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Boston Children's Foundation
Our Mission
The mission of the Boston Children's Foundation (BCF) is to provide integrated, community-based psychosocial stabilization initiatives utilizing state-of-the-art, trauma-specific intervention strategies with the goal of decreasing the negative effects of maltreatment and exposure to traumatic incidents and disasters on children, youth and their adult caregivers. Boston Children's Foundation staff are trained and credentialed in responding to all hazards mitigation traumatic incidents and disasters, and are committed to the central tenet of the BCF program: those most affected by the trauma must be given the opportunity to play a central role in the resolution and recovery from the trauma.
Scope of Services
The Boston Children's Foundation offers training, consultation, emergency deployment and development to community-based trauma response specialists working in concert with mental health professionals in order to assist local neighborhoods and their families in playing a central role in the reduction of the causes and negative effects of traumatic incidents and disasters. BCF staff work with communities to develop a prevention-based youth violence monitoring system that can provide access, assessment and referrals for the most vulnerable children and youth within the selected community.
The BCF program views parents and caretakers as partners and experts in monitoring, assessment and care of their children and youth. BCF staff assists municipal governments and community partnerships in the launching of neighborhood-based training programs and awareness workshops that encourage and support parents teaching parents. BCF provides training and monitoring to neighborhood parents and their children in partnership with local housing authorities, clergy, law enforcement officers, mental health and addiction clinics and school personnel. This approach allows for the integration of viewpoints, expertise, resources, and supports among parents, professionals, police and youth, and provides the BCF staff immediate feedback about the BCF programs being implemented for the selected community.
Operating History
BCF, formerly named the Childrens Trauma Recovery Foundation, began its non-profit operations in 2004, with a base in Metro Boston and extended initiatives in the greater New England area, providing evidence-based traumatic stress reduction and disaster relief programs since 1996 with strategic partners in the behavioral and medical health fields. The BCF team is committed to offering clients an array of choices among services. In terms of community-based traumatic incident intervention, this spectrum of choice must include not only types of interventions, but also, perhaps most importantly, locations of care and culturally and linguistically compatible interventions. BCF has designed, developed and offers Psychological First Aid (PFA), Post Traumatic Stress Management (PTSM) interventions tailored to children and youth, parent and youth resiliency training programs, and acute traumatic stress orientation workshops in a variety of locations, including private residences, schools, houses of worship, community centers, housing authorities, detention centers, and juvenile courts. BCF has access to over 1,000 licensed clinicians and community-based PTSM responders who can meet the needs of the very diverse youth populations of Metro Boston and New England. BCF, in affiliation with the International Center for Disaster Resilience has a specialty team of disaster behavioral health responders that have worked in the US, Asia and Africa post disaster and war to deliver state of the art psychosocial resiliency programs that have now reached over 400,000 youth.