The Learning Center for the Deaf (TLC) held a two-day certification training in Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART) Foundations for clinicians and counselors who work for Walden Community Services, Walden School, and Marie Philip School as part of a recent grant awarded from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
As part of this grant, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child Resilience Center was developed at Gallaudet University. This Center was designed to improve outcomes for traumatized deaf children, adolescents, and their families; reduce the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and address behavioral health disparities within the deaf population.
The goals of this project are to accurately assess trauma symptoms and trauma-related behaviors of deaf children and youth; to increase the number of evidence-based trauma focused interventions that have been adapted for deaf children and youth; to increase the number of mental health professionals who are appropriately trained in cultural and linguistically accessible evidence-based trauma-focused interventions, and; to develop new resources and screening tools to educate providers and families about the unique cultural and linguistic needs of deaf children.
Kasey Pendexter, Director of Clinical Services at Walden School, is a current Track Director on this grant and was able to bring this training to the greater TLC community.
“It has been an honor to work hand-in-hand with the extremely talented clinicians at Walden School to provide a deaf-centric framework for the current SMART Foundations training,” said Pendexter. “With this newly-trained group of deaf clinicians, counselors and therapists, we will be able to further enhance and adapt the materials in order to be linguistically and culturally accessible for the population we serve.”.
TLC recently completed a two-day certification in SMART Training.