CPP Newsletter Winter 2024
Dear Community,
The Child Trauma Research Program has been continuously funded for the past 25 years by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as the lead site of the Early Trauma Treatment Network, a Category II grantee of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). We are entering Year 4 of our five-year grant cycle and would like to share some key accomplishments and milestones from Years 1 to 3. These include a range of training activities and resources developed for our CPP community.
Oh, the Places We’ve Gone
In May 2024, we conducted our first CPP Learning Collaborative (LC) in Spanish in collaboration with agencies in Puerto Rico including:
- ACUDEN
- Casa Albizu – Universidad Albizu
- CIMVAS del Programa Biopsicosocial
- Hospital Pediátrico Universitario, Departamento de Salud
- Ponce Health Sciences University
- Puerto Rico Play Therapy Foundation
- Universidad de Puerto Rico – Recinto de Río Piedras
Carmen Rosa Noroña and Heidy Garcia are the trainers for this cohort with Chandra Ghosh Ippen providing support on the consultation calls. Adriana Bowen was instrumental in translating the Spanish language materials. This LC was funded by our SAMHSA grant. We eagerly anticipate sharing future milestones and insights as we continue to learn and grow together.
Leader Spotlight
Carmen Rosa Noroña, LICSW, MS. Ed., IECMH-E®, is making significant strides in infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) through her advocacy for CPP. She has dedicated her career to addressing trauma, attachment, and the systemic challenges faced by underserved families.Carmen Rosa’s career is deeply influenced by three central aims:
- Transform practice through early developmental knowledge
- Contextualize attachment, development and trauma and provider-family relationships through sociocultural and historical awareness
- Examine and address systemic oppression’s impact on mental health
These driving factors shaped her early experiences in Ecuador, where she trained as a clinical psychologist. While providing care in an orthodox psychoanalytical model,
Carmen Rosa Noroña,
LICSW, MS. Ed., IECMH-E®
Carmen Rosa quickly recognized the limitations of her training. Many of her clients were unable to afford treatment, often facing significant barriers such as transportation issues and a lack of resources. This experience ignited her passion for understanding the needs of very young children and their families, leading her to seek deeper knowledge in IECMH.After completing a Fulbright scholarship in the U.S., Carmen Rosa returned to Ecuador, where she worked with UNICEF to evaluate and reform orphanages and systems of care for abandoned children. She observed firsthand the intersectionality of issues like homelessness, trauma, and systemic barriers, reinforcing her commitment to address these challenges throughout her career. Upon returning to Boston, she joined the Division of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center (BMC).
“This is what I have been waiting for.”
At BMC, Carmen Rosa found her calling in CPP–recalling her initial exposure to the model, she thought, “This is what I have been waiting for.” The CPP approach resonated with her belief that early intervention is vital for mental health and developmental well-being. CPP’s inclusion of caregivers in treatment. The model’s respectful stance towards families’ linguistic and sociocultural background, values and beliefs also spoke to her, given that many Latin American families feel marginalized in predominant treatment settings. Carmen Rosa continues to imbue CPP values into her work at the BMC Child Witness to Violence Program.Currently, Carmen Rosa is developing the Center for Excellence in Immigration, Infant, and Early Childhood Mental Health. This initiative aims to support immigrant families and the workforce serving them through diversity-informed reflective supervision and tailored training programs. By integrating her insights from CPP and implementation science, Carmen Rosa is working to create a comprehensive framework for addressing the complex needs of these communities.Carmen Rosa Noroña’s work exemplifies her dedication to IECMH and the transformative power of CPP. She is not only improving the lives of children and families but also paving the way for a more equitable approach to mental health care.
Voices from the Field
Gabriela Martinez-Souverville De Miller
Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist, Infant Mental Health specialist level (III)
NM License # CMF0131111
Gabriela Martinez-Souverville De Miller’s path to CPP is a testament to her resilience and dedication. Originally from Mexico City, she trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from Universidad Intercontinental. After moving to New Mexico twenty-five years ago, she began working within the Albuquerque Public School system in a parent involvement program, primarily working with immigrant families. Later, Gabriela transitioned to a counseling agency. It was here that she discovered a transformative one-year program that would shape her understanding of attachment and trauma. She remarked, “It was the first time I could understand and make connections about different sides of attachment, the connection between the nervous system of the mom and that of the child, and play therapy took a completely different meaning.” She was invited to participate in CPP training sponsored by New Mexico’s Children, Youth, and Families Department, under the leadership of Soledad Martinez (mentors including Alicia Lieberman, Chandra Ghosh Ippen, Deborah Harris, Jane Clark, and Julie Larrieu). She was struck by alignment of CPP with her personal values of empathy, support, and respect for parental roles. In particular, she noted that the CPP trauma framework helped her understand both what happens in the brain when a person experiences trauma and how the clinician can support parents through trauma work. In addition, creating a trauma narrative helps the child to regain trust and safety in their relationship with the caregiver.
