Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Toolkit

Building a Trauma Informed System of Care Evaluation: Reach, Effectiveness, Successes, & Barriers

• The Boys and Girls Club received a Building Strong Brains grant in 2017 and had all staff and volunteers trained in trauma informed care. Using grant funds, they constructed a “calming room” inside the club where children have the opportunity to learn about emotional regulation when presenting problem behaviors. • Children’s Speedway Charity recently awarded other regional clubs funding to create calming rooms as well. • Healthcare staff in the Population Health Division of Ballad Health are beginning to disseminate information about trauma informed care within the twenty one counties of Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia that are served by the regional healthcare system. They reported great receptivity among community partners for learning about trauma informed care and ACEs science all across rural Appalachia. This is an area where the challenges of the opioid epidemic are being felt. • Anti-drug coalition staff report there are a growing number of requests for trauma informed care training among partnering agencies in their multi-county regions. • University faculty in the Departments of Nursing, Counseling and Human Services, and Public Health received a Building Strong Brains grant to survey ETSU students with both the ACEs survey and a resilience screening tool. The objective of this project is to see if students’ career paths differ based on amount of adversity or resilience in their pasts. These faculty members have also trained 400 pre-health students in trauma informed care during this school year. • A pediatrician is screening caregivers for ACEs and has developed educational tools to review with caregivers scoring low ACEs scores. Parents with scores 4 or higher are referred to on-site social work staff who help connect to additional services around needs identified by screening (i.e. domestic violence support, housing and feeding programs, etc.) to help reduce the effects of toxic stress.

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