Program Goals

The goals for Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) [Trauma Treatment - System-Level Programs (Child & Adolescent)] are:

• Integrate routine, rhythms, and structures into intervention approaches and daily functioning to increase felt safety and support skill development
• Support adult caregivers including milieu staff, administrators, support staff, and educators in understanding and managing their own responses to youth in their care
• Build adult/provider/caregiver capacity to effectively understand and respond to the needs driving youth behaviors
• Support effective responses to youth behavior that are trauma-informed and that increase, rather than decrease, safety
• Build child/adolescent understanding of emotional and physiological experience, including a language for experience and an ability to connect and contextualize emotional cues, through systematic approaches that engage youth in reflecting upon their internal experience
• Build child/adolescent ability to effectively manage and tolerate emotional and physiological experience through systematic approaches to supported regulation
• Build organizational structures and supports to engage and support children/adolescents in building and sustaining relational connections with others
• Support children/adolescents in recognizing choice points, managing impulsive behaviors, and actively making choices through staff/caregiver training and systematic structures that support active problem evaluation, decision-making, and empowerment in youth
• Engage systems in developing activities and approaches that support youth understanding of self, including unique characteristics and influences, coherence across time and situations, sources of efficacy and esteem, and future template
• Build organizational structures and systems that support youth in reflecting upon, processing, and developing a narrative of traumatic experience, and integrating this into a coherent and comprehensive understanding of self

Logic Model

The program representative did not provide information about a Logic Model for Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) [Trauma Treatment - System-Level Programs (Child & Adolescent)].

Essential Components

The essential components of Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) [Trauma Treatment - System-Level Programs (Child & Adolescent)] include:

• Emphasis on developing child, family, and provider engagement and stake in the organizational framework
• Integration of psychoeducation about traumatic stress at all levels of the work (e.g., system, providers, caregivers, child), including systematic approaches to both foundational and ongoing staff/provider training
• Integration of and attention to the use of routine and rhythm in organizational approach and structure
• Attention to staff and, if applicable, primary caregiver emotional experience through attention to staff systemic supports and structures (i.e., supervision)
• Engaging and building a curious, attuned stance among adult caregivers (e.g., staff, providers, administrators), including an understanding of the trauma-related drivers of behavior and skill in mirroring and responding to youth needs
• System-level approaches to addressing youth behavior that integrate an understanding of the drivers of that behavior and a trauma-sensitive, individualized behavioral approach
• Active, proactive attention to supporting youth physiological, emotional, and behavioral regulation through development of systematic regulation supports and routine engagement in modulating strategies
• Routine integration in treatment plans and milieu processes of attention to and support for development of youth strengths and competencies as a core element of intervention

Program Delivery

Recommended Intensity:

Once the program is implemented in an organization, the expectation is that it will be part of the system culture and be used all of the time.

Recommended Duration:

Once the program is implemented, the expectation is that it will be part of the system culture from that time forward.

Delivery Settings

This program is typically conducted in a(n):

• Foster / Kinship Care
• Hospital
• Outpatient Clinic
• Community-based Agency / Organization / Provider
• Group or Residential Care
• School Setting (Including: Day Care, Day Treatment Programs, etc.)
• Shelter (Domestic Violence, Homeless, etc.)

Homework

This program does not include a homework component.

Languages

Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) [Trauma Treatment - System-Level Programs (Child & Adolescent)] has materials available in languages other than English:

Dutch, Spanish, Turkish

For information on which materials are available in these languages, please check on the program's website or contact the program representative (contact information is listed at the bottom of this page).

Resources Needed to Run Program

The typical resources for implementing the program are:

Commitment of administration to the implementation process; personnel willing and able to commit the time/effort into training and consultation, along with identified change processes. The training/implementation process in a service system typically requires a commitment of a minimum of one-year; systems should anticipate a typical 3-year process of building sustainable organizational change. No specific concrete resources are viewed as essential, as the program is adaptable to the real-world setting in which it is implemented.

Manuals and Training

Prerequisite/Minimum Provider Qualifications

Integration of ARC into a system requires the appropriate education/licensure/certification of each staff member as required by their position/profession.

Manual Information

There is a manual that describes how to deliver this program.

Training Information

There is training available for this program.

Training Contact:

• Margaret E. Blaustein, PhD
  www.arcframework.org
  mblaustein@centerfortraumatraining.org

Training Type/Location:

Training may be provided on-site to a contracting agency; consultation is typically remote. The two-day foundational training is also available several times/year as an open-registration workshop.

Number of days/hours:

The standard foundational training is 2 days; minimum suggested follow-up consultation is at least one year (1-3 hours/month) for systems change initiatives. In an organizational system offering clinical services, systems change efforts typically incorporate both clinical and systems-focused consultation.

Relevant Published, Peer-Reviewed Research

Additional References