More than half of the children in the United States suffer from one or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), such as: crime, neglect, abuse, witnessing domestic violence, substance abuse, or the loss of a parent. Studies show that these traumatic events have far reaching implications into adult life by raising the likelihood of addictive behaviors, incarceration, and violence. Ultimately this traumatic legacy is passed onto the next generation of innocent children (Macy, et al., 2004 & Tol, et al., 2008).
Violence is a manifestation and cause of trauma. Accordingly, the most effective way to prevent violence is to intervene and treat the trauma. In partnership with our CBI program, which addresses traumatic events once they have occurred in adolescent populations, Rainbowdance® offers a preventative model that helps children with high ACE scores build resiliency and self-regulation, reducing the likelihood of violence later in life. The experience of moving together in a structured pattern, rhythmically lulled by familiar music, helps children of all ages learn how to self-soothe and develop an internalized resource base to access in times of distress.
The Boston Children’s Foundation℠ (BCF) is committed to reducing the potential trauma that perpetuates a culture of fear, shame, incarceration, maladaptation and community violence for children and families having little to no access to normal resources required to exist on a healthy basis. BCF utilizes trauma informed violence prevention and developmentally appropriate therapeutic processes to turn youth’s natural energy towards healing activities, social empathy and positive relationships. Drawing on its founders’ decades of research, field application, and successful intervention in trauma psychology, BCF enters into partnerships with key allies locally and internationally to deliver active healing experiences supporting a child’s journey to wholeness within a community health framework.
Boston Children’s Foundation’s Early Childhood Framework and Programs provide Early Intervention Services to children aged 0 to 6 years (and upon request to elementary and middle school youth) throughout Metro Boston in partnership with DMH Child & Adolescent Services, Boston Public Schools and other designated early childhood and childcare programs serving the most disadvantaged youth in the Metro Boston area. In an effort to support the development of the healthy, integrated child, we offer support, consultancy and interventions to the caregivers, parents, teachers and other support staff working with these children. Although our offerings are diverse, goals for each are consistent: (1) Increase the child’s self-esteem, social empathy, and self-regulatory capacities; (2) Reduce behavioral violence and targeted aggression; (3) Increase the child’s ability to form healthy relationships with self and other.
Rainbowdance® is BCF’s evidence-based program which integrates music, movement, story, encouraging the growth of collective peer esteem and empowered self-nurturing children. This program is adapted to meet the needs of children with physical, emotional, neurological, and behavioral challenges. Early childhood aggression, normally a response to caretaker or community aggression, neglect and betrayal, if not addressed in childhood, is sustained and amplified in adolescence and adulthood. Through both group and individual interventions, BCF addresses the source of such early aggression, assisting the child to transform destructive behaviors into constructive ones. Our mission is to empower children to experience life’s joy rather than its pain and that can only happen when the child begins to experience safety, comfort, calming and connection.
Our interventions are evidenced based and pay close attention to developmental psychopathology and factors influencing recovery, in part, by focusing on ethnocultural and environmental factors that offer resiliency approaches for young people who have been exposed to sociopolitical and developmental trauma. Our primary interventions for the youth, parents and health service providers are clinically framed expressive arts therapy group sessions sequenced over 10-36 weeks.
Our staff includes arts-based PhD and master’s level clinicians. Our graduate level internship program increases our capacity for sustainability as students are trained to carry forward our programs into local schools, in home and outpatient facilities. Twice annually, we offer Boston Rainbowdance® certificate trainings to the public. We also provide consultancy and supervision to clinicians, early intervention agencies, occupational therapists and preschool teachers.