Butler County Children Services (Ohio) Launches Pilot Study on Trauma-Informed Assessment and Preparation of Adoptive Families

With great excitement a group of passionate social workers, trainers and therapists met at Butler County Children Services in Hamilton, Ohio on January 17th to launch the first of its kind – a two year pilot study project on trauma informed preparation of adoptive and foster families.

Partnering with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Institute for Human Services, evaluators from the University of Cincinnati and MSW interns from Wheelock College, the goals of this project are to examine just how foster and adoptive parents are assessed and prepared. A major question that will be explored is how to narrow the gap between the expectations of foster/adoptive parents and the reality of their experience in caring for a child with a history of trauma. We hope our findings will:

1. Assess foster parent retention and reasons for leaving the program (did inadequate training play a role in their leaving the program)

2. Assess the role of trauma informed assessment and preparation as it relates to foster/adoptive parent satisfaction

3. Assess placement stability of children – are they moving less because parents are more trauma-informed

4. To create an evidence-based trauma-informed preparation, pre-service and support model that can be used not only in Ohio, but throughout the US and also in the work of the Institute for Human Services overseas.

A full description of this project can be found under the trauma informed tab.

For more information about this pilot project:
Contact project coordinator – Jayne Schooler,  jayeschool@aol.com or 937-689-0985

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