NCTSI - Center of Excellence for Resilience in Trauma Responsive Organizations

The Center of Excellence for Resilience in Trauma-Responsive Organizations (CERTRO) at the University of Denver works with cohorts of agencies to implement a comprehensive approach to supporting organizations to better serve children, youth, and families who have experienced trauma. Implementing trauma-responsive care first requires a skilled, well-supported, and resilient workforce. Staff who work with trauma-exposed children and families are at risk of many types of work-related stress, including secondary traumatic stress, burnout, empathy fatigue, and moral distress. Additionally, lack of sufficient skill to address the complex issues facing the children and families they serve can contribute to additional distress and lack of job satisfaction, leading to staff turnover and suboptimal care for the families they serve. The CERTRO approach is designed to address all of these factors to strengthen and upskill the workforce. CERTRO is expanding, evaluating, refining, and disseminating a comprehensive approach that includes training, a secondary traumatic stress-informed supervision approach, communities of practice to support peer learning, and a newly developed trauma-informed developmental coaching model for the workforce. CERTRO’s training is rooted in the NCTSN's Core Curriculum in Child Trauma and emphasizes collaborative experiential learning and problem-based learning to enhance critical reasoning, case conceptualization, and real-world application of skills. CERTRO is a partnership between the University of Denver Butler Institute for Families, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect.