Friday, 14 January 2005 - 10:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Trauma and Bereavement

Community-Based Response to Trauma : A Three-Part Study of a Successful Program

This oral paper presentation will report on the evaluation of a community based trauma intervention program for youth. The program success suggests that this type of program should be an essential component of children's services.

In communities across the country, traumatic events occur, whether these events are described as family violence, violence in the school or community, homicides or suicides, natural disasters, or acts of terrorism. When a traumatic event takes place within a community, a normal stress response occurs to those who are exposed. One of the most vulnerable populations in the community is its children and youth. The Community Services Program (CSP) at the Arbour Trauma Center in Boston has developed a conceptual and practice framework for responding to such events. The interventions are designed to help the children and youth, their families, their teachers, and their neighbors through their responses to trauma, fostering strength and safety, and preventing traumatic situations from having lifelong, negative effects. The interventions follow a set of protocols designed 1) to provide support; and 2) to identify internal and external resources that can augment normal recovery over a normal period of time, relying on the children and youths’ strengths and capacity to adapt. The protocols are highly structured, phase-oriented, and developmentally tailored. The protocols also screen for those children and youth who will require more intensive interventions and/or treatment.

An important element of CSP’s intervention strategy is the development of a broad network of helpers from the community to play a central role in the resolution and recovery from trauma. These helpers are the local “experts” that include practicing clinicians, teachers and other school personnel, community youth workers and others who can have a healing role.

The evaluation consisted of three main components. Structured interviews were conducted with 29 community leaders/stakeholders to gather their views of the program, its impact on individuals and communities, and its quality. A review was done of 63 randomly selected cases (25%) of the 250 case records of interventions with individuals and community groups experiencing traumatic events to assess the breadth and depth of the interventions, the manpower and time required, and the effectiveness of the interventions.

In-depth structured interviews were conducted with 55 randomly selected licensed professionals, school personnel and community workers who participated, over the past 4 years, in training to learn how to provide interventions at the time of traumatic events.

Results indicated that the program had a substantial impact on communities in dealing with traumatic events and prepared communities for future trauma events. Respondents and case records indicated that the program had responded to a wide variety of traumas but the greatest number were homicides and suicides. They served a wide variety of ethnic groups and provided numerous interventions around one incident which served the particular needs of that community.

A critical finding was that schools and communities felt much better prepared to intervene in future traumatic events. This suggests that such programs would be an important addition to the services provided for children.

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