“When you explain to the parent [what is happening] through the lens of trauma, you see the shift.”
Applying CPP in her private practice, Gabriela emphasizes the importance of understanding each family’s narrative, especially regarding their immigration experiences and cultural backgrounds, “When you explain to the parent [what is happening] through the lens of trauma, you see the shift.” Reflective consultation is inherent to the CPP model, and Gabriela emphasized that the Spanish-speaking CPP consultation group organized by Carmen Rosa Noroña and Patricia Lakatos has been invaluable in navigating the relational dynamics in bi-cultural families. This work can be complex; for instance, one case involved a Spanish-speaking mother recovering from trauma who struggled to connect with her child, who only spoke English. This community of practice offers Gabriela clinical context and emotional grounding, which she in turn brings to her clients: “The group holds you, you hold the parent, and the parent holds the child.” Gabriela takes pride in witnessing the transformative changes in families she has supported. While not every case is a success, the progress she observes—especially in the parent-child relationship—is deeply fulfilling. “Part of the closing phase is to [be together with the caregiver] remember back to the beginning and recognize how much has changed,” she notes.As she looks to the future, Gabriela remains passionate about integrating her learnings from CPP into her practice. She is committed to continuing her education and expanding her expertise to support mothers experiencing pre-partum and postpartum challenges. Through her journey, Gabriela Miller exemplifies the profound impact that dedicated practitioners can have on families, nurturing connections that foster resilience and healing in the face of adversity.
Honoring Our Angels
Jeree Pawl was a legendary clinician and mentor, someone who went beyond the conventional wisdom of standard psychotherapy principles to engage in clinical interventions that transcended narrow boundaries and reached the essence of what mothers and babies needed in the moment. Her sayings were memorable – among them, the much-quoted “How you are is just as important as what you do”, which became the lead line for the organizational vision and values statement of ZERO TO THREE, where she was president of the board and which awarded her its 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jeree started her career at the University of Michigan as clinical supervisor in Selma Fraiberg’s pioneering Child Development Project, a program that was the cradle of infant-parent psychotherapy and its concept of “ghosts in the nursery” to describe the intergenerational transmission of relational conflicts
Jeree Pawl
from parents to infants. In 1979 Jeree joined Selma in founding the UCSF Infant-Parent Program at the San Francisco General Hospital at the invitation of Robert Wallerstein, then-chair of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, whose vision was to bring the nascent field of infant mental health to California. Selma passed away in 1981 less than 2 years later, and it became Jeree’s life mission to take the helm of IPP as an innovative but fledgling program and transform it into a national beacon of clinical and training excellence in infant mental health.Alicia Lieberman, who worked with Jeree for 25 years and considers her one of her core mentors, compared hearing her talk about clinical moments to listening to Isaac Stern playing the Stradivarius. One example of her extraordinary gift for establishing trusting relationships even with deeply wounded parents stands out. A father with a long criminal history who had been in treatment with Jeree was in a dangerous stand-off with police, holding his 2-year-old. He agreed to surrender peacefully provided he could hand over his 2-year-old child to Jeree, and she went to the scene to make this possible.Jeree had extraordinary moral clarity, personal courage, and an incisive ability to cut through obfuscating considerations to get to the heart of the clinical matter. She embodied the highest values of the field of infant mental health, and we are all indebted to her for showing us how to be and not just what to do.
The Road Ahead
The UCSF Child Trauma Research Program will be hosting an in-person CPP Conference on February 6, 2025! Join us in San Francisco to connect with CPP model Developers and trainers, attend advanced CPP workshops, and practice ports of entry with fellow CPP providers. The Dissemination Team will also be rolling out two new fidelity strands!Cost of attendance is $200, or $225 for attendance and 6 APA CE credits. Click here for more information and registration!
The UCSF Child Trauma Research Program will be hosting an in-person CPP Conference on February 6, 2025! Join us in San Francisco to connect with CPP model Developers and trainers, attend advanced CPP workshops, and practice ports of entry with fellow CPP providers. The Dissemination Team will also be rolling out two new fidelity strands!
Cost of attendance is $200, or $225 for attendance and 6 APA CE credits. Click here for more information and registration!
Gratitude
The CPP community now has a crosswalk between Learning Collaborative training activities and the Competency Guidelines/Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health®, from the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health (AIMH). CPP practitioners around the country now have access to a guide for counting time spent learning the model towards a professional certification recognized by more than 20 states.This resource was developed by Carmen Rosa Noroña and Mindy Kronenberg, two CPP champions and trainers. The work was funded by SAMHSA as part of a grant to the Early Trauma Treatment Network, a site of the NCTSN. Thank you Carmen Rosa and Mindy for your commitment to and support of the CPP community–-we hope this tool supports the professional development and sustainability of the IECMH workforce.
