UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — One out of every four students in U.S. schools has been exposed to a traumatic event that can affect their learning and behavior, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
Penn State’s Network on Child Protection and Well-Being aims to help those working with children identify and respond to the unique challenges of childhood trauma in schools with its fifth annual conference, “Trauma Informed Schools: How child maltreatment prevention, detection, and intervention can be integrated into the school-setting,” to be held Oct. 10-11 at the Nittany Lion Inn on Penn State’s University Park campus.
According to Jennie Noll, network director and professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, children who experience the trauma of maltreatment in the classroom often have difficulties outside of it as well. “These challenges can negatively affect educational well-being and often persist over the long term, creating unnecessary barriers to learning and independence,” Noll said.
The goal of the conference is to bring together key members of the research, educational, and child-welfare communities in order to create a unified dialog about how schools can more effectively move toward a coordinated, multifaceted response to traumatic events that take place in schools.
Conference sessions will include child-welfare legislation changes and school-based maltreatment prevention efforts, the behavioral and developmental impact of trauma, policies to improve education efforts, mandated reporter trainings, and how community providers, child advocates, and schools can work together to support teachers and improve the educational experience for children who have been maltreated.
The conference will conclude with a panel discussion focused on identifying the next essential steps in research, training and policy that will move the field forward to support administrators and teachers in promoting child well-being and creating enriched educational environments for students who have experienced trauma.
For more information about the conference and to register, go to http://protectchildren.psu.edu/content/2016-conference.
The Network on Child Protection and Well-Being was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the network was launched in fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. For more information on the network, visit protectchildren.psu.edu.