Reports on the results of a survey conducted among family/dependency courts, child welfare agencies, foster care agencies, mental health agencies, and schools to determine the way these entities gather, assess, and share trauma-related information and to assess the nature and level of staff training. The goal was to understand how agencies communicate with one another and whether they succeed in promoting a child’s healing following a traumatic event. The key findings show that: (1) most respondents seldom received in-depth information about a child’s trauma history when the child is first referred to them by another agency; (2) less than half of respondents offered staff training on evidence-based treatments for child traumatic stress, and more than a third offered no training on assessment of child trauma; and (3) respondents gathered relatively more information about behavior and school problems triggered by trauma than about such issues as duration of abuse, number of trauma episodes, and internalizing symptoms. Recommendations to all stakeholders sounded a consistent theme: to seek out education and training to understand how a child’s trauma history influences development and current functioning, and to develop liaisons among related agencies to better meet the needs of traumatized children.
