The Jewish Board: Trauma-Informed Care, Mobility Mentoring, & Child Welfare in New York City

This month's highlight is child welfare organization The Jewish Board based in New York City. They have served families in New York City for over 140 years. In 2020, they joined the Exchange network and have been implementing Mobility Mentoring in the child welfare sector ever since.

They are a learning organization and invest in professional development through a commitment to a set of core values including Trauma-Informed Care (TIC). The Martha K. Selig Educational Institute is the training and organizational development center of The Jewish Board. Through this institute they offer courses focused on TIC, helping professionals to understand, recognize, and respond to the effects of trauma. They emphasize physical, psychological and emotional safety for both professionals and families, and helps clients rebuild a sense of control and empowerment.

The Mobility Mentoring program leadership has discussed and is exploring together the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR), and SAMHSA’s National Center for Trauma-Informed Care (NCTIC) principals when responding to Public Health emergencies. This idea is being embraced as poverty, inequities based on race and other identities, along with nearly all referral reasons experienced by our families constitute a public health concern.

Some of the principals explored by the leadership and embraced with staff and clients are: safety, trustworthiness & transparency, collaboration & mutuality. The team is committed to building understanding of the impact that inequities based on race, gender, cultural as well as other identities and the way that this impacts engagement and goal achievement with the families they serve.