SPOKANE – A recent grant will help WSU train teachers and parents to help children suffering from exposure to violence.
“The mental health needs of our children are far greater than the capacity of our formal social and health service system and threaten the educational success of all of our children,” said Chris Blodgett, principal investigator on the grant. “Fortunately, if we can get support to these kids early, they can recover, and long-term effects from trauma exposure can be limited.”
The $250,000 award is the first phase of a potential $1 million grant to develop and test ways to integrate social emotional learning and trauma response in publicly funded early learning programs. This four-and-a-half-year project builds on earlier work done to train teachers and other school professionals to recognize and deal with complex trauma, the chronic exposure to a cluster of harmful events such as violence, substance abuse and homelessness.
The money, awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice under its “Safe Start: Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence” program, was given to the Area Health Education Center (AHEC) of Eastern Washington, a unit of WSU Extension.
A recent study conducted by AHEC among Spokane County school professionals showed that 23 percent of a randomly selected group of children aged 5-11 had experienced two or more adverse events. It also found that kids in this group were more than 2.5 times more likely to fail academically and 4 times more likely to display significant school behavior problems than those without such experiences.
AHEC Director Blodgett pointed out that, although schools already provide support, they are in need of partners and more effective strategies, which this project will provide.
AHEC will work with partner organizations to provide social emotional learning and trauma management training and resources to teaching staff and parents in the Spokane County Head Start and Early Head Start programs, as well as the state-supported Early Childhood Education Assistance Program (ECEAP).
In addition, AHEC will compare the value of two caregiver-child intervention models for children exposed to trauma: the Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC) model, a flexible psychotherapeutic trauma treatment, and the Circle of Security, a structured group intervention designed for high-risk toddlers and their caregivers and based on attachment principles.
The three-year intervention comparison study is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and will include 160 families.
AHEC’s funded partners in this project include the Community Colleges of Spokane, which administers the Spokane County Head Start/ECEAP/Early Head Start program; the Spokane-based Circle of Security organization; the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, a Boston-based organization dedicated to helping individuals, families and communities deal with trauma and adversity; and the Spokane Regional Health District, which will provide public health nurses to assist early learning teaching staff with their trauma response efforts.
About AHEC
AHEC works with university and community allies to promote health and wellness for underserved and at-risk populations through research, education and community development. Based at WSU Spokane, it belongs to a network of AHEC organizations throughout the United States that focuses on health professions education and training, as well as the recruitment and retention of health care providers. Research conducted at AHEC has focused primarily on fostering long-term success in early learning and K-12 education and evaluating mental and behavioral programs.
AHEC works with university and community allies to promote health and wellness for underserved and at-risk populations through research, education and community development. Based at WSU Spokane, it belongs to a network of AHEC organizations throughout the United States that focuses on health professions education and training, as well as the recruitment and retention of health care providers. Research conducted at AHEC has focused primarily on fostering long-term success in early learning and K-12 education and evaluating mental and behavioral programs.