Coaching Academy on Resilience & Trauma (CART) FAQs

• Teams should be made up of a minimum of 5 people and a maximum of 8 people. No solo applicants will be accepted.​
• Team should have relationships with key stakeholders in their community.
• Teams members should be diverse and inclusive.
• Team should be knowledgeable about the issues that impact the children & families in their community​.
• Teams should present an idea for their community resilience building initiative.  We welcome ideas from early-stage concepts to more developed work.
• Team should be ready to commit to 6-month program of twice a month sessions.

We recognize that each community has different needs and assets. It is important that each applicant team can build the best team that works for their local project, goals, and context.

We believe the teams who would benefit best from this program will include various passionate and invested stakeholders. When it comes to the mental health & well-being of children, SAMHSA defines community stakeholders as:

• Youth/children
• Parents/caregivers
• Businesses
• Media
• Schools
• Youth-serving Organizations (non-profit & for profit)
• Law Enforcement
• Religious Or Fraternal Organizations
• Civic Or Volunteer Groups
• Healthcare Professionals
• State Or Local Agencies
• Other Local Organizations

We value both professional experts & experience experts.

Experience experts are those who have been directly impacted by the issues that your team is trying to solve. Example: a parent of LGTBTQ teen leading an initiative that impact LGBTQ children & families.

Professional experts have formal education and certifications or has a history of being paid for their skills/talent. Example: a local grant writer that can help the team get additional funding or a local furniture maker teaching foster youth build chairs.

Perhaps most importantly, your team needs to work together in a strength-based & collaborative way.

We are open to all issues & topics that impact children & families and that can benefit from trauma-responsive & resilience-focused training.

Trauma and resilience in a community are complex issues that require a team approach.  None of us can do it alone! Additionally, we want to support projects that have the potential to be sustainable and have a long-term impact. This requires the ability to tap into various resources including personnel capacity.

We are open to your team’s definition
of your location and also encourage non-regionally based work if that better fits your definition of community team. In Massachusetts, regions are defined in multiple ways, cities, counties, districts, major metropolitan areas. There are also 6 formal
regions as defined by the state government: Western, Central, Northeast, Metro West, Boston and Southeast.

Communities can be defined by location, identities, or experiences.  Example: A team can be working on an initiative that specifically impacts the LGBTQPIA2s+ community.

Yes, multi-city and/or regional approaches are welcomed, if they are focused on a common goal and their initiative is relevant and appropriate for the multiple cities.  See the previous question about how the community is defined.

This is about what would work best to make your community more trauma-responsive. If you are unsure if your team is the right fit, or have a question please contact childwellbeingtrauma@umassmed.edu.

We do not intend to accept multiple teams representing the same city or community. However, we are open to understanding special circumstances*. One of our goals is to support resilient and positive collaboration across the state, so the selection committee will factor in geographic diversity in its process.

*Special circumstance depends on how teams are defining their regions. One team may be focused on a multi-city region and another team addressing a completely different issue might be focused on one city.