauma-responsive practices to well-being initiatives, we hope you will take a moment to both care for your own precious health and connect meaningfully to those around you. 
The C-TLC is funded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and is part of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (New England MHTTC) Network.
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New England MHTTC