Another stop on my 3-week fellowship trip, visiting trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, was in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Here's a summary of some of the work they're doing to implement trauma-informed care in their agencies that serve children, youth and families:
Coeur d'Alene's journey to implement trauma-informed practices in their schools and youth-serving agencies got kicked off in a big way with a keynote presentation in October, 2014 to the Idaho School Counselors Association Conference titled "Catching Kids As They Fall." The speaker was Jim Sporleder, who had spearheaded the trauma-informed turnaround at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, Washington, featured in the documentary film "Paper Tigers."
Coeur d'Alene school counselor Kelli Aiken had secured Sporleder as the keynote based on the recommendation of her brother, who works in the juvenile justice system in Washington state. Kelli had seen the pervasive effects of trauma in the kids she saw in her office every day and knew the subject of trauma and resilience would resonate with other school counselors.
"We had a great turnout for that event and afterward, people wanted to know what's next?" Kelli explains. So, after the School Counselors conference, Kelli gathered other partners to start figuring out next steps.
They started a Facebook page called "Idaho ACES Prevention Project", described as "A group of community leaders, professionals, family members and friends dedicated to reducing exposure to toxic stress and providing trauma informed care."
There, they started posting relevant articles and resources related to trauma and resilience.
Then the partners co-hosted several other events in quick succession to increase awareness and understanding of trauma and to build momentum for addressing it:
- April, 2015: a full-day workshop with Jim Sporleder and Teri Barila from Walla Walla, titled "Building a Trauma-Informed Model and Making a Paradigm Shift in Our Communities" - over 400 people attended
- May, 2015: a presentation by Christian Moore titled "Flipping the Resilience Switch". Moore is author of "The Resilience Breakthrough" and the "Why Try" curriculum.
- 2016: several screenings of the film "Paper Tigers"
- Early 2017: several screenings of the film "Resilience", attended by more than 600 people
By using the online event planning and registration tool "EventBrite" for all of these events, they've been able to build a huge list of interested people and agencies throughout the community who have attended these events. They're now using that list to keep people informed and engaged with monthly "Lunch & Learn" sessions on various topics related to trauma and resilience, and a monthly newsletter with upcoming events, training opportunities, tips, resources and other information.
Simultaneously, over the past five years or so, staff at Children and Family Services (CFS) were starting to look at the role of trauma in the lives of children they served. They started offering trauma trainings and talking about implementing a trauma-informed approach with child protection workers, therapists, and foster parents. They saw that different agencies that served children, youth and families were each doing their own thing and had different philosophies and approaches.
"We were inspired by the idea of a collaborative community, to adopt and apply a common model across systems, so every child and family being served in the community has consistency of care with all agencies and systems using a common language and philosophy of care," Andi, from CFS, explains.
They looked at several models, including Bruce Perry's model, the Sanctuary Model from Sandra Bloom, the "Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC)" model, and an evidence-based approach called "Trust-Based Relational Intervention" (TBRI). While each model had many similarities, and common core concepts, each model also had different requirements and costs to get trained, certified, and be able to implement.
Ultimately, they decided to adopt TBRI, as it seemed to offer the best balance of accessibility, cost, and relatively low barriers to getting started and full implementation. Initially, Andi and another CFS colleague, Roxanne, went to Texas for a week-long TBRI training.
Roxanne explains, "TBRI incorporates the best of Bruce Perry's concepts and work, but in layman's terms and in a very practical and usable way on a day to day basis." Roxanne described the TBRI training as one of the best trainings of her entire career.
They are now developing a set of standards and guidelines for other agencies in their collaborative that want to implement TBRI to follow. They already have commitments from 8 other agencies to send staff to Texas this autumn for TBRI training, including representatives from the school district, children’s mental health workers, juvenile justice, child protection workers, Head Start, Special Needs recruitment, and therapists from a local shelter home for children in crisis.
"Our long-range goal is to create a collaborative, common system of care across the entire state of Idaho," Andi explains. "But for right now, we're working really hard to do this in Coeur D'Alene."
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