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KALAMAZOO, MI

Southwest Michigan Children's Trauma Assessment Center (CTAC)
Western Michigan University
1000 Oakland Drive
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5361
269.387.7073

Purpose
To reduce the impact of children’s exposure to violence by building awareness and providing training to courts, mental health agencies, daycares and preschools, domestic assault shelters, and the school system.

Interventions
Head Start School Intervention Project (HSSIP): CTAC developed and is currently evaluating a  preventive intervention that equips children with personal strategies to manage stress and respond to potentially traumatizing events. CTAC is working with Kalamazoo County Head Start to implement the HSSIP trauma-sensitive curriculum for 22 Head Start preschool classrooms. A team of graduate students from the fields of education, occupational therapy, and speech and language pathology are supporting the implementing of the curriculum by interventionists in Head Start classrooms. The curriculum is based on core elements of trauma intervention, including: feeling safe, making and keeping friends, calming my mind and body, feeling good about learning, and making meaning of my experiences. It includes three 30-minute sessions offered over a 26-week period.

Teacher education: Implementation of the curriculum is supported by a transdisciplinary teacher professional development model that seeks to change teacher attitudes and behaviors toward the most challenging students, who are most likely to have a history of traumatization. The program offers ongoing professional development for teachers with an initial 2-day training on the impact of exposure to violence, followed by 45 minutes of critical incidentmeetings offered every other week for 26 weeks. The content of the teachers’ curriculum, connecting the impact of exposure to violence with real-life classroom and home experiences, mirrors the core components of the children’s curriculum.

Parent education: Four parent groups meet every other week in 90-minute sessions to discuss issues including the impact of exposure to violence, the core elements of the curriculum, and management skills.

Community building: The Safe Start Steering committee is exploring the benefit to the Kalamazoo community of providing training on Parent Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT) to interventionists working with young children exposed to violence. Trainees include collaborative members of the steering committee as well as other clinicians who are committed to working with children exposed to violence. Partnering agencies identify appropriate staff for training as well as contract providers that currently serve traumatized children. The goal of the training is to develop a network of providers in Southwest Michigan trained in PCIT and available to families in Kalamazoo and its surrounding areas. A long-term goal of PCIT training is to sustain the availability of evidence-based, trauma-focused therapy for young children through the establishment of a regional training center (WMU) that includes community partners.

Promising or Evidence-Based Practices
Head Start School Intervention Curriculum: Shifting School Paradigms: Changing Teacher Perceptions and Interventions with Traumatized Children. James Henry, PhD. Southwest Michigan Children's Trauma Assessment Center, Western Michigan University. National Traumatic Stress Network.

Parent Child Interactive Therapy: Herschell, A.D., Calzada, E.J., Eyberg, S.M., and McNeil, C.B. (2002). Parent-Child Interaction Therapy9, 9-16.