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The ChildTrauma Academy Newsletters |
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Hurricane season looms. And yet the impact of Katrina and Rita persists. Hundreds of thousands still live with the traumatic impact of these natural disasters. Most vulnerable are the children. Immediately after Katrina, Dr. Perry wrote a commentary which was widely distributed, The Real Crisis of Katrina, which urged policy makers to focus on the recovery of the children. Unfortunately this has not happened. And, the consequences are devastating. We will discuss some of the work of the CTA in the efforts to address the long-term impact of Katrina. During Hurricane Rita last year, Annette Jackson, a visiting Scholar from Australia, was visiting The ChildTrauma Academy as part of her Creswick Fellowship. She was visiting leading programs in North America working with maltreated children as part of her efforts to shape program development and research in an exciting new program in Australia, TAKE TWO (see below). Her insights about the CTA's organizational model helped us learn more about other organizations taking a similar approach to systemic change. In this issue we will introduce you to Communities of Practice as a novel working model for organizations. For many years the CTA and its partner organzations and professionals have been working to help improve the lives of maltreated children. At times it seems a frustrating process; children continue to be maltreated, systems continue to be disorganized and inefficient - often replicating the trauma for the children they are mandated to protect and heal, professionals continue to work with children using out-dated, ill informed practices. Yet within all of this there is hope. We see increasing reference to childhood trauma, neurodevelopmentally-informed practices, and use of CTA (and related organization's) materials and research in education, medicine, law, social work, psychology and policy making in the US and across the world. Systemic change is complex but we remain hopeful. We appreciate the positive feedback we received from our previous Newsletters and we look forward to your comments on this Newsletter. We will continue to work hard to provide useful and timely information to help you continue to better understand and serve high risk children and their families. Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
In the days following Katrina, CTA personnel were
directly involved in the complex and multi-systemic
response to the needs of children and families displaced
by Katrina. Many CTA personnel were involved in the
acute and long-term responses to the Katrina.
In Houston, Mary Beth Archidiacano, a CTA Fellow, spent hours in the Astrodome with displaced children and families, Sarah Webster, former head of CPS in Texas and a CTA Fellow, lead the entire HHS response in Austin, working tirelessly to organize and provide care to thousands; Dr. Chris Dobson and Dr. B. Perry co-wrote a set of materials still used by professionals working with children and famililes displaced by Katrina; Dr. Dobson provided - and continues to provide - training and support for educators working with children in schools and Dr. Perry has worked with local, state and federal officials in several capacities as immediate and long- term responses models were developed. Our most recent CTA Fellow, Dr. Stewart Gordon, a pediatrician at LSU in Baton Rouge continues to work each day with children and families forever impacted by Katrina. The impact - predicted by Dr. Perry's editorial comments in the weeks following Katrina - has been devastating on children, particularily high risk children. Development of trauma-related symptoms, academic problems, behavioral problems and a host of other issues plague the children of Katrina. A series of articles and materials related to this is being archived on the web by Voices for Children in a special Voices of Katrina's Children website. We encourage everyone to visit this site (see below). Hopefully with time and attention policymakers and public systems will provide the resources to help these children and their families. Certainly the CTA will continue in the ways we can to help.
The CTA started as a typical center of excellence in an
academic setting, initially at The University of Chicago
and later at Baylor College of Medicine. Over time,
however, it was clear that the problems of abuse and
neglect in children were much more complex and
multi-dimensional than the physiological dysfunctions
that cause disease. A medical school centered work group
investigating and solving physiological problems in
humans makes sense. Solving problems which involve
parenting, education, the law, child protection systems,
mental health, law enforcement and a host of related
systems across every professional discipline is more
difficult from the traditional medical model. The CTA
has been trying to improve and, simply, to self-correct,
for years. The direction we have taken is to create our
current, somewhat atypical model. Yet as Annette Jackson
saw - and as we knew on some level - was that the CTA is
an example of a new kind of organization. The CTA is,
she pointed out, a Community of Practice.
Etienne Wenger, a leading social learning theorist, defines communities of practice as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This model has been discussed as optimal for promoting social change in our current complex world. As we read more about these organizations, we agree; in part by trial and error, in part purposefuly design, the CTA works to create collaborative working relationships between organizations and individuals to most effectively promote positive change for children. We see promise - and we see progress - in this current model.
Annette Jackson first wrote to Dr. Perry several years
ago. She was planning a several month long visit to
North America as part of the prestigious Creswick
Fellowship. She was the newly appointed Research Manager
for Take Two, a unique collaborative program providing
clinical services for maltreated children in Melbourne,
Australia. During her visit, Hurricane Katrina had just
disrupted life in the entire Gulf region - and she was
able to see some of the CTA's work to help respond to
this crisis. And, in a real life exposure to the chaotic
impact a natural disaster can have, Annette was caught
up in the evacuation chaos in Houston during Hurricane
Rita.
During the many productive discussions with our team, Annette was the first to point out that the model of our organization was essentially the Communities of Practice model. This insight, and others, made her visit with the CTA a mutually productive experience. Our CTA administrative team was so impressed that we have asked Annette to become only our second international CTA Fellow. We look forward to working with her and her colleagues at TAKE TWO as we use our distance learning models to share clinical and research insights.
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