Bridge Project aims to help abused kids NH

http://www.reformer.com/newenglandnews/ci_15305878

Bridge Project aims to help abused kids

Note: My comment is at the bottom of the article. Please go to the article annd comment!
By HOLLY RAMER / Associated Press

Wednesday June 16, 2010
CONCORD, N.H. -- Some abused children recover quickly once they’re in a safe environment. Others may shut down and prove harder to reach. Recognizing and responding to those differences are among the goals of a new project aimed at synchronizing the state agencies that serve the youngest victims of abuse, neglect and other trauma.
"We need to make sure we have providers and I have staff who are able to understand and recognize that trauma can play out in different ways with different children, including children in the same family," said Maggie Bishop, director of the state Division of Children, Youth and Families. "That trauma begins to play itself out in how they are becoming either healthy or unhealthy adolescents, and we want to make sure the sooner we can intervene on that, the better."
The Dartmouth Trauma Interventions Center at Dartmouth Medical School has been awarded a three-year federal grant to oversee the New Hampshire Bridge Project. The project will train managers and workers in Bishop’s agency, the juvenile justice system and the family court system to more effectively serve children with emotional and behavioral problems resulting from trauma.
Dr. Stanley Rosenberg, the center’s director, said the project builds upon the center’s previous work, which focused on bringing the best practices in treating childhood trauma to community mental health centers. But the highest-risk children
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don’t always have access to that treatment and are more likely to show up in the child welfare or juvenile justice system, he said.
"A child gets involved with the juvenile justice system because of delinquency or anti-social behavior, but we know that the great majority of kids in that system are themselves survivors of trauma and abuse scenarios, often undiagnosed and rarely treated appropriately," he said.
More than 200 representatives from state agencies and other service providers are expected to attend the project’s first meeting Thursday in Hanover, where they will hear from Charles Wilson, director of the Chadwick Center at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. Both his center and the Dartmouth center are part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
Wilson, who will serve as a consultant to the Bridge Project, said the goal is to train the agencies to perform their jobs in a way that takes into account a child’s trauma history.
"We realized that focusing on mental health treatment for traumatized treatment is necessary but not sufficient to help them recover, because these children live in families, live in communities and many are in systems like child welfare and juvenile justice," he said.
"And if those systems are not aware of trauma issues and helping support traumatized children and their families, no amount of mental health work by itself is going to work."
He described his own experience investigating child abuse complaints in the 1970s and said that back then, the focus was almost exclusively on a child’s physical safety in deciding whether to remove a child from a home. Today, physical safety is still the priority, but the emotional impact also is taken into account. That could mean something as simple as making sure the child has his favorite teddy bear when he’s moved.
"Often what we’re talking about are not radically different things, it’s being more aware and sensitive to the trauma needs of children. it doesn’t require people to work a lot harder, it just requires them to work differently and be aware of the impact of trauma," he said.
Bishop said the project will build upon progress the agencies have made in collaborating with each other. While the state hasn’t seen an increase in children experiencing trauma, the severity of their problems has increased, she said. Early intervention in those cases is especially crucial, she said.
"What’s key to treating trauma is breaking the cycle, that’s the major piece," she said.


Dot Knightly
Join the community
Manchester, NH
1 min ago

Maggie Bishop fails to mention that most of NH's traumatized children, are traumatized due to being yanked out of their homes Illegally by DCYF. Many of the parents are falsely accused. Their children are removed immediately, as DCYF claims every child is in imminent danger. Services to these families is never an option, even though they are mandated by our Federal government.
Maggie Bishop also fail's to mention these children traumatized by the loss of their families, who try to commit suicide and have new found violent behavior, are then fed psycho-tropic drugs by DCYF making them worth more money, especially once their parent's rights are terminated and they are auctioned off for adoption, which is common practice in NH, seeing as children are NEVER returned, all parent's rights are terminated and the NH Supreme Court never reverses a TPR.(Words of a Nashua DCYF caseworker). Today physical safety is NOT a priority, considering all the physically abused children in NH still suffering abuse because DCYF is too busy railroading innocent parents. They will snag a white child first, before a bi-racial child and alway's a baby first and foremost as they have a list of waiting foster to adopt stranger's who have put in their order's for a baby. The younger the better.
A child doesn't even have to be abused or neglected to be stolen by DCYF and in DCYF cases there is NO burden of proof. Hearsay will do the trick along with DCYF's psychic ability of stealing a child for "Neglect in the Future."
There wouldn't be so many children in NH with emotional and behavioral problems if DCYF were held accountable for their many deceitful practices. DCYF is turning our children into psycho's. Most of them don't even have children of their own and they have NO CLUE how to raise a child. They are too lazy and ignorant when it comes to dealing with a traumatized child, so they drug them. Ask her how she really feels about children. She sure told me when she said I should have left my daughter in jail to die and then asked why she isn't dead.Ask Maggie Bishop about all this. Oh, don't bother, all she'll tell you is lies. I believe it's time for Maggie Bishop to find a new line of work. Maybe she'd do well as a bank teller, seeing as all she see's is dollar sign's. How about hiring someone who REALLY believes in family preservation, not family destruction!