Principal Investigator and Strengthening Families Coping Resource Team Leader: Laurel Kiser, Ph.D., M.B.A. is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at UMSOM. She was trained in child psychology and family therapy. Her career focus has been on the provision and evaluation of treatment for youth living in poverty, victims of neglect, physical and sexual abuse, with moderate to severe psychiatric and behavior disorders always with a commitment to keeping children at home with their families. Her current research is on the protective role of family rituals/routines for coping with trauma and she is supported by an NIMH K-Award for developing and testing SFCR. She co-directs the University of Maryland Child Trauma Clinic. She received advanced training from Cohen on TF-CBT and led Maryland’s Child Trauma team in the Eastern TF-CBT Learning Collaborative. She is active in teaching and supervising trainees on childhood trauma in multiple venues. She provides trauma education to the community through the Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate program and invited presentations at local conferences. She has published numerous articles on childhood trauma, family stress, family rituals/routines, and outcomes evaluation. Contact Dr. Kiser at lkiser@psych.umaryland.edu.

Principal Investigator and FamilyLive Co-Leader: Harolyn Belcher, M.D., M.H.S. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and jointly appointed in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the Principal Investigator on an NCTSN CTS (6 U 79 SM 56215-01-1) and recently completed a K-award from NIMH that evaluated a parenting curriculum that was designed to promote parental emotional well-being and knowledge of child development for young parents of children enrolled in Early Head Start. She served as a co-investigator on a community-based Head Start substance abuse and mental health prevention intervention grant funded by SAMHSA. She has collaborated in community based initiatives to support recruitment and education of African American parents in church-based foster care for children with drug exposure and HIV infection. She received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Department of Navy for her work as Assistant Medical Director of the Exceptional Family Member Program. Contact Dr. Belcher at belcher@kennedykrieger.org.

Principal Investigator, Evaluator and Trauma Adapted Family Connections Co-Leader: Kathryn Collins, MSW, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. The focus of her academic career centers on social justice, disparities in access to trauma based mental health services, and developing trauma focused social work interventions for vulnerable and oppressed populations such as minority children, women, and families surviving poverty and chronic violence in the inner city. Her commitment to the field is long standing with over 13 years of community based clinical social work practice with children and families. She has numerous publications and has been the PI or Co-PI on state and nationally funded research. She has earned an extramural research award in the NIH, National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities Loan Repayment Program for her research focusing on children from minority communities and their exposure to community violence. Recently, she completed a statewide evaluation of victim services, where she facilitated the creation and implementation of screening protocols and outcome measures for survivors of violence in Pennsylvania. Further, she brings her research scholarship, practice and life experience to the classroom where she has received several teaching awards. Contact Dr. Collins at kcollins@ssw.umaryland.edu

Project Director: Kathleen Connors, LCSW-C, is a Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry at UMSOM, Director of the CIS, Child Psychiatry Associates, and a supervisor in the Child Trauma Clinic. She has over 24 years experience as a clinical social worker working with families experiencing trauma and loss in a variety of settings, including hospital, residential, private practice, clinic, home, and school-based programs. She trains psychiatry fellows, psychology and social work interns in family therapy through a combined format of live supervision and didactic training (Intensive Family Therapy). She coordinates UMSOM’s Early Childhood Mental Health Seminar and the Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program, she was a trainer in MD’s Seclusion and Restraint Reduction Grant and has trained staff, trainees, and local and national audiences on implementing effective family engagement strategies to increase families’ participation in and reduce their attrition from treatment. She has extensive expertise in collaborating with community, legal and social service agencies. She served as the Program Director for the UM’s Center for Families’ Care Clinic, was a senior clinician at the KKFC for 10 years, and Program Director at Hopewell Cancer Support Program where she developed group therapy for child and families experiencing trauma, grief and loss related to cancer. She has contributed to the scientific literature in child maltreatment, been an investigator on trauma treatment research projects and is trained in TF-CBT and PPT. Contact Ms Connors at kconnors@psych.umaryland.edu.

Kennedy Krieger Family Center Team Leader: Elizabeth Thompson, Ph.D. is Director of Kennedy Krieger Family Center and Project Director for the Family Center’s Integrated Trauma Approaches Program (NCTSN Category III site). Current workgroup activity includes: Core Concepts, Skills, and Components Curriculum Task Force; Parenting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma Curriculum Workgroup; Family Systems Workgroup; and Culture Consortium. She also served as faculty for the National Breakthrough Series Collaborative and facilitated the senior leader track for the Eastern TF-CBT Learning Collaborative. Dr. Thompson has an established track record of optimizing mental health service delivery to traumatized children and families through administration, program and product development/evaluation, development of trauma-informed trainings, clinical supervision, organizational consultation, and direct service. She co-developed the KKFC Domain Evaluation Scale, an assessment tool designed to assess the capacity of children that have experienced complex trauma across 7 domains of functioning. Initial reliability studies have been conducted and additional efforts to establish psychometric properties of the measure are on-going. She also co-developed a model for mental health assessment and treatment for birth-5 year olds and their families, which has been successfully implemented by clinicians trained on the model. Contact Dr. Thompson at thompsone@kenndykrieger.org.

