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Children's Hospital Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience

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Children's Hospital Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience

Children's Hospital Center for Refugee
Trauma and Resilience

The Children's Hospital Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience is a National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Treatment and Services Adaptation Center with a focus on Refugee Trauma under the direction of Drs. Saxe and Ellis of the Children's Hospital Boston Center for Behavioral Science. The Children's Hospital Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience has identified the following four aims:

To help lead the NCTSN to raise public awareness of the scope and serious impact of child traumatic stress on the safety and development of our nation’s refugee children and families.
To improve the standard of care by integrating developmental and cultural knowledge to advance a broad range of effective services and interventions that will preserve and restore the future of our nation’s refugee children and families.
To work with established systems of care, including the health, mental health, education, law enforcement, child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and especially refugee resettlement agencies, to ensure that there is a comprehensive continuum of care available and accessible to all refugee children and families.
To be an integral part of the NCTSN community, dedicated to collaboration within and beyond the Network to ensure that widely shared knowledge and skills create a national resource to address the problem of child traumatic stress amongst refugee children and families.

1) Trauma Systems Therapy (TST)
TST is a comprehensive intervention model that addresses the barriers that repeatedly interfere with the dissemination of trauma-focused, evidence-based practice in front line services settings. The core assumption underlying the design of TST is that a child who experiences a traumatic event develops clinically significant mental health symptoms when there is a poor match between 1) the ability of the child to regulate his or her emotions and 2) the capacity of the child's social environment and/or system of care to protect the child from threat and to help the child to regulate emotion. TST also assumes that, to be effective, trauma-oriented services must be family-focused, strength-based, and well-integrated with systems of care. The manual for TST can be purchased at Guilford Press.

2) Trauma Systems Therapy- Adapted for Refugees (TST-R)
TST has been standardized and adapted for refugees. TST-R features a flexible culturally based treatment engagement strategy, a specific focus on the services system where refugee children receive care, and attention to the social environmental problems common to the refugee experience. TST-R has yielded promising treatment outcomes for this population.

3) Unaccompanied Minors Trauma Informed Services (UMTIS)
The Unaccompanied Minors Trauma Informed Services program is an intervention created in collaboration with the Latin Health Institute (LHI) and Project JOY for undocumented, unaccompanied immigrant children and adolescents living in US custody. The program provides training and continued support for staff members who work with these youth in 1)TST 2) Play as therapeutic intervention and 3) Vicarious Trauma.

4) Refugee Services Toolkit (RST)
The Refugee Services Toolkit is a product that is currently under development by our Center to be feasibly delivered within the broader system of care. The tools will include psychoeducational materials, screening tools, and resources. The toolkit will be a) user-friendly, b) effectively implemented with minimal training and time, c) culturally-appropriate for a diversity of cultures, and d) integrated well within the service systems targeted.

5) Family Based Preventive Intervention (FBPI)
The Family Based Preventive Intervention model has been widely adapted for prevention of mental health problems in children of depressed parents across different cultural groups, including recent adaptations for Latino immigrants, many of whom are also victims of trauma. This model has been successfully implemented in the public health service systems in Finland and shows promise to be adapted and delivered as a preventive model to refugee children and families in existing service systems in the U.S.

Center for Refugee Trauma and Resilience Staff

Glenn Saxe, M.D.-Director

B. Heidi Ellis, Ph.D.-Associate Director

Molly Benson, Ph.D.-Program Evaluator

Saida Abdi, M.A.-Refugee Services Specialist

William Beardslee, M.D.-Prevention Specialist

Theresa Betancourt, ScD., M.A.-Refugee Service Systems Specialist

Carryl Navalta, Ph.D.-Clinical Psychologist

Heather Baldwin, Ph.D.-Postdoctoral Fellow

Jennifer Twiss, M.S.-Program Assistant

Alisa Miller, M.A.-Project SHIFA Research Coordinator

Amanda Nisewaner, M.S.W. - Clinician