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The National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative is designed to address child trauma issues by providing federal support for a national effort to improve treatment and services for child trauma, to expand availability and accessibility of effective community services and to promote better understanding of clinical and research issues relevant to providing effective interventions for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events.

"The attacks of Sept. 11 remind us how essential these programs are to help our children deal physically and emotionally with traumatic events," Secretary Thompson said. "We are committed to substantially improving mental health services for children and adolescents and supporting the valuable services provided by today's grantees."

Grantees, funded by HHS' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will establish a network of centers to identify or develop effective treatments and services; collect clinical data on child trauma cases and services; develop resources on trauma for professionals, consumers, and the public; and develop trauma-focused public education professional training.

"Traumatic stress can result from many incidents -- experiencing natural and human-caused disasters, child abuse, rape or other dangerous crimes as well as witnessing such trauma happening to a loved one," SAMHSA acting administrator
Joseph H. Autry III, M.D., said.

"The development and implementation of this initiative will help us to maximize trauma recovery, and understand which children and which types of trauma exposure are effectively treated by different types of intervention approaches as well as how intervention approaches should best address developmental issues," said Bernard S. Arons, M.D., the director of SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services. "We expect that the results from these grantee sites will provide substantial information which can be introduced in other communities throughout the nation."

The initiative is made up of three components and three types of grants were awarded.

One award made to the University of California Los Angeles-Duke National Center for Traumatic Stress, Los Angeles, Calif. ($3,063,132) is to establish a National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. The National Center will coordinate the national initiative to increase services and raise the standard of care for traumatized children, adolescents and their families and will establish a nationwide collaborative network of organizations involved in the study, treatment and support of children and families impacted by traumatic stress.

The second category of grantees will use funds to establish treatment/services development centers. These centers will identify, support, improve or develop effective treatment and service approaches for:

(1) Different types of child traumatic events, including witnessing or experiencing interpersonal violence or life threat; traumatic loss of family; sexual assault and abuse; medical trauma, including injuries from accidents and invasive medical procedures; natural and human-caused disasters; and war, displacement and refugee trauma.

(2) Developmentally appropriate trauma treatment and intervention for children and adolescents of all ages.

(3) Identification, assessment and appropriate treatment and services for children in specialty child service sectors, such as schools, the juvenile justice system, the refugee service system and the child welfare and protective service systems.

The second type of award were made to:

• Boston Medical Center, Boston, Mass. ($599,764) -- in partnership with Boston University School of Medicine and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder proposes a treatment/services center with particular emphasis on 1) medical trauma, including injuries from accidents and invasive medical procedures and 2) war, displacement and refugee trauma.

• The Early Trauma Treatment Network, University of California-San Francisco ($581,825) -- is a collaboration between UCSF, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Tulane University Medical Center and Boston Medical Center and provides expertise in implementing, evaluating and improving trauma treatment approaches for families with young children, zero thru six years of age. Trauma service approaches will be developed for ethnically/culturally diverse children and families traumatized by interpersonal violence and sudden loss.

• Northshore University Hospital, Long Island, N.Y. ($596,731) -- will coordinate development of treatment and service approaches for adolescent trauma survivors, who are at a developmental stage particularly vulnerable to the impact of trauma.

• Yale University, New Haven, Conn. ($600,000) -- capitalizes on the combined experience of the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) and the UConn Health Center in developing innovative collaborative responses to children who have been acutely traumatized by violence in their communities and homes.

• Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa. ($567,507) -- the Child Abuse and Traumatic Loss Treatment/Services Development Center at Allegheny General Hospital's Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents in Pittsburgh, Pa., will focus on developing, modifying and disseminating effective treatments for child physical and sexual abuse, traumatic loss, and post traumatic stress disorder for broader use in community settings.

The third category of grantees will use funds to establish community practice centers. These centers will implement and evaluate effective treatment and services in community settings; collect clinical data on traumatized children receiving treatment and services; provide expertise on effective practices, service financing and other service issues; and develop and provide training on child trauma for service providers in the community and for staff in child service sectors. These awards were made to the following organizations:

• Miller Children's Hospital Abuse and Violence Intervention Center, Long Beach, Calif. ($339,797) -- in collaboration with the Educational Psychology Department of California State University, Long Beach and Long Beach Unified School District, will greatly expand services provided to larger numbers of traumatized children, adolescents and families through a school-based and multi-service initiative center.

• The Center for Multicultural Human Services, Falls Church, Va. ($340,000) -- is a licensed mental health and social services agency serving immigrant and refugee children and adults in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area in 27 languages. The center will serve as a community practice center with a special expertise in war, displacement and refugee-related trauma.

• Children's Institute International, Los Angeles, Calif. ($340,000) -- will implement a community practice center for child trauma treatment and services for diverse immigrant populations in the Metropolitan Los Angeles area. The community practice center will be organized through a Child Trauma Council collaborative composed of representatives from local systems involved with child abuse and child trauma policies, issues and services.

• Arbour Health Systems, Boston, Mass. ($339,970) -- provides specialty trauma service delivery, education, training and research in child maltreatment (neglect and physical and sexual abuse), community violence and traumatic incident response throughout the greater Boston area.

• The Aurora Mental Health Center, Aurora, Colo. ($284,936) -- offers an existing, dynamic and successful infrastructure for collaborative services, education and training in the community, schools, agencies, clinics and hospitals. It also offers an opportunity to help children dually diagnosed with mental illness and developmental disabilities, a seriously underserved population.

• University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Mo. ($347,888) -- will house the Kansas City Metro Child Trauma Stress Community Practice Center to serve Jackson, Clay, Wyandotte and Johnson counties. The goal is to improve treatment and services for all children and adolescents in the community who have experienced traumatic events.

• The Mental Health Corporation of Denver, Denver, Colo. (MHCD) ($339,626) -- will identify children in need of trauma services and provide services through schools, shelters and a detention center.

• Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, New York, N.Y. ($340,000) -- will develop a rigorous outcome-based evaluation model for best practices in treatment and services for New York City adolescents affected by traumatic stress.

• New Mexico Alliance for Children with Traumatic Stress, Santa Fe, N.M. ($335,485) -- is a unique collaboration of non-profit, governmental and tribal organizations committed to improving New Mexico's capacity to identify, assess, treat, serve and protect children who experience traumatic stress as a result of traumatic events in their living environments. The Center will address the needs of the state's diverse cultural/ethnic children and families living in both urban and remote rural areas.

• The Northwest Ohio Child Trauma Community Practice Center, Toledo, Ohio ($317,557) --is a joint effort of Toledo Children's Hospital and the Lucas County Children's Advocacy Center. The center will use the front-end delivery strengths of the Advocacy Center and the treatment capabilities of the hospital to collaborate with National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative activities.

• Intermountain Health Care, Salt Lake City, Utah ($325,782) -- will develop and support the Intermountain West Child Traumatic Stress Treatment Network. The goal is to improve the treatment and services for children and adolescents who experience trauma and who live in the Intermountain West states of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

• Safe Horizon-Saint Vincent's Child Trauma Care Center, New York, N.Y. ($340,000) --offers a unique and comprehensive continuum of treatment and services for child trauma victims and their families. Programs range from community-based prevention to intensive inpatient therapy and provide effective, trauma focused care to over 10,000 youth each year. The project's extensive outreach will reach a broad range of youth, many of whom do not otherwise access mental health services.

SAMHSA is the lead federal agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment and mental health services in the United States. Information on SAMHSA's programs is available on the Internet at www.samhsa.gov.

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