Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Children and Adolescents

Effects of child trauma screening on trauma‐informed multidisciplinary evaluation and service planning in the child welfare system

“…When compared to a sample of cases with an MDE that was completed prior to trauma screening implementation, youth in the postimplementation period were significantly more likely to have documentation of a completed trauma screen. As anticipated, the use of a trauma screen enabled providers and CWS workers to more thoroughly document children's general and specific traumatic reactions (Forkey et al., 2016), which is important given that trauma exposure can impact children and manifest itself differently in different individuals (Grasso et al., 2009; Lang et al., 2017).…”

“…Despite these variations, evidence suggests that the systematic collection of trauma history reduces the probability of misdiagnosis, aids in the early identification of trauma exposure, improves documentation regarding trauma‐related symptoms, and increases referrals for trauma‐focused services (Forkey et al., 2016; Grasso et al., 2009; Kottenstette et al., 2020). However, the impact of formal trauma screening practices in CWS on the documentation of children's trauma‐related needs and service planning in their records has not been studied.…”