Multidisciplinary and Collaborative Trauma Training and Perceptions of Trauma Experiences In Child Welfare

Background: An abundance of research has documented how children in foster care experience trauma. This research has informed casework practice and trauma-informed services. While there is ample research on the effectiveness of trauma-informed practices, less is known about how child welfare (CW) professionals perceive the degree of trauma children and families experience during different CW situations. Furthermore, there has been a growing national conversation about understanding the Human Need for Belonging (Franck Meyer, 2024), reimagining a CW system to recognize the trauma inflicted upon families and children from oversurveillance and forced removals and restructuring systems to keep families together. This study explored two research questions: (1) Does participation in multidisciplinary and collaborative trauma (MCT) training influence CW professionals’ perceptions of trauma experienced by children and families in different CW situations?; and, (2) Does MCT training influence perceptions differently than other trainings?

Method: This study used a statewide survey of CW professionals in a Midwestern state in 2025 (n=795). Participants rated degree of trauma experienced from minimal (1) to severe (7) in reference to four CW situations: reported for maltreatment, assessed for maltreatment, received family preservation, and separated by foster care. Participants rated child and family experiences separately and self-reported their training participation as no (0) or yes (1). Participants indicated if they participated in (a) mandated reporter training for reporting child abuse/neglect; (b) risk, danger, and safety practice training for individualized assessment/safety planning; and, (c) a MCT training on trauma related to family separation. The MCT training was unique due to university-agency collaboration and multidisciplinary implementation. We conducted multivariate regressions to test the relationship between perceptions of trauma by CW situation and training participation. We accounted for missing data using full information maximum likelihood and controlled for workers’ position, race, gender, years’ experience, service region, and position in all analytic models.

Results: We found participation in MCT training influenced perceptions of children’s and families’ trauma experience across different CW situations. Participation in MCT training was positively associated with perceptions of more trauma experienced by children (reported: b=0.37, p=0.02; assessed: b=0.35, p=0.008; foster care: b=0.24, p=0.04) and families (reported: b=0.31, p=0.04; assessed: b=0.32, p=0.02) in most circumstances. No statistically significant associations were found between either mandated reporter or risk-safety training and perceptions of trauma.

Implications/Cnclusion: Our findings provide several key insights and implications. First, effective training can be implemented to shift perspectives to align workers’ perceptions with evidence-based research. Second, multidisciplinary and collaborative trauma training may have unique influences beyond standard training. For instance, mandated reporter training did not influence perceptions of trauma. This is important as mandated reporting initiates the process of children and families being touched by the system. Similarly, risk-safety training did not influence perceptions of trauma experienced. These results suggest CW professionals could benefit from MCT training to understand the potential harm caused to children and families at all points of the CW continuum. Finally, this research sets the stage for future explorations on how MCT training influences casework practice and understand how perceptions impact CW outcomes.