Abstract
In 2016, Child Maltreatment published a Special Section edited by Drs. Hanson and Lang called “A Critical Look at Trauma Informed Care (TIC) among Agencies and Systems Serving Maltreated Youth and Families.” This set of papers, with an accompanying introduction by Drs. Hanson and Lang and commentary by Lucy Berliner and Dr David Kolko, described the multiple definitions and complexity of “TIC,” highlighted several examples of TIC implementation, identified important gaps and pitfalls with the current state of TIC research, and offered recommendations for advancing the field. This ten-year update will describe the evolving conceptualization of TIC, provide a summary of the current state of TIC research, and describe the extent to which recommendations from the 2016 issue have or have not been advanced. The special issue will solicit new papers about TIC implementation, with a particular focus on updates to how TIC is being defined and measured, research examining the outcomes of TIC, and how TIC has evolved with changes in behavioral health, child welfare, prevention, and society (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic, increased interest in equity and anti-racism).
Since the 2016 Special Section, local, state, federal, and philanthropic funding has only grown to promote TIC across the multiple systems that serve youth and their families. The federal government created The Interagency Task Force on Trauma Informed Care in 2018 (PL 115-271), which produced a National Strategy for Trauma Informed Care Operating Plan, and in 2023, SAMHSA released an updated “Practical Guide for Implementing a Trauma-Informed Approach.”
Many national organizations have developed plans and resources related to TIC, including The Center for Healthcare Strategies, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, the SAMHSA National Child Traumatic Stress Network, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice, and the National Education Association. Yet, despite the enormous interest in, funding for, and published research about TIC, significant gaps and questions remain about how to define and measure TIC, how to efficiently and effectively implement TIC across large and diverse child-serving systems, and especially about the evidence of TIC’s impact on child and family outcomes, particularly for diverse and/or marginalized populations (for example, based on race/ethnicity, immigration status, country of origin, religion, or disability).
Thus, the goals of this Special Issue are to provide an update on research in the past decade to: (1) describe how TIC is defined and conceptualized across the increasingly wide variety of agencies/service sectors serving youth and their families where it is being implemented; (2) highlight recent large-scale TIC implementation efforts across a range of child-serving systems; (3) provide empirical support about the impact of these efforts, particularly with a focus on outcomes among diverse populations of children and families and/or cost-benefits of TIC implementation, and (4) provide recommendations for implementation of and further research on TIC.
Child Maltreatment is soliciting empirical manuscripts on topics related to TIC within agencies and/or single or multiple service systems (e.g., child welfare, mental health, schools, juvenile justice, pediatrics, early care and education). We invite original empirical research papers, particularly those that clearly define TIC (using existing frameworks and research) and rigorously evaluate the impact of this work on factors at the system, agency, staff, and especially consumer levels. We specifically seek papers that include multiple domains or components of TIC (e.g. workforce development, organizational/policy change, implementation of evidence-based treatments, staff wellness) rather than those that focus on a single component of TIC without contextualization in an overarching TIC framework. Systematic reviews and metaanalyses on TIC are also welcomed.
We are especially interested in empirical papers that address one or more of the following: • Synthesize and summarize existing conceptualizations of TIC, TIC components, and associated research, and/or that address the impact of societal changes in the past decade on TIC (e.g. COVID-19, racial reckoning) • Describe and evaluate large-scale TIC implementation efforts • Describe and evaluate the effects of TIC implementation efforts on child and family outcomes • Describe the effects of TIC implementation efforts on diverse or historically marginalized populations of children, families, or staff, and/or comparisons of TIC implementation across different sub-groups (for example, by race/ethnicity) • Examine the costs and/or cost-benefits of TIC • Challenge existing notions or assumptions about TIC using rigorous evidence (including studies of TIC with null or unexpected findings) • Other papers that address the goals of the Special Section defined above
The deadline for submitting manuscripts is
The manuscript should be submitted to CM via the online portal ScholarOne Manuscripts at: https://manuscriptcentral.com/childmaltreatment. First time users will need to create an account before submitting. Please follow the prompts in the Author Center to complete the submission.
Questions regarding this special issue and the fit of particular topics should be addressed to Jason Lang (