Project Details
Trauma Recovery Initiative for Youth (TRI) Center
Description
The Trauma Recovery Initiative for Youth (TRI) Center project is a 4-year Department of Health and Human Services funded grant that features a partnership between the Western Division of the Children’s Home Society of Florida (CHS), the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of South Florida, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) to provide trauma-informed services to children and youth experiencing complex trauma and are in foster care or other out-of-home family care or are at-risk of being removed from their homes. The goals of the TRI Center are to promote, implement, evaluate, and improve trauma-focused services to meet the needs of youth in out-of-home family care or are at-risk of being removed from their homes in northwest Florida; to establish a local trauma-informed system of care; and to collaboratively link this system with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. CHS will provide Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for youth and their foster families (and biological parents if available). To meet the needs of the target population, the TRI Center has modified the TF-CBT model (Cohen, 2006). These changes include: 1) extending the length of treatment; 2) foster parent trauma screening and treatment involvement; 3) promoting case management and judiciary support for treatment; and 4) therapist selection and supervision for the intervention to be home-based. The evaluation has 3 components, a process evaluation to assess implementation, a fidelity study, and an outcome evaluation. Key informant interviews, meeting participation and observation, and document reviews will inform the process evaluation. The fidelity study will assess the degree to which TF-CBT is implemented with conformity. Outcomes for youth and families randomly assigned either to TF-CBT or standard care will be examined using the NCTSN Core Data Set (CDS), as well as locally identified measures. In the outcome study, data will be collected at enrollment to TF-CBT or standard care, 3 months post-enrollment, and at discharge. Youth and families will also be interviewed at 3 and 6 months post-discharge. Data collected for youth and families in standard care will adhere to the same time frames. 105 youth and families will participate in the TF-CBT and standard care arms, a total of 210 families. In addition to the CDS measures, additional assessment and outcome tools will be used in the evaluation. These include the CANS-Comprehensive (CANS-C), the TSC-40 for foster parents and biological parents, the Trauma-Informed Program Self-Assessment Scale (Fallot & Harris, 2006), several TF-CBT fidelity tools, and a Parent-Child Relationship tool. The TRI Center is an innovative project using a modification of TF-CBT for youth with complex trauma in out-of-home foster care or are at-risk of being removed from their homes, as well as collaborating with Florida’s child welfare system to implement universal trauma screening for abused and neglected youth entering out-of-home care. One of the TRI Center’s goals is the creation of a trauma-informed system of care for children and youth in northwest Florida. Successful demonstration of this goal will provide impetus for expansion to other areas in Florida.