In September, CCFH received a grant of $92,000 from the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to expand its Trauma-Informed Leadership Training (TILT) initiative with Durham Public Schools. The grant was part of a $5 million budget allocation by the General Assembly in 2018 to improve school safety in the wake of high-profile school shootings in other states. The announcement for the grant program specified that DPI was seeking proposals for evidence-based services and training that will help students develop healthy responses to trauma and stress.
In 2016, CCFH began an intensive training program with five DPS schools. Teams from the participating schools spent nine months learning the fundamental principles of childhood trauma and developing their own practices for effective, evidence-based interventions. After the initial learning and design phase, CCFH has continued providing implementation support for the five schools. The grant will help support this ongoing work.
Also, CCFH will now be able to offer additional trauma-informed training to personnel at any DPS school. This training includes Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE), a modification of a clinical treatment that can be used by any adult who interacts with traumatized children. The grant will also support group therapy at Southern High School for up to 30 students who are affected by trauma or chronic adversity.
Kelly Sullivan, director of mental health services at CCFH, leads CCFH’s school-related initiatives and wrote the grant proposal.
“Funding for these kinds of initiatives is rare,” she says, “so we feel very fortunate to have received this grant to keep these programs going. And we truly commend DPI for recognizing that helping children deal with trauma and troubling experiences in healthy ways is an integral part of school safety.”