As part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), the Learning Center for Child and Adolescent Trauma offers Free Online Education with:
- 300+ FREE CE certificates
- 50+ speakers
- 200+ online webinars
- 90,000+ members
Brings together experts on the impact of community violence on youth and families. This series highlights best practices for prevention and trauma intervention for youth affected by community violence, and features NCTSN members representing viewpoints from service providers, to researchers, to youth and family members.
Discusses how the term community violence has often been associated with urban areas and densely populated communities of color. This webinar broadens the perspective to include rural communities, which are experiencing a rise in community violence but often lack access to robust service structures, specialized training, and key partnerships needed to support families effectively. It offers insights into the shared elements and unique challenges of addressing community violence in urban and rural environments, while highlighting strategies and solutions that have proven effective in both contexts.
Explore how trauma and disproportionality are connected and how these experiences impact young people, their families, and their communities. This webinar examines both historical and present-day causes of disproportionality, as well as how exposure to trauma can influence behaviors and interactions within the justice system. The discussion highlights ways to create more supportive, community-centered systems that focus on empowerment and positive change. Presenters share insights on how families and communities can be active partners in shaping fair and effective support services for youth.
Discuss research findings and real-life experiences to better understand how gang involvement affects young people’s emotional and psychological well-being. This webinar explores parallels between gang-involved youth and other vulnerable populations, such as youth who have experienced trafficking, and highlights promising trauma-informed approaches that can help. It also offers recommendations for intervention, research, and systemic changes to better support at-risk youth and their communities.
Community violence—especially in urban areas—is an escalating crisis for far too many children and families across the United States. Given the urgency of this public health issue, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network is hosting a national forum to address community violence in the lives of youth and offer examples of solutions through partnership and collaboration from various sections of the country. Presenters will include individuals currently involved in addressing community violence: youth, mentors, therapists, police officers, and federal agency administrators.
Crossover youth—those involved simultaneously or successively in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems—represent a population with specific risks and unique needs for trauma-informed services. In this webinar, the presenters will discuss the processes leading maltreated youth to become dually involved in the juvenile justice system and will describe the characteristics of crossover youth with a particular focus on those living in urban settings, including the highly disproportionate representation of ethnic minority youth and girls. Theories and research regarding the underlying developmental processes and trajectories that link childhood maltreatment to adolescent involvement in the juvenile justice system also will be presented. A clinical framework for trauma-informed services and trauma-specific therapeutic and rehabilitative services will then be described, including models for intervening at the levels of systems and institutions, as well as evidence-based approaches for treating traumatized families and individual youths.
Speakers will discuss the key causes, major consequences, and professional responses related to community violence and its traumatic stress-related impacts on youth, including: exploring the historic and contemporary causes of violence exposure among urban youth and their families, understanding the interrelated contexts of violence exposure that impact urban youth, and developing specific goals for implementing best practices for serving violence-exposed urban youth.
Refugee youth and their families flee their home country due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion to seek protection in another country. Refugee youth and families are often resettled in urban neighborhoods in North America that have high rates of community violence. In this webinar, the presenters will discuss the “double edge sword” that refugee youth experience in resettlement.