FamilyLive Co-Leader: Sarah Gardner, LCSW-C is a senior clinician whose expertise is intergenerational trauma patterns and their impact on parenting, communication and family functioning. She co-developed FL. Single case studies indicate FL is a promising practice and she is developing a research plan to demonstrate its effectiveness in traumatized populations. She is the primary author of the KKFC Clinical Intervention Model, a standardized description of phase-based clinical practice with traumatized children and families that includes child and family competencies at each stage of treatment. She is an active member of the NCTSN Partnering with Youth and Families Workgroup which recently drafted “Pathways to Partnership”, currently under review by NCTSN Steering Committee. She has delivered dozens of professional presentations and co-authored two articles on trauma in peer reviewed journals. Contact Ms Gardner at gardner@kennedykrieger.org.

Trauma-Adapted Family Connections Co- Leader: Frederick H. Strieder, Ph.D., M.S.S.A. is a Clinical Associate Professor at the UMSSW where he is the Director of FC/GFC and UMSSW site participating in the FC U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau Replication Grant. Over the past 32 years, he has provided mental health and child welfare services as a practitioner, supervisor, and administrator; served as a committee chair and board member on local, regional, and national levels regarding the development of outcome evaluation strategies and program development specific to treatment foster care; developed and directed intern training programs at the KKFC and the FC program and taught in the Johns Hopkins and UMSOM DCAP training programs; developed best practice models for children and families who have been the victims of maltreatment; developed community-based service models for families who struggle to meet the needs of their children, specifically grandparent-headed households, been clinical director of programs that have integrated outcome-based designs and research protocols into best practice models. Publications and presentations relate to the needs of children placed in the child welfare system, community-based programs, and clinical practice related to children who have been victims of maltreatment and families who struggle to meet the needs of their children. Contact Dr. Strieder at fstrieder@ssw.umaryland.edu.

 Trauma-Adapted Family Connections Team Member: R. Anna Hayward, MSW is Research Specialist at the Ruth H. Young Center (RYC), University of Maryland School of Social Work, and coordinates the implementation and evaluation of Trauma Adapted Family Connections. Since 2004 Anna has served as coordinator, investigator, or research assistant on numerous RYC projects focused on child welfare services, child well-being, and intervention evaluation. Previously, Anna served as research coordinator at the CUNY Research foundation for the SAHMHSA funded Women, Co-Occurring Disorders, and Trauma Study (2001). Anna’s social work practice experience includes direct practice with foster youth and adolescent sex offenders, recruiting and training foster parents, coordinating a childhood bereavement and intra-agency trauma program, and case-management with homeless mentally ill women. Contact Ms. Hayward at ahayward@ssw.umaryland.edu.

 VA Team Leader: Sonja V. Batten, Ph.D. leads the Trauma Recovery Programs at the VAMHCS. She is an expert in the study and treatment of traumatic stress. She received specialized training in traumatic stress throughout graduate school at the University of Nevada Reno, followed by a NIMH-sponsored clinical psychology internship at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center of the Medical University of South Carolina. She was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for PTSD. She is well-trained in both civilian and military trauma and has published and presented widely, both nationally and internationally. Since coming to the VAMHCS, the TRPs have implemented a variety of treatment resources, based on best practice guidelines for PTSD. In this regard, she has shown her effectiveness to develop programs and motivate staff as they implement new elements. Contact Dr. Batten at sonja.batten@va.gov.

Strengthening Families’ Coping Resources Team Member: Erica Goldblatt, MSW, LGSW, MBE, hails from Toronto, Canada. She holds a dual Master of Social Work/Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Certificate in Clinical Ethics from Albany Medical Center. Prior to joining the FITT team, Erica worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, where her specialization was oncology and end of life care. She has led and co-facilitated workshops regarding pediatric end of life care, and has educated social work interns on the application of bioethics in clinical practice. Erica has worked with the VA population in Philadelphia as member of the palliative care team and research assistant. During her time at Children's she was a member of the palliative care team and the Institutional Ethics Forum where she presented and reviewed cases among an interdisciplinary population. She was the youngest ethics on-call team leader, responding to urgent pages for ethics mediation throughout the hospital and leading consultations and team discussions. In addition to studying trauma and its effects on grief, loss, and child development, Erica’s passion continues to be advocating for the evolution of social worker as valued clinical ethicist. Contact Erica at egoldbla@psych.umaryland.edu. 

Statewide Youth MOVE Maryland Coordinator: TriciaLouise (Tricia) Gurley A Youth Trainer and Consultant, in the spring of 2008 she will be returning to school for her double majors in Human Services and Business Finance/International Business and a minor in Communications. She has been working in the human services field for the last 7 years as the former youth coordinator of Westchester Community Networks "Youth Forum". Tricialouise is also a current member and co-founder of "Youth M.O.V.E. National", which is a national organization for and by youth where their expertise can be fostered and utilized in transforming the children’s mental health system. Her areas of expertise are "Transition Age Youth", Placements (group homes etc.), GLBT related issues and social marketing. In her down time she works as a freelance music promoter and her hobbies consist of writing, billiards, traveling, reading, tattoos and piercings. Her future aspirations include becoming a professional public speaker and directing a residential treatment center. Contact Tricia at tgurley@psych.umaryland.edu.