The National Center for Children Exposed to Violence (NCCEV) at the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) has designated its long-time colleague and partner, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Child Development-Community Policing Partnership (CM CD-CP) in Charlotte, N.C. as the NCCEV’s Southeast Regional Training Center.

The YCSC first set up the Child Development-Community Policing Partnership between Yale and the New Haven Department of Police Services in 1996. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department sent representatives to be trained by the CD-CP model in the same year. Since the establishment of the NCCEV in 1999, the CM CD-CP has continued to foster a close relationship of replication training, collaboration and technical assistance.

“The goal is to establish closer working relationships among police and mental health clinicians in order to respond in a coordinated, timely, and developmentally appropriate manner to children exposed to violence and trauma, with the intent of preventing the development of serious, long-term psychological damage that often results,” said Sarah Greene, the CD-CP Program Coordinator in Charlotte.

The Clinton White House and the Department of Justice established the NCCEV at the Yale Child Study Center in 1999. Originally conceived by Dr. Steven Marans of the YCSC, Connecticut House Representative Rosa DeLauro and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman ’63 LAW ’67 , the establishment of the NCCEV recognized the pioneering work of the Yale Child Study Center in the field.

“The YCSC had long been a leader in the study of the traumatic effects of violence exposure to the social-emotional development of children,” Dr. James Lewis III, Chief of Operations at NCCEV said.

Since the NCCEV’s establishment, Greene said, the YCSC has been considered the best model for how to serve children exposed to violence and trauma. Due to its great success, the practices and training of the NCCEV have been replicated at 14 sites nationwide, culminating in this new Southeast Regional Training Center in Charlotte (NCCEV-SRTC). The new NCCEV Training Center has already begun to train a partnership team in Raleigh, N.C. at the Wake County Department of Child Welfare and Mental Health Services.

“Since our relationship with NCCEV at Yale has grown, our opportunities to provide CD-CP replication training and technical assistance to other communities interested in creating similar collaborations serving children exposed to violence and trauma have increased,” Greene said.

Lewis said NCCEV is planning additional replication training this year in Providence, R.I., Zuni, N.M., and in Chatham County, N.C.. NCCEV operates a trauma center in New Haven, but generally does not provide direct service to individual children. Instead, the Center offers expert consultation to those who do provide direct service, including the New Haven Police Department.

He said some of the Center’s most important work has stemmed from the national trauma and violence of the last few years, including that of Sept. 11, 2001 and the Second Iraqi War.

“During the crisis of 9/11, NCCEV was instrumental in providing information and guidelines to parents and teachers regarding how to cope with children confronting this crisis,” Dr. Lewis said. “Again during the ramp up to the war in Iraq, [we provided] printed and electronic information to assist the professional and the public community’s capacity to respond to children in crisis.”

The NCCEV also provides technical assistance to eleven “Safe Start” Initiatives — a program that provides funding to aid young children exposed to violence, Lewis said. All of its programs have consistently received bi-partisan support from the current and previous administrations at the Department of Justice and in Congress, he said.