In my new role as a Program Coordinator with the Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers, I facilitated a workshop entitled A Treater’s Approach to Building Healthy Attachment with Trauma Survivors that focused on how our attachment styles influence treaters when working with trauma survivors.

As ABA and IDD providers recognize the centrality of trauma in the lives of those they support, the natural next question is, “So what do we do about it?”

Early Head Start/Head Start American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act grant recipients are facing challenges regarding how to spend down ARP funding by March 31, 2023. While initial funds were a critical lifeline to child care programs during the worst of the pandemic, there's still plenty that can be done to create stability in programs for the long-term; grant recipients know the importance of building workplace environments that are safe, equitable, trustworthy, and that support healing. 

My experience with Office of Head Start programs began in 2015 as an Early Childhood Mental Health consultant. I learned in that role just how vital it is for Early Childhood programs to provide quality early childhood services that promote school readiness, encourage family and community engagement, and – most importantly – build resilience in families, children, and staff.

Setting the Scene

Way back in 2019, I took a series of Improv classes at a place called Happier Valley Comedy where I live in Western Massachusetts. How brave of me, right? On Tuesday nights a group – ages 15 to 65 – that started out as strangers would gather to engage in a smorgasbord of improvisational games and activities.

As we discussed in a previous blog post, the Traumatic Stress Institute recognized that while our curriculum included some discussion of social justice, there was much more we could do to focus on and foster discussion about racism.  We understand that it is impossible to separate trauma and racism; racism is a common source of trauma.

The Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers (TSI) offers a transformation method to help organizations move toward more trauma-informed care. TSI currently serves 86 agencies in North America and our clients include treatment agencies, schools, head start providers, juvenile justice providers, and hospitals, amongst others.

We have reached the halfway point of an innovative TIC initiative in the intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) sector.  So, it seemed like a good time to share out some of our achievements, challenges, and lessons learned so far.

The Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) of Klingberg Family Centers is seeking to hire contracted Faculty Trainers for our Risking Connection Trauma Training as adapted for organizations serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).