Training & Professional Development

The YCTSR provides advanced clinical training for mental health professionals completing their educations, including child psychologists, clinical social workers, and child and adolescent psychiatrists. Fellows in the YCTSR will gain in-depth experience in trauma-focused assessment, treatment and multidisciplinary collaborative approaches to intervention with children and families affected by violence and other potentially traumatic events.

Psychology fellows specializing in trauma at the Child Study Center participate in an APA accredited predoctoral internship and a postdoctoral fellowship over two years. This in-depth experience includes advanced training in trauma-informed assessment, treatment, and multidisciplinary collaboration within a generalist psychology training program. Opportunities for relevant research may also be available during the second year.

Social work and Child Psychiatry fellows may select a trauma elective during their second year at the Child Study Center. All fellows may participate in:

• Assessment of children’s trauma-related responses to episodes of violence.
• Brief and longer-term treatment with children (aged 7-18) and their families, including the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention (CFTSI), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
• Acute intervention with children and families affected by violence, as part of the Child Development-Community Policing Program (CD-CP).
• Experiential and didactic training in principles and practices of community policing and strategies for police/mental health collaboration.
• Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention Training

The YCTSR trains masters-level therapists in agencies that serve children in the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention (CFTSI), an evidence-based intervention for children and adolescents in the immediate aftermath (30-45 days) of a potentially traumatic event or disclosure of physical or sexual abuse.

Please complete this survey to contact us about CFTSI Training.

As part of the CD-CP Program, New Haven police officers of all ranks receive training on principles of:

• Child development
• Trauma reactions/responses (at varies stages of development)

This training provides officers with a foundation for their interactions with children and families in the course of their work. This also helps officers identify and recognize traumatic stress reactions in children and adults in the immediate aftermath of potentially traumatic events, which helps to equip them with means of finding the right sources of support for individuals and families in these moments.

Other professionals involved in the CD-CP Program, e.g., child protection workers, juvenile justice professionals, advocates and educators may participate in the seminars for police officers as well.

The YCTSR offers consultation, training and technical assistance to communities interested in developing law enforcement-mental health partnerships to respond to children exposed to violence. Individualized consultation is designed to identify and find solutions to organizational and operational challenges. YCTSR consultation is grounded in developmental theory and focuses on building community capacity to offer developmentally appropriate responses children exposed to violence.

Recognizing that one size does not fit all when it comes to local interventions, YCTSR consultation helps communities forge and strengthen unique broad-based collaborative efforts to decrease childhood exposure to violence by including law enforcement and mental health professionals as partners serving children exposed to violence. Specifically, YCSTR consultation can assist sites to assess readiness to implement collaborative programs, develop organizational structures to meet community needs, and facilitate and enhance collaboration among key stakeholders.

YCTSR consultation has helped communities to:

• Grow capacities essential to collaborative efforts, including willingness and ability to share information and cases across organizations, the cultivation of a learning community within each organization’s staff and among its partners, and standard policies, procedures, and protocols for responding to children exposed to violence and their families.
• Acquire specific knowledge and skills to work with young children exposed to violence, including state-of-the-art intervention techniques.
• Develop understanding of the critical role of law enforcement in efforts designed to serve children exposed to violence, maximizing the formal and informal use of information, and the capacity of law enforcement professionals to reinforce safety and security.