Skip to main content

Associate Professor Betsy Bledsoe discusses role on National Child Traumatic Stress Network steering committee  

by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work Associate Professor Betsy Bledsoe is a leading researcher in the field of social work. 

An expert in mental health services, intervention and implementation research, Bledsoe has published more than 90 peer-reviewed articles and delivered more than 300 presentations at venues around the world.  

Bledsoe is a co-director of the National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development [NITEWD] at UNC, a role she’s served in since 2021. The center is a part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network [NCTSN], funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA]. 

In March 2024, Bledsoe began a term on the national steering committee for the NCTSN. She and other members of the committee recently convened for a conference at the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress in Los Angeles, where they offered insights for improving care for traumatized communities and children. 

We spoke with Bledsoe to learn more about the work of the steering committee, insights and benefits gained during the trip, and more. This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

How would you describe the work done on the steering committee? 

The steering committee is one of the guiding bodies of the NCTSN. The NCTSN is a network of more than 250 sites.  

There is the Category One site, which oversees the network. That site guides the steering committee. The Category Two centers are focused more on the development, dissemination and implementation of evidence-based trauma interventions. We have an evidence-based training intervention here [at NITEWD at UNC]. The work of the Category Three centers is to provide services to children and families. 

It’s a guiding committee that influences work that’s done within the network. 

Were there any particular insights or benefits gathered by the steering committee during the trip? 

There’s an ongoing focus on the impact of racism and other forms of oppression and how that interacts with trauma and how that can create or exacerbate trauma for children and families. One of the things we discussed was existing initiatives. The steering committee has been responsible for producing statements around the impact of racism and anti-racism, how that should look within the network and how that impacts trauma. 

We also focused on other current issues, including the tension between evidence-based practice and traditional and community-based healing practices. This is driven by our Indigenous workgroup within the network.  

A portion of our meeting was devoted to how we can reconcile some of the differences between those practices and figure out how we can best guide the network in utilizing both evidence-based practices and Indigenous and culturally-based healing practices. 

The other area we looked at was the mental health workforce that is specifically focused on children, families and trauma; and on secondary traumatic stress. Secondary traumatic stress refers to the stress and distress that many of the members of our workforce experience and who serve children and families who’ve been impacted by trauma. We were looking at ways to reduce that. We want to support our workforce and to help retain and expand our workforce given the recent trends in loss of workforce.  

The third area we focused on was collaboration among different centers and working groups within the network and different ways to build collaboration. The network consists of these different centers across the country, but we also have working or collaborative groups within the network, such as the cultural consortium, a school-based group, a child welfare-based group, and an implementation group. We spent a lot of time looking to increase collaboration and sharing of work and resources between the groups as well. 

What is the impact of the steering committee’s ability to change the perspective of how we think and talk about these concepts? 

We have groups of scholars, such as myself, who are writing, who are developing interventions, who are working with children and families and learning what works best. But another thing that the network is charged with is deciding when and if we should issue a position statement. Those statements go out not only to the network, but across the country. Many providers who work with children and families use the NCTSN and its cadre of resources as a guiding light for how they do their work. 

We also looked at some of the political conflicts going on across the globe and how the network should handle guidance on those conflicts, including the conflict in the Middle East, conflicts and genocide in Africa, and conflicts in Europe. We think about, “Should we issue a position statement?” The network is focused on the United States, but we know these international conflicts do impact children and families in the United States and can cause traumatization.  

There are also a number of resources on the website available to practitioners, not only in the network but publicly available. We look at what’s going on in the context of potentially traumatic events for children and families, where we focus our energy and guidance, and where the network wants to focus its priority. 

We saw that clearly when we had the disaster of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. The network already had resources from previous natural disasters. As a member of the network, I receive a resource list in our listserv from the Category One site any time there’s a natural disaster in the United States. I was able to immediately forward that list to people in North Carolina so they had the resources at hand that were already developed.  

That’s one of the many ways the network is able to influence and support how we think about trauma, how we can react more expediently to serve those who have been traumatized. We know that you don’t send in a force of counselors immediately. You tend to basic needs first. A lot of that work has been done by the network. Eventually people learn these best practices and they’re at people’s fingertips when we have an event with a widespread impact on children and families. 

You’ve served as the co-director of the NITEWD at UNC since 2021. Are there any noticeable differences in the way we deal with and respond to child trauma now that weren’t as evident or apparent in 2021? 

We are paying more attention to the impact of race-based trauma. It’s always existed, but there has been increased attention to it. There’s been increased attention to socially engineered trauma.  

When the network was initially developed in the early 2000s, it was focused more internally on building a network of highly skilled practitioners. As much as it has expanded, it’s not large enough to serve everyone. There has been a move for the network to reach out to practitioners and agencies that are not necessarily a part of the network or funded by the network to make these resources more widely available.  

That sort of shift within the network changed our plan. Instead of working with practitioners who are part of network providing centers, we’re focused on getting the information the network has developed out to practitioners who aren’t as highly resourced. We’re moving beyond mental health-focused practitioners and looking at expanding into other professionals such as school counselors, nurses, first responders.  

Trauma is at pandemic levels. It’s important for people beyond mental health practitioners to be trauma-informed — teachers, law enforcement, first responders, general health care providers. It’s more important for those people to be trauma-informed as well because of the widespread impact of trauma in the United States and beyond.