Home > Conference Calendar > 15th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect > Conference Program > Workshops > Therapeutic Child Care: Comprehensive Intervention for Traumatized Children in a Community-Based Early Education Center (Workshop 148)

Therapeutic Child Care: Comprehensive Intervention for Traumatized Children in a Community-Based Early Education Center (Workshop 148)

Presenters describe an innovative partnership between a large inner-city child care and early education center and a university-based research and training program that focuses on measuring effectiveness of interventions for at-risk children from birth to five years and their families. They address interventions in the classroom and with the family and child, as well as review research findings regarding the efficacy of the Pair Play Therapy intervention and the diverse developmental pathways in young children exposed to trauma as they relate to the risk and/or protective factors present in the face of child maltreatment.

Classroom intervention involves supporting and training teachers to create environments and strategies that promote positive social-emotional outcomes for infants, toddlers, and preschool children. With the family, attention is directed to assessment and support and to facilitating positive attachment relationships between parents and children. Individual, group, and dyadic interventions focusing on the child strive to reduce risk, promote resilience, and address the effects of past trauma.

The Pair Play Therapy intervention helps children to engage in positive peer relationships, to experience friendships, and to gain perspective in developing positive and lasting relationships with others. This approach involves two children, a senior child therapist, and a child therapist-in-training.

Presenters identify intervention during a child's first years as crucial in helping children to develop positive, resilient coping strategies in reaction to maltreatment and trauma and thus to avoid common negative outcomes later in life, such as mental illness, substance abuse, or involvement in the criminal justice system. The workshop concludes that early childhood programs emerge as an ideal setting for this form of comprehensive intervention.

Holly Bishop, M.S.W., L.I.C.S.W.
Associated Early Care and Education
95 Berkeley Street
Suite 206
Boston, MA 02116

Catherine Ayoub, R.N., Ed.D.
Graduate School of Education
Harvard University
Larsen Hall, Room 613
Appian Way
Cambridge, MA 02138

Victoria Barrios, M.A., M.Ed.
Associated Early Care and Education
38 Horadan Way
Roxbury Crossing, MA 02120

Updated on February 2, 2010