CTA Program Consultation

The ChildTrauma Academy provides a wide array of consultation services to individuals and organizations. These consultation services vary to meet the needs of each specific project, program and individual situation. Consultation services include:

Program Design and Evaluation

Specialized assessment protocols and process can be developed to meet the needs of a variety of projects, programs and organizations. At present, protocols exist for ChildTrauma Academy (CTA) partnerships in a host of public-private partnerships in traditional mental health and medical settings, child protective services and the juvenile justice systems.

Consultation with CTA professional staff and partners can help determine the specific needs of a project and help design and implement the assessment protocols. Key to effective assessment and outcomes efforts in any given program are complementing information management and staff/client training activities that complement the program's evaluation and intervention strategies. Integration of assessment protocols, information management and training are standard elements of a CTA program partnership.

Outcomes Evaluation

One of the central issues in all of child development is what works?

In order to determine whether any specific intervention, service, program or activity is effective, there must be some measurement of functioning before and after the "intervention." Traditionally the domain of "research," assessment is, in fact, the core of any effective clinical, educational or program activity. Assessment protocols and outcomes evaluation are crucial to determining and improving "what works." 

Whether the focus of the assessment is the individual child, the family or specific program activities, systematic measurement is crucial. CTA has developed a variety of individual and family assessment protocols that are cost-effective. These assessment protocols incorporate elements of evaluation used in traditional clinical and educational settings. These protocols are designed to allow outcome evaluations for individual children in any given placement of intervention. When assessment and outcomes information from individual children is pooled, effectiveness of various programs and interventions can be determined.

For individual children, CTA has developed a multi-dimensional, cost-effective assessment process to identify the strengths and vulnerabilities of children and match educational, medical, mental health and placement services to these specific needs.

This assessment process for is designed to quantify key life events, family and social characteristics, and the physical, behavioral, emotional and cognitive functioning of each child. This multi-dimensional assessment involves both traditional child and caregiver contact but includes the use of standardized procedures and psychological 'instruments' that allow quantitative evaluation of these domains.

Specific psychological instruments to be used vary depending upon the age of the child. Very young children are unable to provide self-reports of their behavior; therefore caregiver reports are the source of most information regarding their behavior. Caregivers may also provide information about family functioning. Additionally, instruments which assess a child's ability to perform developmental tasks are useful with young children, as these simply require a child to perform behaviors or activities, supplemented by caregiver reports regarding whether a child has achieved developmental milestones expected for one his/her age. With children 4 and over, instruments that assess intelligence and visual-motor development will be used to assess these domains.

With children older than six, a host of standardized instruments are integrated into the assessment. The combination of measures can be modified to evaluate the specific set of characteristics that are of most interest in any given program or project (e.g., focus on cognitive/academic vs. emotional or behavioral characteristics).