U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, and U.S. Representative Danny Davis, D-Chicago have introduced federal legislation called the Trauma Informed Care for Children and Families Act. This bill creates a federal task force, expands Medicaid coverage for child trauma services, increases mental health care in schools, authorizes a $20 million funding increase for National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative, and creates training programs for educators to work with students who experience trauma. The legislation has been modeled after the Performance Partnership Pilots (P3) to allow state and local agencies to work with the federal government with an increased level of flexibility.

At the state and local level, nearly 40 bills have been introduced in 18 different states in 2017 to combat adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and provide trauma-informed care. States such as Virginia, California, Texas and Massachusetts have introduced laws and resolutions in order to create a more unified approach to holistic care that considers the impact of trauma and ACEs. State agencies have also created initiatives that align the trauma-informed sphere with those of juvenile justice, mental health, and education. Scans of work done in each state illuminate the tremendous potential for impact that can be harnessed by states and localities that incorporate principles of P3 flexibility into creation of trauma-informed care policy.

As host to the Children's Cabinet Network, The Forum for Youth Investment conducts a biennial survey of child and youth policy coordinating bodies (such as P-20 Councils, Children's Cabinets and Early Childhood Advisory Councils) across the county. The goal of this survey is to track the success of these bodies over time and to collect information on promising practices for coordinating child and youth policies across departments and agencies. If you know of a child and youth policy coordinating body in your city, county or state we would greatly appreciate if you would take the time to follow this link to a short contact form so that we can ensure that we capture that coordinating body in our survey. Additionally, please feel free to view reports from previous iterations of this survey here.