Trauma Treatment for Youth in Community-Based Settings: Implementing the Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) Framework

Research demonstrates that exposure to traumatic events can have a negative impact on child development and well-being. Fortunately, an array of protective factors can build youth resiliency and the provision of trauma-informed services can assist in recovery from posttraumatic responses. In the past decade, there has been an increase in the development of, access to, and delivery of trauma-informed, evidence-based mental health interventions. Literature demonstrating the effectiveness of such interventions within community-based practice settings (e.g., mental health clinics, schools, public libraries, homes) is newly emerging. The present study examined the impact of the Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) framework on a sample of 83 youth receiving outpatient mental health services across a range of community-based practice settings in a suburban area of a Midwestern state. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests were used to examine pre to post changes on the Child Behavioral Checklist for Children (CBCL), the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) tool, and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC); all demonstrated statistically significant improvement and small to medium effect sizes across an array of social, emotional, and behavioral clinical indicators. Separate ordinal logistic regression models and linear regression models did not demonstrate a moderating effect for child sex, trauma exposure (total trauma item count), or treatment dosage (number of ARC sessions) on change over time. Child age moderated the externalizing subscale of the CBCL such that older youth demonstrated more improvement from pre to post ARC. Implications are discussed.