By Chris Gunderson, LPC-S, NCC, President/CEO, Denali Family Services
In response to a growing need for early childhood mental health services in Alaska, a multi-agency partnership, including the Alaska Children’s Trust and Denali Family Services, is working to disseminate Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) training across Alaska with the goal of training clinicians from around the state in this nationally recognized, evidence-based practice. In this post, I will discuss the need for this training and the reasons why CPP is an essential addition to Alaska’s continuum of care.
In calendar year 2019, the Alaska Office of Children’s services received more than 23,000 protective services reports, nearly half of which were screened-in for further investigation. Federal statistics indicate that younger children, ages 0 to 3, experience rates of maltreatment two to three times that of adolescents. In Alaska, nearly half of all child abuse victims experience their first incident of abuse before the age of 5. Taken together, these numbers tell us that very young children in Alaska are at elevated risk for abuse and neglect. What these numbers do not express is the profound, and disproportionate, impact that maltreatment early in life will have on a child’s development.
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