Resilient Roots: Supporting Youth and Families

Resilient Roots is integrated into the TRANSFORM Center to promote translation of research findings into clinical interventions, to inform the next generation of research on child abuse and neglect (CAN), and to facilitate dissemination of research and practice knowledge/skills to varied stakeholders. Exposure to CAN frequently results in long-term detrimental effects on mental health. For youth who have experienced socioecological stress, the trauma associated with CAN may be compounded by stress and trauma deriving from experiences of stress in their communities. Interventions to address specific socioecological stress for symptomatic youth receiving human centered mental health services are lacking, and use of mental health services that are acceptable to families are too often misaligned with their representation in the population in general and overrepresentation in the child welfare system specifically. Incorporating support for families in enhancing socialization and coping skills specific to addressing contextual stress and trauma has relevance for public health. Although Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based treatment for children who have experienced CAN, determining best practices for implementing enhanced TF-CBT with socialization components is urgently needed to address these gaps and provide optimal intervention. Resilient Roots is a pilot study within a RE-AIM/PRISM framework (including Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance with emphasis on contextual factors at multiple levels of the implementation setting) that will incorporate stakeholder perspectives and evaluate the incorporation of socialization into enhanced TF-CBT, while identifying barriers and facilitators to implementation to guide future larger-scale trials.