TCTY Training Model: A Learning Collaborative Approach

The Treatment Collaborative for Traumatized Youth (TCTY) utilizes a Learning Collaborative approach to disseminate evidence-based mental health interventions for traumatized youth and their families.  The TCTY Training Team believes that this model is the most effective means to promote successful implementation, adoption and spread of evidenced-based practices to benefit traumatized children and their families.

What is a Learning Collaborative?

The Learning Collaborative (LC) approach focuses on spreading, adopting, and adapting best practices across multiple settings and creating changes in organizations that promote the delivery of effective interventions and services.  The overall goal of a Learning Collaborative is to get results and to close the gap between usual practice and the best care for a specific topic.

A Learning Collaborative is a model that:
-  Focuses on adopting best practices in diverse service settings.
-  Emphasizes adult learning principles and interactive training methods
-  Encourages the participation of both clinicians and supervisors to enhance the opportunity for successful implementation.
-  Requires focused work to adopt SPARCS and TFCBT over the course of the 12 month training program.

A Learning Collaborative is an ongoing process that:
-  Brings together mental health clinicians from diverse settings to learn, implement, and sustain evidence-based interventions
-  Enables participants to share and learn from their collective experiences and challenges.
-  Requires ongoing follow-up consultation activities (through phone and Internet).
-  Provides opportunities to practice new skills and share progress through the TCTY.

A Learning Collaborative is NOT:
-  A single or one-time training event.
-  Single-setting, single-site, or individual clinician-focused.
-  A model for implementing small changes within existing systems.

Why use this approach?

There are several important reasons for offering the Learning Collaborative approach to training.

1.  Many agencies struggle with adoption of new, evidence-based practices and are trying to overcome these challenges largely on their own, without sufficient resources.
2.  If we create a forum for the exchange of experiences and ongoing feedback, the learners will become each other’s teachers.
3.  We believe that the resulting improvements associated with the LC approach have the potential to propel the whole child trauma field forward.

How can I become involved in the Treatment Collaborative for Traumatized Youth?

The TCTY Training Team will be kicking off a new learning collaborative with SPARCS training on July 21-22 of 2010 in Fargo.  This Learning Collaborative will provide training in two evidence-based mental health interventions, Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS; July 21-22, 2010) and Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT; February 2011) respectively.  These interventions are appropriate for the treatment of children who have experienced traumatic life events.  TF-CBT training is appropriate for supervisors and therapists that have a Master’s degree or higher.  There will be no exceptions to this requirement for TF-CBT training.  However, the TCTY Training Team will consider individuals with a bachelor’s degree for SPARCS training on a case-by-case review.  It is essential that these individuals have considerable experience working with traumatized youth.

The cost of participating in the year-long Learning Collaborative is $1500 and includes the following:
1)  2-day, face-to-face workshop in SPARCS (includes SPARCS manual, group supplies, lunch, and refreshments)—JULY 21-22, 2010 in Fargo
2)  6 months of biweekly SPARCS consultation via phone
3)  2-day, face-to-face workshop in TF-CBT (includes TF-CBT manual, lunch, and refreshments)—FEBRUARY 2011 in Fargo
4)  6 months of biweekly TF-CBT consultation via phone
5)  Membership in the Treatment Collaborative for Traumatized Youth (TCTY) which provides you with access to the “Clinician Only” side of the the TCTY website, a TCTY book bag, and an invitation to the TCTY Annual Meeting.

Note: If you are are interested in receiving training in only one of these interventions (6 month committment) the cost is $750. 

Registration is not yet open for our next round of training.  Please call Heather Simonich, TCTY Program Coordinator, at 701-365-4948 for more information.

TCTY Training Information