Organizations often see measurement and program evaluation as a luxury or something extra to do - they'll do it if they have extra cash or if it's required by a grant or a change package they purchase. It’s viewed as something that will tell them at the end whether the intervention moved the needle.

A large-scale study with 1,395 human service providers, health professionals, and educators from 17 different settings established further support for the psychometric properties of the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale. The study entitled “Validation of the Attitudes Related to Trauma Informed Care Scale (ARTIC)”—by lead author Courtney Baker, Ph.D. from Tulane University and a team of others—was published online in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Successfully implementing trauma-informed care (TIC) is challenging. Successfully measuring TIC is equally challenging. But with the Online ARTIC you can do both.

The Online ARTIC makes TIC assessment and program evaluation user-friendly. At the same time, it still requires thoughtful planning, staff time, and effort to get meaningful results.

Committing to trauma-informed care is the difficult part. With the Online ARTIC, measuring trauma-informed care is the easy part. Start today with 6 Easy Steps to Onboard the Online ARTIC.

Measuring Whether an Organization’s Trauma-Informed Care Efforts Are Working

As the movement toward trauma-informed care (TIC) continues to grow and evolve, organizations, systems, governing bodies, and funders are understandably asking, "How can we tell if we are making progress?" Many of us have experienced these powerful “aha” moments of TIC:

While efforts to implement trauma-informed care are trending, TIC measurement is still in its infancy. So, as human service, education, and health organizations increasingly strive to become trauma-informed, it’s essential to measure whether desired results are being achieved.

New federal funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act includes critical funding for advancing trauma-informed care services in tribal communities.

Delivering trauma-informed care (TIC) is challenging. Measuring TIC is even more difficult. More and more school systems, human service agencies, juvenile justice programs, behavioral health organizations and others are moving to become more trauma-informed - and struggling to measure the impact of their efforts. That’s why the Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) developed the Online ARTIC.

Despite the COVID-19 crisis, school systems, human service agencies, behavioral health programs, medical institutions, foster care agencies, juvenile justice programs, and many others are working to sustain trauma-informed care--now more than ever.