Treating Children with Trauma: An Evidence Based Curriculum

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is an application is for a proposal for curriculum development of Trauma-focused CBT for children is submitted in response to MH PA-08-080, inviting applications for projects focused on training in validated behavioral treatments. Social workers provide by far the most mental health services in the community. Social work practitioners are dedicated to improving services for low income and underserved minority populations. However, few programs currently teach well evaluated interventions. Clinicians must be retrained after graduation, resulting in considerable workforce inefficiencies. Our goal is to target masters' level education to teach proven efficacious mental health interventions. Childhood trauma is all too common with potentially serious sequelae. Epidemiologic studies indicate up to 68% of children in the US experience traumatic events. Children with trauma histories are disproportionately represented in programs that treat substance use disorders (SUD) and juvenile delinquency. Early recognition and treatment of PTSD symptoms could potentially prevent more severe behavioral problems in youth. Trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT) is a well evaluated behavioral treatment shown to be effective. Dr. Kimberly Hoagwood, Co-I on this project, has trained over 800 clinicians in TF-CBT across NY state. In this application we propose to extend this training to masters level social work students. Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW) enrolls 350 masters' students each year. Many students work in field agencies supervising clinicians have been trained in TF-CBT and we will collaborate with these agencies. Working with Dr. Hoagwood and Dr. Judith Cohen, co-developer of TF-CBT, we plan to 1) develop and implement a curriculum for teaching TF-CBT to social work students, 2) develop and implement an evaluation procedure to test effectiveness of our curriculum, and 3) develop and implement a dissemination program. CUSSW has a strong academic research faculty and a commitment to bringing research tested treatments into the masters' students' classrooms. Successful development of TF- CBT will be a major step in this effort and a model for other social work educational programs.