In addition to our trauma-informed Rainbowdance® program for children, BCF℠ partners with the International Trauma Center to offer the following trauma services:
Community-Classroom-Culture Based Intervention
Post Traumatic Stress Management
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. Our goal is 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.
Boston Children’s Foundation’s Agency-School-Community Based Posttraumatic Stress Management (PTSM)
The PTSM development team, founded in 1995 by the International Trauma Center and the Boston Children’s Foundation works closely with state Departments of Education, Mental Health, Youth and Family Services, and Federal agencies including DOE, SAMHSA, FEMA, DHS and the Red Cross to incorporate evidence-based and emerging practice models for psychological first aid and recovery phase protocols. PTSM is a cognitive based (verbal) group intervention model for youth and adults 9 years old and older that has been developed through extensive field practice and research over the last 30 years in the US and abroad post trauma and violence exposure in schools and local communities; the PTSM design and development service continuum includes gender specific, developmentally specific, culturally and linguistically specific post-disaster psychological intervention, stabilization and resiliency augmentation protocols. PTSM is a phase-oriented series of highly structured, school, agency and community-based group interventions supporting the natural tendency of school and/or community peers to group together seeking safety and solace following traumatic incidents. PTSM targets immediate reduction of traumatic stress sequelae with the concomitant augmentation of coping and resiliency and the identification of survivors who require higher levels of behavioral health or medical care. PTSM focuses across the life span as well as specifically on impacted children, youth and their families and on the staff of schools and social service agencies supporting school trauma responses or exposed to ongoing traumatic events.
(See Robert D. Macy, et. al., Community-Based, Acute Posttraumatic Stress Management: A Description and Evaluation of a Psychosocial-Intervention Continuum; Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Issue # 12.4, Taylor & Francis, September 2004).