FIRST:ECE

To transform early childhood education systems by empowering personnel with the tools, training, and supportive community needed to implement trauma-informed practices that nurture resilience in children, families, and staff.

An early childhood education system where every child is seen, every family is valued, and every educator is empowered to foster safe, supportive, and resilient learning environments.

1. Three-Hour Trauma Awareness Foundational Training
   • Focus: Creates foundational understanding of trauma, its impact on children, families and staff, and introduces basic strategies any staff member can use in everyday interactions with individuals who have experienced trauma
   • Purpose: Provides an on-ramp for new staff or partners and casts a wide net to bring more people into the conversation about trauma-informed care. Can serve as a feeder or “Phase 1” entry point into deeper training programs like the classroom practices certificate program.
2. Learning Collaborative for Administrators
   • Focus: Supports leaders in implementation of system-wide trauma-informed care initiatives, including attending to domains of trauma-informed care that go beyond classroom practices (e.g. policies, family partnerships, staff resilience).
   • Purpose: Equips ECE leaders with the mindset, tools, and supportive network to successfully lead trauma-informed care organizational change.  Can complement teacher training initiatives and support their implementation and sustainability.
3. Trauma-Informed Classroom Practices Certificate Program
   • Focus: Cultivates trauma-informed practices at the classroom level, by building knowledge about trauma and providing sessions on supportive relationships, safety, self-regulation skill building, social skill building and self-care (the FIRST:ECE 5 Ss). Pairs 6 in-depth training sessions with individual coaching and digital touchpoints to focus on sustaining learning between sessions, addressing barriers and reinforcing consistency
   • Purpose: Builds deep knowledge, practical skills, and emotional resilience in educators. Can pair with the learning collaborative for administrators, creating alignment between administrators and classroom staff, and fostering impactful change.
4. Two-Year Intensive Organizational Change Initiative
   • Focus: Foster deep, sustained transformation of systems and culture in a single program or site.  Pairs leadership development and organizational change support with the trauma-informed practices certificate program trainings and coaching approach.  Includes a year focused on sustainability including peer support teams and ongoing support for organizational change initiatives.
   • Purpose: Provides a high-fidelity model of our full approach—blending leadership development, staff training, coaching, and systems change consulting.  High intensity offering for ECE programs with clear readiness and commitment to major organizational change – not designed for wide dissemination.

• In a study of 91 educators, teachers reported significant gains in trauma-related knowledge and implementation of TI teaching strategies in the classroom.
• Staff focused on implementation of broader TI organizational changes (e.g. adapting policies and procedures) reported they developed an effective and sustainable process for facilitating organizational change.

Full paper and results available here.

We are a multi-disciplinary team representing the fields of education, social work, clinical and educational psychology and educational research, with deep knowledge of trauma, trauma-informed care practices and the science of organizational change. Collectively, our team brings experience in teaching, administering ECE programs, organizational leadership, evidence-based mental health treatment for trauma, training and coaching and research and evaluation. We came together in 2018 at the request of partners in the ECE community, and since that time we have been developing, testing and refining approaches to supporting trauma-informed organizational change.

FIRST:ECE Leadership Team