The landmark CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) has dramatically accelerated the movement toward trauma-informed care (TIC) in a wide variety of sectors ranging from mental health to education to primary care -- even whole cities are implementing TIC.
As this has happened, there has been an upsurge in resources about the definition of TIC, key principles, and implementation steps. Funders are investing larger amounts of money in TIC and organizations and service systems are rushing to implementing TIC in their systems.
At the same time, TIC has become an overused buzzword with definitions that vary widely and are often vague. Stakeholders have started to ask: "How do you know if TIC is really being practiced? How do you know if you are making progress? If we use an evidenced-based treatment such as TF-CBT, does that mean we are trauma-informed?" In short, theory and practice is far ahead of science.
A key barrier to the science of TIC is the lack of objective ways to determine if TIC is being practiced. The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale was created to fill this gap.
Finally you can know if you are making progress toward trauma-informed care
The ARTIC is the first psychometrically valid measure of TIC published in the peer reviewed literature. It was developed collaboratively by the Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers and Dr. Courtney Baker at Tulane University.
The ARTIC measures the favorable or unfavorable attitudes of service providers toward TIC. It is based on the premise that staff attitudes are an important driver of staff behavior -- and the moment-to-moment behavior of staff is a critical factor in successful implementation of TIC.
Join a FREE webinar about the ARTIC
on April 12th or May 2nd.
The ARTIC is unique is several ways. While there are many organizational self-assessment tools that have been created to assess TIC implementation by an organization (screening, training, treatment models, policy, etc), the ARTIC measures something different -- staff attitudes. Furthermore, other than the TICOMETER created by the Center for Social Innovation, these organizational tools have NOT been psychometrically validated via research, which means that they may lack properties that make them accurate and reliable measurement tools. The ARTIC, in contrast, resulted from an intensive two-year research process that greatly increases the likelihood that it actually measures what it is intended to measure.
There are three versions of the ARTIC for human services settings (45-item, 35-item, and 10-item short form) and three parallel versions for education settings. The ARTIC has five core subscales and two supplementary subscales. The longest version, the ARTIC-45, can be completed in 15 – 20 minutes.
The ARTIC can be purchased for an introductory one-time fee of $450. When you purchase, you will receive:
- All versions for human service and education settings
- Instructions on how to use and score the ARTIC
- The ARTIC Scoring Spreadsheet allowing easy and accurate scoring.
Fees are used to support the research on the ARTIC and other Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) educational projects.
If your agency has adopted the Risking Connection Trauma Training Model to implement TIC, the one-time fee is $150.
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