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NATIONAL CENTER FOR SOCIAL WORK TRAUMA AND EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

The National Center is a collaboration between the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service and the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. As a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), the National Center works with NCTSN committees, developers of evidence-based trauma treatment methods, schools of social work, and community providers.

http://www.ncswtraumaed.org

Vision:  Transformed social work trauma education and enhanced and sustained trauma treatment services

Mission:
 To prepare the current and next generation of social workers for trauma informed and evidence-based practice

National Child Traumatic Stress Network
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network is dedicated to providing state-of-the-art training to enhance the quality of clinical assessment, treatment, and services for traumatized children, adolescents, their families, and communities. To that end, the Network offers a variety of in-person and online (live and on-demand) training opportunities -- http://www.nctsnet.org/

Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit
The Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit 2nd Edition is designed to teach basic knowledge, skills, and values about working with children who are in the child welfare system and who have experienced traumatic events. The toolkit teaches strategies for using trauma-informed child welfare practice to enhance the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families who are involved in the child welfare system. The toolkit can be accessed at the NCTSN Learning Center for Child and Adolescent Trauma.

The content of the toolkit was developed by the Child Welfare Committee of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. The original version of the Toolkit was released in 2008. Training and implementation of the Toolkit has been provided to child welfare agencies and jurisdictions across the country. Revisions to the Toolkit began in 2011, and this second edition is the final result of those revisions. Changes to the Toolkit incorporate updated research and enhanced content on types of trauma, cultural implications, and long-term effects of childhood trauma, parent trauma, and secondary traumatic stress. The revised version also embodies the Essential Elements of a Child Welfare System.

The National Center's “Upstream Model” for Capacity Building for Schools, Students, and Agencies
The Center addresses the shortage of social workers prepared to deliver culturally competent, evidence-based, trauma services to children and adolescents from infancy to seventeen years old, by means of our “Upstream Model.” The model moves trauma education “upstream” from community agencies into the social work curriculum. The National Center works with ten other schools of social work that are implementing the model which provides students with coursework, training in an evidence-based trauma treatment (EBTT), and field instruction in the EBTT.

The Upstream Model expands the trauma-informed capacity of: (1) social work faculty who learn to teach a Core Concepts course using skilled problem-based learning methods; (2) social work students who learn the core concepts of developmental trauma and an EBTT  model; and (3) agency-based field instructors trained in the same EBTT as the student.

Coursework
Social work students at over forty other schools across the country can take the same course offered in the "Upstream Model," as a stand alone course taught faculty trained by National Center. Two versions of the course are offered : Core Concepts of Child and Adolescent Trauma (clinical practice); and Core Concepts of Trauma Informed Child Welfare Practice. Both courses employ a problem-based learning approach used with five in-depth client case studies that reflects trauma’s impact on children of every developmental age period. This approach allows students to experience “real” cases as they actually unfold in practice and builds their critical thinking and case conceptualization skills.