New Article: David and Schiff, Trauma Intervention for Infants and Young Children

David, Paula and Miriam Schiff. “Learning from Bottom-Up Dissemination: Importing an Evidence-Based Trauma Intervention for Infants and Young Children to Israel.” Evaluation and Program Planning 53 (2015): 18-24.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2015.07.012

 

Abstract

This article describes a pilot study of a “bottom up” dissemination process of a new evidence based intervention for treating early childhood trauma. Clinicians applied to learn Child–Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), imported to Israel from the U.S. A focus group of six graduates of a CPP training program responded to questions concerning their experiences learning and using CPP. All 39 CPP graduates from two cohorts also completed a cross sectional survey related to their use of CPP. Within the focus group, the openness of the workplace and the intervention’s characteristics were considered major factors impacting CPP use; the training program was perceived to promote CPP implementation, and lack of supervision and secondary traumatic stress were the major inhibiting factors. Using CPP-informed therapy, as opposed to CPP with fidelity, was perceived to be one of the main outcomes of the training. Survey results showed that 53% of graduates were using CPP in over three cases, and almost all intended to use CPP within the next year. Ninety-five percent were using CPP principles in their therapeutic work. The implications of importing a new evidence based intervention to a foreign country that utilizes a different dissemination system within a different professional culture are discussed.