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).

Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) is defined as the “positive psychological change in the wake of struggling with highly challenging life circumstances,” by Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, who coined the term in 2004. Tedeschi recently reflected on the pandemic and opportunity for Growth After Trauma in Harvard Business Review.

If there was ever any doubt that the IDD field is recognizing the critical importance of trauma, three brand new articles in the academic literature have put that to rest. They are all scoping reviews which summarize the professional literature on a particular topic and attempt to synthesize the current state of knowledge.

The Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) is excited to announce the four agencies participating in the first-of-its-kind Pilot Trauma-Informed Care Learning Collaborative for Organizations Serving Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD).