The Benchmarks’ Standardized Assessment Project (SAP) and Surry County’s SAP Leadership Team welcome The Children’s Center of Northwest North Carolina as our newest Trauma-Intensive Comprehensive Clinical Assessment (TiCCA) provider!
The Children’s Center of Northwest North Carolina (Children’s Center) provides a wide array of programs and services for children and families in the Northwestern region of North Carolina. Community Relations Coordinator, Valerie Smith, states “The Children’s Center offers a wide range of programs that support the prevention, intervention, and treatment of child abuse. In addition, the Children’s Center provides services for neglected and at-risk youth. The Center operates two residential homes—one in Surry County and another in Yadkin County. In the past five years, our mental health clinical services have expanded to include Psychiatric diagnostics, Psychotherapy, CBT, and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Most recently, we were invited to join Benchmark's SAP project.”
According to their website, The Children’s Center provides services ranging from residential facilities to monetary incentive programs. The services include behavioral health services, family services, and youth services. The residential services they provide are certified through Cornell University’s CARE program. Family services include evidence-based models that are designed to help prevent child maltreatment through intervention. The Children’s Center provides youth programs for at-risk or court-involved youth that operate in partnership with local juvenile crime prevention councils, court staff, school personnel, etc. The agency also offers a wide range of evidence-based mental health services for children, families, and adults. They also provide specialty services for The Department of Social Services, Juvenile Justice, and other local agencies.
The Children’s Center services are offered across Northwest North Carolina in Ashe, Alleghany, Stokes, Surry, Yadkin, and Wilkes County. Surry County’s SAP Leadership Team identified that the Department of Social Services (DSS) needed an additional TiCCA provider locally to meet their assessment capacity needs for children coming into foster care with trauma. The Children’s Center was chosen by the Team and committed to participating in Benchmarks’ Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) Project as a local Trauma-Intensive Comprehensive Clinical Assessment (TiCCA) provider.
The Benchmarks’ TiCCA assesses multiple domains of a child’s life and experiences, to produce the most appropriate trauma-informed diagnosis and holistic recommendations. In May 2022, the Children’s Center began its participation with the project when Dale Smith, Director of Behavioral Health, was trained as a TiCCA assessor. Dale states, “We are so grateful to be a part of this wonderful project and look forward to utilizing standardized, trauma and evidence-informed assessments to ensure that an appropriate diagnosis will lead to proper service provisions and improve child and family outcomes.”
The Children’s Center is delighted to be a part of another community project that is working to improve the outcomes for children and families in the Northwest North Carolina region. Executive Director, Robin Testerman stated “The Children’s Center is excited to be a partner in this project to improve the quality of life for children entering foster care. As a provider, we see firsthand the impact of multiple placements. The Standardized Assessment Protocol pilot adds to our trauma informed continuum of services we provide to our communities in Northwest North Carolina.” We welcome The Children’s Center of Northwest NC as our newest TiCCA provider and look forward to hearing about the great work they are doing with Surry County foster children!
For more details about the programs offered at the Children’s Center of Northwest North Carolina, please visit https://childrenscenternwnc.org/programs-classes/.
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