The Institute for Translational Research in Children’s Mental Health (ITR) announced the funding of a new national center to raise awareness of, and increase access to, family interventions that promote resilience in traumatized children.
The Center for Resilient Families, funded with a $3 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is a partnership between Ambit Network at the University of Minnesota (PI, Dr. Abigail Gewirtz), developers of evidence-based family programs at Arizona State University’s REACH Institute, Implementation Sciences International, and the Research Consortium on Gender-based Violence.
Over the next five years, the Center for Resilient Families will adapt and put into practice five parenting interventions that have been found through rigorous testing to be effective at strengthening resilience among traumatized families. These interventions will serve more than 35,000 people and specifically target isolated families in transition, such as:
- those with a parent deployed to war
- Native American families on reservations
- immigrant and refugee families
- families involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems
- families in which a parent has been killed
ITR is excited to house the groundbreaking work of this center, which furthers its mission of bridging the vast gap between research and practice in children’s mental health.
