Trauma Responsive Child Welfare Systems - Paperback

by Virginia C. Strand (Editor), Ginny Sprang (Editor)

This comprehensive reference offers a robust framework for introducing and sustaining trauma-responsive services and culture in child welfare systems. Organized around concepts of safety, permanency, and well-being, chapters describe innovations in child protection, violence prevention, foster care, and adoption services to reduce immediate effects of trauma on children and improve long-term development and maturation. Foundations and interventions for practice include collaborations with families and community entities, cultural competency, trauma-responsive assessment and treatment, promoting trauma-informed parenting, and, when appropriate, working toward reunification of families. The book's chapters on agency culture also address staffing, supervisory, and training issues, planning and implementation, and developing a competent, committed, and sturdy workforce.

Among the topics covered:

• Trauma-informed family engagement with resistant clients.
• Introducing evidence-based trauma treatment in preventive services.
  
• Working with resource parents for trauma-informed foster care.
  
• Use of implementation science principles in program development for sustainability.
  
• Trauma informed and secondary traumatic stress informed organizational readiness assessments.
  
• Caseworker training for trauma practice and building worker resiliency.

Trauma Responsive Child Welfare Systems ably assists psychology professionals of varied disciplines, social workers, and mental health professionals applying trauma theory and trauma-informed family engagement to clinical practice and/or research seeking to gain strategies for creating trauma-informed agency practice and agency culture. It also makes a worthwhile text for a child welfare training curriculum.

Back Jacket

This comprehensive reference offers a robust framework for introducing and sustaining trauma-responsive services and culture in child welfare systems. Organized around concepts of safety, permanency, and well-being, chapters describe innovations in child protection, violence prevention, foster care, and adoption services to reduce immediate effects of trauma on children and improve long-term development and maturation. Foundations and interventions for practice include collaborations with families and community entities, cultural competency, trauma-responsive assessment and treatment, promoting trauma-informed parenting, and, when appropriate, working toward reunification of families. The book's chapters on agency culture also address staffing, supervisory, and training issues, planning and implementation, and developing a competent, committed, and sturdy workforce.

Among the topics covered:

• Trauma-informed family engagement with resistant clients.
  
• Introducing evidence-based trauma treatment in preventive services.
  
• Working with resource parents for trauma-informed foster care.
  
• Use of implementation science principles in program development for sustainability.
  
• Trauma informed and secondary traumatic stress informed organizational readiness assessments.
  
• Caseworker training for trauma practice and building worker resiliency.

Trauma Responsive Child Welfare Systems ably assists psychology professionals of varied disciplines, social workers, and mental health professionals applying trauma theory and trauma-informed family engagement to clinical practice and/or research seeking to gain strategies for creating trauma-informed agency practice and agency culture. It also makes a worthwhile text for a child welfare training curriculum.

Author Biography

Virginia C. Strand, DSW, is Professor and Founding Director of Children FIRST, a research and training institute within the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Her research interests are in child welfare and children's mental health and she has published most recently in the areas trauma assessment for children and transfer of learning programs for child welfare workforce development. Currently, she is PI representing Fordham on a new federal institutive, the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute.
Ginny Sprang, PhD, is a Professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Sprang is a Principal Investigator and Executive Director of the Center on Trauma and Children at the University of Kentucky. She has served as a member of the National Steering Committee of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), is the current Co-Chair of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Committee, and is the Chair of the Terrorism and Disaster Special Interest Group of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Her scholarship focuses on the clinical, forensic, and empirical aspects of traumatic stress and the efficacy and effectiveness of treatments to address the biopsychosocial impact of violence against children. Dr. Sprang has published extensively in the leading journals focusing on trauma, maltreatment, and treatment efficacy in adults and children.