Trauma-Informed and Healing Centered Tools, Trainings, and Research

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CTI Chicago Resources

We seek to create responsive systems and healing-centered communities within our city, while striving to support individuals, advocates, and practitioners. CTI Chicago has curated a wide range of trauma-focused resources, tools, and educational opportunities, created by Chicago partners, and trauma-informed initiatives across the country. For convenience, resources are grouped by categories, and include a brief description.


  • What is Trauma?
    This site is intended for those just learning about trauma: its definitions, effects, and the science around it.
    via the Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Resource Center
  • Understanding the Effects of Trauma on Health
    This is a concise factsheet outlining what childhood trauma is, how it can impact physical and behavioral health outcomes, and how providers and advocates can implement effective solutions.
    via the Center for Health Care Strategies
  • What is Secondary Trauma?
    This site includes explanations and examples of secondary trauma (the emotional distress that happens when we hear about or witness another person's traumatic experience, includes a short video and links to related resources.
    via the THEN Center: The Center for Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity, and Neurobiology
  • A Guide for Youth: Understanding Trauma
    This guide is designed to help youth make a connection between stressful events and the potential lasting impacts. Understanding trauma and having a framework to talk about past experiences can help in processing and asking for help.
    via Youth M.O.V.E. National
  • REACH Learning and Resource Hub
    This hub provides free, virtual on-demand learning and education resources to help educators, clinicians, parents, and caregivers better support the mental health and resilience of the children and youth in their communities. It focuses on trauma-responsive practices and policies, and fosters personal and professional resilience, social-emotional awareness and self-care.
    via the Center for Childhood Resilience
  • Supporting Trauma-Informed Schools to Keep Students in the Classroom
    Promising trauma-informed practices that were tested and implemented in five school- and district-based sites.
    via The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
  • Trauma-informed Schools
    There is a growing movement in schools nationwide to become trauma-informed. This report explains the why and how of trauma-informed schools and provides concrete rationale, possible action steps, and examples for creating thriving school environments.
    via the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice
  • Trauma-informed Policy Making Tool
    This Trauma-Informed Policymaking Tool adapts the six principles of the trauma-informed approach from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and can be applied to policy issues across all sectors.
    via HMPRG
  • Whole Child Task Force Report
    The Whole Child Task Force Report provides recommendations in establishing an equitable, inclusive, safe, and supportive environment in all schools for every student in Illinois
    via the Illinois State Board of Education
  • Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect: A Technical Package for Policy, Norm and Programmatic Activities
    A guide that outlines a series of potential technical interventions to address child abuse and neglect, primarily focused on the policy level, including bolstering economic, parental, and educational support for families. Each intervention is broken down by its strategy, approach, and evidence.
    via the Centers for Disease Control
  • Fostering Equity: Creating Shared Understanding for Building Community Resilience
    Learning modules and other tools for mapping out the collective experience of oppressive systems and policies, as well as the inequitable social structures that exacerbate individual traumas.
    via the Centers for Disease Control
  • Historical Trauma and Cultural Healing
    Video series and discussion questions to answer the questions: What is historical trauma? How do people and communities experience it? And how can reconnecting to cultural practices help families and communities heal?
    via the University of Minnesota Extension
  • How does trauma spill from one generation to the next?
    Article on the current research documenting and explaining generational and collective trauma and how to cope with it.
    via the Washington Post
  • How Racism Makes Us Sick
    David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality. In this eye-opening talk, Williams presents evidence for how racism is producing a rigged system -- and offers hopeful examples of programs across the US that are working to dismantle discrimination.
    via TED Talks
  • Segregation Stress Syndrome
    Dr. Ruth Thompson-Miller discusses “Segregation Stress Syndrome”–the chronic, enduring, and painful responses to collective trauma that occurred during Jim Crow, the effects of which are still felt today. This intergenerational transmission of trauma creates risk factors for young African Americans in their interactions with police and other systems in the modern world.
    via The Academic Minute
  • Preventing and Healing Trauma
    A curated set of resources for preventing and healing trauma.
    via the THEN Center
  • Youth Risk and Protective Factors
    This page idenitifies individual and community ACES risk factors, those that increase the likelihood of experiencing an ACE, and protective factors, those that decrease the likelihood of occurrence and potential negative effects.
    via the CDC
  • Protective Factors to Promote Well-Being and Prevent Child Abuse & Neglect
    A detailed explanation of, and additional resources on, protective facts that can prevent child abuse and promote wellbeing.
    via the Children's Bureau
  • The Resilience Tree
    A 90-minute webinar that dives into using “The Resilience Tree” as a tool to frame, implement, and measure community-level resilience and positive childhood experiences. Links include a worksheet and tutorial.
    via the Center for Community Resilience