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Information
Trauma-Informed Care: Working with Children, Families, and Service Providers in Child Welfare Services
Original Recording Date :
Course Format
Hybrid: Recorded video-based online activity and reading-based online activity.
This course is an elective course in the Online Trauma-Informed Organization Certificate Program: Basics for All Staff that was created by the University at Buffalo School of Social Work’s Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care (ITTIC).
This elective module offers a foundation of information to support the workforce in implementing Trauma-Informed change and integrating related knowledge and skills into their interactions, service delivery, and organizational culture. The module spans a variety of relevant topics including historical context, overviews of related public policy, information on complex and intergenerational trauma, ethical considerations, and practical guidance on best practices to apply each value/principle of a trauma-informed approach in child welfare settings. The module also includes case studies to assist with the effective transfer of learnings into daily practice.
Learning Objectives:
- Recognize how trauma affects families in the child welfare system;
- Identify and understand how each component of the Trauma-Informed Care approach can be implemented into the child welfare system;
- Identify specific ways the child welfare system can benefit from implementing components of Trauma-Informed Care; and
- Recognize how trauma impacts professionals in the child welfare system.
Target Audience: This course is appropriate for social workers and all levels of human service staff that seek information on trauma and a Trauma-Informed approach in child- and family-strengthening systems and related settings.
Shelley Hitzel, LMSW
Child Advocacy Center- Executive Director, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center/Child Advocacy Center of Niagara; Independent Contractor, Institute on Trauma and Trauma Informed Care, University at Buffalo, Buffalo Center for Social Research
Shelley Hitzel is a licensed master social worker, who holds a BA in Psychology with a Criminal Justice minor from Daemen College where her thesis focused on the relationship between emotional intelligence and perpetration of obsessive relational intrusions. In 2012 Shelley completed the University at Buffalo’s Trauma Counseling Certificate Program. She has been an employee of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center since 2008, beginning her career in inpatient behavioral health and the psychiatric emergency room. In 2010 she transitioned to the Child Advocacy Center of Niagara (CAC), a department of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, where she has held a number of advocate roles, becoming Executive Director of the agency in 2020. At the CAC she works alongside a multidisciplinary team providing investigative and support services to both child and adult survivors of trauma. Since 2015 she has been on staff as an independent consultant with the Institute on Trauma and Trauma Informed Care where she serves as the Project Coordinator for SAMHSA’s How Being Trauma-Informed Improves Criminal Justice System Response. Shelley has a passion for improving direct service delivery by increasing the knowledge and application of trauma informed care amongst agencies and professionals providing services to trauma survivors.
