Overview

Once familiar with concepts in the trauma-informed care curriculum, review these resources for additional information. These materials were designed to help the learner develop advanced clinical skills in trauma recognition, screening and response, interventions and resources, and competency to implement trauma-responsive care in their own practice and to train others. These lectures and video vignettes provide important context for subsequent education.

Webinars

To learn more about epigenetics, culture and trauma, and burnout and secondary traumatic stress, watch the short webinars below.

Epigenetics

Culture and Trauma

Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress

Video Case Vignette Series

Watch the video case vignette series below, which demonstrate an effective workflow for screening, referral, and follow-up for trauma. These 3 series are broken down into short clips for specific teaching points.

Series 1: Attachment, Resilience, and Trauma

In this series you'll see how a pediatrician engages with a 9-year-old patient and his mom, and demonstrates predictable compassionate availability, allowing the family to feel safe to express their distress and helping them regulate that distress. The pediatrician models surveillance, screening, and resilience by asking open ended questions and starting from a resiliency approach.

Series 2: Shared Power and Difficult Conversations

In this series the pediatrician reengages with his 9-year-old patient and his mom, and demonstrates how nonverbal communication can help regulate and help promote healing. The pediatrician explains the concept of the "invisible suitcase" and refers to a trauma-informed mental health provider for therapy.

Series 3: Talking to Teens about Trauma

In this series the pediatrician engages with his teen patient, demonstrates the steps in talking with teens about trauma, and explains the importance of displaying acceptance, curiosity, and empathy.


Want More?

Review the additional lectures below to better understand specific principles and processes related to trauma-informed pediatric care, and where they fall along a spectrum of care. 


Understanding Attachments: A Deeper Dive

Recognize that attachment provides a safe haven and a secure base and main function of attachment is emotional regulation; identify characteristics of secure attachment in children and in adult relationships, and explain the first steps to take with caregivers to restore attachment.

Positive Purposeful Parenting

Consider the application of common Evidence-Based Parenting Practices across the ages and stages of development, understand application of common Evidence-Based Parenting Practices to support the attachment relationship and typical development at each age and stage, and understand how the application of common Evidence-Based Parenting Practices might vary with caregivers who have a history of trauma, mental health or other issues impacting regulation and executive functions.

Parental ACEs

Describe the impact of a parent’s own ACEs on their parenting capacity, discuss ways in which parental toxic stress can present in the pediatric health care setting, and understand specific ways in which pediatric health care professionals can assist a parent with toxic stress.

How Trauma Presents Across the Age Span

Identify how FRAYED symptoms present differently based on a child’s developmental level, become familiar with how the lower brain (safety) develops at the expense of the higher brain, define the role of the default mode network in child development, and consider how intrapersonal, neurocognitive, interpersonal, and regulation (INIR) competencies are impacted at each developmental level.

Trauma Assessment and Suicide Prevention

Review different methods for systematically detecting trauma symptoms among pediatric patients, discuss how to systematically screen for suicide using both screening tools and standardized interview questions, and discuss how to effectively incorporate trauma symptom severity and functional impairment/challenges when making treatment/referral decisions.

Evidence-Based Treatments of Trauma

Identify three evidence-based treatments (EBT) for childhood trauma, describe key components of trauma-informed treatment, and describe components of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), the most rigorously tested treatment for childhood trauma to date.

Promoting Regulation

Define, co-regulation and self-regulation, importance of promoting regulation, typical development of regulation, and how trauma impacts it, promoting the regulation of caregivers, co-regulation and the development of child self- regulation.

WEAVE: When Everything You've Already Ventured Isn't Enough

Integrate the request for medication to treat a child who has experienced trauma into the THREAD and FRAYED construct, consider what role medications play in supporting a child, and review what medications and what protocols have the strongest evidence support in the context of trauma.

Practical Approach to Disrupted Caregiving ECHO Series

Watch the short series below to learn more about practical skills to support to support safe, stable, and nurturing relationships (SSNR) or secure attachment relationships impacted by impaired caregiving. Impacted caregiving refers to substance use disorder (SUD), mental health disorder, or overwhelming social stressors, which impair their ability to provide SSNRs.

Session 1

Neurobiology of Parenting and Disrupted Caregiving

Session 2

Engagement and Coaching Caregivers in the Context of Disrupted Caregiving

Session 3

Surveillance and Support in Setting of Substance Misuse by Caregivers

Session 4

Bedside and Beyond the PPD Screeners: Pediatric Care and Caregiver Mood Disorder

Last Updated

02/03/2026

Source

American Academy of Pediatrics