Newswise — PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care, Child Division (RUBHC), was awarded a $2 million, five-year grant by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, beginning October 1, 2016, to create the Children’s Center for Resilience and Trauma Recovery.

The Center is a National Child Trauma Stress Network–Category III Community Service and Treatment Center funded to provide evidence-based, trauma-informed care services to children with complex trauma and their families across New Jersey through training and consultation.

RUBHC will partner with the New Jersey Children’s System of Care as well as with Rutgers’ School of Nursing, School of Social Work and Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology to train the existing and future workforce. The center’s immediate goal is to create a highly skilled workforce to provide trauma-focused interventions to New Jersey’s most vulnerable children at a critical time in their development — from birth to age 10 — and their caregivers, reducing the short- and long-term negative impact of trauma on academic, social, emotional and physical development.

The center expects to begin training and consultation in late 2017. It also will provide an online presence to provide resources and links to trauma-focused content for providers statewide and beyond. Long-term goals include building the workforce’s capacity of using best practices in trauma-informed care beyond the life of the grant.

The long-term impact of neglected trauma has been widely researched and found to have significant effects on individuals, the health care system and society. Exposure to multiple traumatic experiences especially can impact children over the long-term in a number of ways, such as their ability to form secure attachments and relationships, physical health, ability to self-regulate in their emotional responses to life stressors, behavioral responses and impulse control, and cognitive functioning.

“If we can help these families early on, we can nurture their resilience to recover from trauma and use skills to promote sustained change over time,” says Director Kelly Moore, PsyD, who will administer the grant with Diana Salvador, PsyD, Principal Investigator. “By focusing on training the existing and future workforce of New Jersey clinicians, the Center’s efforts aim to create a sustainable workforce that is sensitive and responsive to the need to recognize and treat trauma and promote the protective factors that foster resilience in children and families.”

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