The Statewide Collaborative on Trauma-Informed Care endeavors to raise awareness about Trauma-Informed Care through training and educational opportunities; to lead a statewide collaborative to create a trauma-informed and trauma-responsive child welfare system that better meets the needs of children families who have experienced trauma; and to partner with other Texas and national trauma-informed workgroups and collaboratives.
In July 2017, the Children’s Commission launched the Statewide Collaborative on Trauma-Informed Care (SCTIC) to elevate trauma-informed policy and practices in the Texas child welfare system by creating a statewide strategy to support system reform, organizational leadership, cross-systems collaboration, and community-led efforts with data-informed initiatives. The SCTIC centered its first phase of work around these four concepts with the goal of developing a plan for transforming the child welfare system.
Based on the work of the SCTIC during the development phase, the Children’s Commission published a final report in February 2019 entitled Building a Trauma-Informed Child Welfare System: A Blueprint. The Trauma Blueprint provides a roadmap for the Texas child welfare system to become trauma-informed and trauma-responsive and invites innovation and improvement in the approach to trauma-informed care in both the public and private sectors.
The SCTIC continues under the guidance of an Implementation Task Force and utilizes the Blueprint to direct the SCTIC’s work. The SCTIC works collaboratively to develop and identify trauma-informed resources for the child welfare community. Recently, through a grant partnership with the Texas Center for Child and Family Studies, the SCTIC work has focused on supporting several court sites to implement trauma-informed projects in child protection courts. Each court site has a lead judge who has convened a court team made of key collaborative partners to implement projects with the goal of addressing child and family safety through a trauma-informed lens.
To view current resources please visit TraumaInformedTexas.com.
Staff: Jocelyn Fowler, Tiffany Edwards
Please visit the sections below to learn more about current projects or visit the Reports & Resources page for recent publications.
Guiding Principles of Implementation
The Blueprint focuses on nine Guiding Principles to create a trauma-informed child welfare system. These Guiding Principles and correlating strategies inform the work of the SCTIC Implementation Task Force, as well as provide principles for all interested stakeholders to center their trauma work around.
SCTIC Implementation Task Force
The Implementation Task Force was created to oversee the implementation of the strategies set forth in the Blueprint. The Implementation Task Force sets global priorities for the SCTIC, establishes workgroups to carry out these priorities, and monitors progress of the workgroups to help ensure successful implementation. The Implementation Task Force is chaired by the Honorable Judge Carlos Villalon, Judge of the Child Protection Court of the Rio Grande Valley West.
SCTIC Implementation Workgroups
In 2019, the Task Force created three workgroups to begin the implementation work of the Blueprint. Workgroup members are responsible for prioritizing the strategies and creating and executing work plans. The workgroups Policy & Practice, Training, and Information Sharing, Data, & Funding each completed large projects during the initial phase of implementation.
For additional resources, please visit the Reports and Resources page, Statewide Collaborative on Trauma-Informed Care.
