Evidence over Conviction: Controlled studies of short- and long-term effects of psychoeducational interventions for trauma informed care to promote child health and resilience

Childhood trauma has profound, far-reaching consequences on child development and health, increasing the risk of mental illness, unemployment, poverty, and criminality in adulthood. Children in out-of-home care have often been through trauma.

Thus, the quality of daily interaction with foster parents, teachers, residential workers or social secretaries may be crucial for these children’s well-being, healing and feeling of security.

Trauma-informed training for key caregivers is increasingly used internationally to promote the development and resilience of children in out-of-home care, but there is little scientific evidence for the effectiveness of these interventions. Save the Children is the largest provider of trauma-informed training programs (TMO) in Sweden.

Through six controlled, quasiexperimental longitudinal studies, this project evaluates, for the first time, actual effects of TMO.

The project is uniquely collaborative as it is co-produced with Save the Children and other important institutions within public welfare.

Foster parents, preschool teachers, social workers and children in out-of-home care will be involved as key stakeholders in the planning and carrying out of the project, and also as participants in the studies.

The project outcome-variables will be finalised in collaboration with all stakeholders, but tentatively encompass children´s well-being, attachment security and behavior; foster parents’ behaviors, representations of the children and cooperation with co-parents; preschool teachers’ and social workers’ attitude and behavior toward the children, and professional self-efficacy.

Placement stability will measure system-level effects.

Our studies compare effects of psychoeducative intervention alone, or combined with either supervision or child trauma therapy. We control for socioeconomic variables and intervention fidelity. The project provides a basis for cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions, with implications for health-economy.