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The Nation­al Child Trau­mat­ic Stress Net­work (NCTSN) was cre­at­ed by Con­gress in 2000 as part of the Children’s Health Act to raise the stan­dard of care and increase access to ser­vices for chil­dren and fam­i­lies who expe­ri­ence or wit­ness trau­mat­ic events. This unique net­work of front­line providers, fam­i­ly mem­bers, researchers, and nation­al part­ners is com­mit­ted to chang­ing the course of children’s lives by improv­ing their care and mov­ing sci­en­tif­ic gains quick­ly into prac­tice across the U.S. The NCTSN is admin­is­tered by the Sub­stance Abuse and Men­tal Health Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (SAMHSA) and coor­di­nat­ed by the UCLA-Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Nation­al Cen­ter for Child Trau­mat­ic Stress (NCCTS).

The NCTSN has grown from 17 fund­ed cen­ters in 2001 to 209 cur­rent­ly fund­ed cen­ters and over 200 Affil­i­ate (for­mer­ly fund­ed) cen­ters and indi­vid­u­als, work­ing in hos­pi­tals, uni­ver­si­ties, and com­mu­ni­ty-based pro­grams in 48 states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Puer­to Rico, and Guam.

To accom­plish the NCTSN mis­sion, grantees and Affil­i­ates work to:

  • Pro­vide clin­i­cal services
  • Devel­op and dis­sem­i­nate new inter­ven­tions and resource materials
  • Offer edu­ca­tion and train­ing programs
  • Col­lab­o­rate with estab­lished sys­tems of care
  • Engage in data col­lec­tion and evaluation
  • Inform pub­lic pol­i­cy and aware­ness efforts

The nation­al impact of the NCTSN is well doc­u­ment­ed. In recent years, esti­mates from the NCTSN Col­lab­o­ra­tive Change Project (CoCap) have indi­cat­ed that each quar­ter about 50,000 indi­vid­u­als – chil­dren, ado­les­cents and their fam­i­lies – direct­ly ben­e­fit­ed from ser­vices through this Net­work. Since its incep­tion, the NCTSN has trained more than two mil­lion pro­fes­sion­als in trau­ma-informed inter­ven­tions. Hun­dreds of thou­sands more are ben­e­fit­ing from the oth­er com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, web­site resources, webi­na­rs, edu­ca­tion­al prod­ucts, com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, and more. Over 10,000 local and state part­ner­ships have been estab­lished by NCTSN mem­bers in their work to inte­grate trau­ma-informed ser­vices into all child-serv­ing sys­tems, includ­ing child pro­tec­tive ser­vices, health and men­tal health pro­grams, child wel­fare, edu­ca­tion, res­i­den­tial care, juve­nile jus­tice, courts, and pro­grams serv­ing mil­i­tary and vet­er­an families.