Training for Clinicians & School Staff

Training for School-based Clinicians

Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, as part of its ongoing commitment to workforce development, offers a variety of trainings throughout each school year especially for school-based clinicians and interns. The trainings focus on evidence-based practices to treat trauma and other mental health difficulties and on their delivery in schools.

AIP focuses not only on training in evidence-based practices, but also on their implementation. Wherever possible, AIP uses a Community of Practice model that encourages peer to peer support and mutual experiential learning. AIP also offers ongoing supervision and consultation in implementation of evidence-based practices, relying on AIP staff as well as experts in the field.

The trainings that AIP offers include:

Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS) and Bounce Back

CBITS is a school-based group treatment model (10 sessions) to treat traumatic stress. It is well evaluated in urban school settings and with diverse cultural/ethnic/racial groups. Developed at UCLA, its theoretical basis is cognitive-behavioral, utilizing the techniques of psycho-education, relaxation, cognitive restructuring, exposure and social problem solving.

CBITS targets students in grades 5-12. For younger elementary students in grades K-5, there is an adaptation called Bounce Back. There is an adaptation for use by non-clinical school staff called Support for Students Exposed to Trauma (SSET). There is also an adaptation for use within the foster care system.

Coping Cat/ C.A.T. Project

Developed by Phillip Kendall at Temple University’s Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic, Coping Cat is a 16-session cognitive-behavioral treatment for anxious children (Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, and Separation Anxiety Disorder). The goal of the treatment is to teach children to recognize physical signs of anxiety, and to let these signs serve as cues for the implementation of anxiety coping strategies. Techniques used in the treatment model are psycho-education, relaxation, cognitive restructuring and exposure.

Coping Cat is designed for children ages 7-13. C.A.T. Project is an adaptation designed for children ages 14-17. There are adaptations for group therapy, family therapy and a brief treatment (8 sessions) model.

Trauma Systems Therapy

Trauma Systems Therapy is a phase-based framework for the organization of trauma-informed services. The model targets youth ages 6-19, and utilizes:

Home- and Community-based Care
Services Advocacy
Skills Training in Self-regulation
Psychopharmacology Services.

Originally developed by Glenn Saxe and Heidi Ellis out of Boston University School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Boston, it is now located at the NYU Child Study Center and the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU’s School of Medicine.

Trauma Sensitive Yoga

Developed by David Emerson of the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) utilizes the forms and movement of hatha-style yoga to treat complex trauma. The goal is to build a sense of empowerment through yoga as well as a more positive relationship with one’s body.

Mindfulness

AIP and Hands to Heart Center have developed Hearts + Minds, a school-based mindfulness program that supports classroom teachers in developing their own mindfulness practices and leading mindfulness activities for students. Mindfulness is the basis of most meditation and yoga practices, and essentially refers to the intentional, purposeful act of being present, without judgment, through a gentle, neutral sense of observation of what is happening in the now. Through engaging activities and discussion, students learn to maintain a moment-by-moment awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and bodies. Over the past decade, teachers across the U.S. have started teaching mindfulness in their classrooms but increasingly, school leaders are bringing mindfulness outside of the classroom to develop school-wide mindfulness strategies.

12 Core Concepts for Understanding Traumatic Stress Responses in Children and Families

The 12 Core Concepts, developed by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), provides a framework for understanding the complex aspects of responses in children and families to traumatic events. The concepts are designed as lenses through which to view stress responses in order to appreciate the widely varied experiences of children and families to traumatic events.

A Core Curriculum is used that utilizes a Problem-Based Learning approach as well as an in-depth case study model to teach the 12 Core Concepts.