Kansas City’s Crittenton Children’s Center will present Head Start-Trauma Smart program to Missouri Children’s Services Commission in Jefferson City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Oct. 4, 2013) — A leadership team from Crittenton Children’s Center, the region’s leading provider of behavioral and mental health care services for children and adolescents, has been invited to present at an open meeting of the Missouri Children’s Services Commission at 1 p.m., on Monday, Oct. 7. The topic of the presentation will be the history, model and methodology, and success to date of Crittenton’s Head Start-Trauma Smart (HS-TS) program, which has recently expanded from the Kansas City metropolitan area to 25 counties in Missouri. The commission meeting will take place at The Department of Mental Health, conference rooms A and B, located at 1706 East Elm in Jefferson City.

HS-TS is an early childhood trauma intervention model initiated in 2008 in response to the remarkably negative impact of traumatic experiences on the children and staff in Kansas City’s urban core Head Start programs. Using trauma-focused training and skill development for children, parents, and Head Start staff (teachers, administrators, bus drivers, kitchen, secretarial staff, etc.) the model creates calm, connected classrooms and home environments where children can learn and thrive for lifetime success. Licensed therapists provide classroom consultation as well as individual/family therapy, while staff and parent mentors are developed to sustain progress. HS-TS promotes the development of systemic trauma awareness, resiliency and practical life-long coping skills.

In June of this year, Crittenton received a $2.3 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to begin expansion of the model into multiple communities across Missouri. With the help of this grant, in addition to commitments from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City and the Alliance for the Southwest community partnership, Crittenton is now well underway in replicating HS-TS into urban, suburban, and rural communities. In the Kansas City area, the project will continue in Wyandotte and Jackson counties, with expansion into Platte and Clay counties. In the eastern region of the state, Head Start sites in St. Charles, Warren, Montgomery, and Lincoln counties will implement the model. Additionally, the project will include those counties surrounding Columbia, Jefferson City, Joplin, Newton, McDonald, and Trenton. HS-TS will benefit an estimated 3,265 preschool students in 156 classrooms each year, for the next three years.

“We have been growing this program since 2009, so we already know the positive effect it is having on the lives of these children, their families and their communities. The proof is not only in the numbers, but also in what we’re hearing first hand from teachers and parents,” Janine Hron, Crittenton Children’s Center CEO, said. “Now as we expand in Missouri, we’re eager to share the news of this success with state legislators and leadership who can help support us and ensure the growth continues—hopefully on a national level someday soon.”

The consistently positive HS-TS outcomes suggest that Crittenton’s program is on the cusp of an important contribution, with promise to become a federally designated best-practice model benefiting the more than 900,000 children in Head Start programs nationwide. With HS-TS, participants transition from gaining awareness of the individual and community implications of trauma, through phases of change resulting in the adoption of a proficient, trauma-informed system.

Hron will present the fundamentals of the HS-TS program, including its history and the partnerships now in place for its expansion. She will present alongside Avis Smith, LCSW, LSCSW, director of prevention and school-based services, who will discuss the clinical science behind the evidence-based program and the success treatment outcomes that have already been measured; and Paula Neese, senior director of community based programs and former director of the Missouri Children’s Division, who will discuss the process of replication of the program in Missouri and the training the dozens of teachers, parents, and staff members.