Giving Compass' Take:

• Joint tactics such as the police and community-based organization partnership called the Child Trauma Response Team, can help children who experienced or witnessed trauma in their household.

• If these joint tactics are beneficial, how can philanthropists support more collaborative interventions? 

• Read about how to make an impact on adverse childhood experiences. 


The police and community-based organization partnership called the Child Trauma Response Team has demonstrated success at screening and treating children for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) immediately following incidents of intimate partner violence, according to the study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

“Families that experience poverty, social disadvantage, and structural racism are at a higher risk for severe intimate partner violence, but those same factors are also barriers to accessing the post-trauma support offered by community-based organizations,” says Amanda Stylianou, an expert on domestic violence and health outcomes at Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care.

More than 7 million children in the United States are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, which can affect their development, mental health, physical health, and functioning as adults, Stylianou says.

To understand how to improve post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screening and treatment of children and their caregivers after witnessing these incidents, she and her research team looked at 244 families with 352 children in Harlem being served by Safe Horizon, the nation’s largest crime victim organization, through the New York City Child Trauma Response Team (CTRT) over the initial one-year pilot.

They found families that received an immediate CTRT response, including victim safety assessments, were three times more likely to engage in a child PTSD screen. Of the children who completed the PTSD screens, close to three-quarters showed one or more trauma symptoms and were offered evidence-based mental health treatment.

The study also found that children who witnessed a felony were more likely to be screened for PTSD and that Black children were close to three times more likely to have a positive PTSD screen than White or Hispanic/Latino children — a rate possibly due to their exposure to structural and racial trauma.

Read the full article about joint community and law enforcement intervention by Patti Verbanas at Futurity.