The Center on Child Wellbeing & Trauma is here to support the work of child-serving organizations and professionals across Massachusetts. In addition to the trainings and resources available on this website, we’d like to partner and collaborate with you in these areas:
The Center on Child Wellbeing and Trauma works with organizations in Massachusetts that support children—schools, community-based service providers, early childhood care providers, Family Resource Centers, and more. We believe that all agencies and organizations interacting with children will benefit from an assessment and coaching process to become more trauma-informed and responsive.
In our process, all organizations are offered a way to assess themselves and where they are in the journey to become more trauma-informed and responsive through these four steps:
1. Assessment:
Organizational assessments to help identify areas of strength and areas for further work
- We start by working with organizations to complete the Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment (TIOA), an assessment tool developed by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. This is discussed at our first meeting as an overview and walkthrough of the assessment process.
- Organization or program staff complete the assessment.
2. Action Plan Development and Implementation:
Working in partnership with you, we develop an action plan to meet your organization’s needs to become more trauma responsive. Coaching will focus on implementation of the action plan.
- Debrief results from assessment and initial plan development session.
- Organizations will participate in a regular group coaching session, with the possibility for more frequent meetings if needed.
3. Coaching & Training:
- Coaching sessions, both in a group and individual, are available to take a deeper dive into an identified area of need for each program. These sessions, which can be two to four 1-hour sessions over the course of an assessment process, allow for ongoing engagement and individualized support.
- Training opportunities, which may include one-time or multiple sessions on trauma, vicarious trauma, racial trauma, LGBTQ+ issues, protective and preventative childhood experiences, and/or self-care. (Time varies depending on training curriculum.)
4. Assessment and Sustainability Planning:
- Evaluate progress: all staff complete the TIOA again to see how interventions have enhanced practice.
- Review outcomes and outline next steps towards future goals of each program.
- Celebrate gains and share knowledge! We are currently accepting requests for our TIOA from organizations based on space and need in our cohorts. Please reach out to us if you are interested in having an assessment and coaching partnerships.
Professional Learning Communities, also known as communities of practice, are a safe place to learn and share information on various topics related to being more trauma-informed and responsive. The particular community will depend on the needs of the group and we welcome the opportunity to enhance your learning on trauma and prevention on a wide variety of topics. Some of the communities of practice will focus on supporting staff knowledge of trauma. Other professional learning communities will be developed based on needs identified in the Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment process.
Throughout the website, we have included information to help you become more trauma-informed and responsive. Please explore to find toolkits, articles, videos on adverse and positive childhood experiences, and more. We hope you find useful information.
We want to keep our website current and up-to-date with new resources and tool kits. We hope to accomplish that in partnership with all organizations doing this important work across the Commonwealth.
If you have a model to share or want your work highlighted, please let us know.