Model and Strategy
Our project will give mental health providers the skills needed to help young children and their parents heal from trauma and restore joy in their relationships. The majority of lifelong mental health problems originate in the first five years of life, when children cannot put their fears into words and are left alone with their despair. We create and disseminate effective treatments that harness child and family strengths and use play, language, body-based work, and rigorous science to find meaning in the pain and transform terror into safety. Our research shows that the entire family benefits. Parents learn that they can heal from their own traumatic pasts. Children learn that they can trust their parents’ love. The cycle of trauma is interrupted.
We train thousands of clinicians nationally and worldwide to use our methods, but we need additional training vehicles to meet the high demand. BatteryPowered funding will help us create web-based trainings that clinicians can access for independent learning and community agencies can use to bridge service gaps resulting from untrained staff. Thousands of children and families nationally and abroad will benefit as a result.
Impact
This project has the potential to enhance exponentially the effectiveness of clinicians treating traumatized young children and their families locally, nationally, and worldwide. We will use Battery Powered funding to create a web-based training for our state-of-the-art trauma treatment that clinicians can access to study in their own time and at their own pace. Community agencies that have already adopted our treatment will be able to onboard new staff more efficiently and prepare them faster to serve children and their families. Agency directors who want to adopt our early trauma treatment will have access to this new cutting-edge didactic material to facilitate their learning. Telehealth case consultation will supplement this web-based learning to hone clinical skills.
Battery Powered funding will also support local sustainability initiatives with our Bay Area partners, including San Francisco Department of Public Health, Alameda County Behavioral Health, and Santa Clara First Five. We will host training conferences and use our mentorship model to deepen clinician expertise and promote sustainability.
Past experience suggests that nationally about 1000 providers/year will use our web-based materials to become more competent in early trauma treatment, benefitting about 30,000 children and families annually. Local sustainability efforts will include 50 clinicians/year, benefitting 1500 Bay Area children and their families yearly. We will use the initial web-based materials to continually update training modules and incorporate new scientific knowledge and clinical advances. Web-based training is the next frontier in our long-term goal of making cutting-edge mental health treatment available to low income and underserved young children and their families.
Leadership
-
Alicia Lieberman
Executive Director
-
Chandra Ghosh Ippen
Associate Director & Project Lead