We are excited to share news about the new TRANSFORM Research Center at Mount Hope Family Center, one of Children’s Institute’s longstanding partners and community neighbors. Dr. Jody Todd Manly, Clinical Director at Mt Hope Family Center, explained that the new Center will provide guidance to providers around ensuring child wellness, provide the latest research to lawmakers, and support education structures for parents. While the TRANSFORM Center focuses primarily on preventing child abuse and neglect, this research also informs childcare for all young people.

The TRANSFORM Center is a partnership between the University of Rochester and the University of Minnesota with support from the Educational Development Center Inc. the TRANSFORM Center has three primary goals: Project Promise supports successful parenting, an Adult Health study will follow up with 600 individuals initially assessed during childhood to provide key insight into the affects of childhood maltreatment, and the Center’s Community Engagement Core (housed at the University of Rochester and the Susan B. Anthony Center) will work to disseminate cutting edge research and practices to parents and providers. Building a network across providers to share information and amplify work being done across sectors is a primary vision to promote child wellness.

The TRANSFORM Center has already hosted a series of webinars for interested community members. Particularly, content around data sharing to improve child outcomes and working collaboratively across systems provide key information for educators and out of school time providers.

Finally, resources at the TRANSFORM Center will be forthcoming in future months, but experts still point toward the Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators as a high quality and informative source of important information.

In addition to the TRANSFORM Center, Mount Hope Family Center provides a variety of family and community services to help children and families affected by trauma, abuse, neglect, and violence. Learn more about their many programs and resources, such as child-parent psychotherapy, The Incredible Years parenting group, and Project STRONGER (Supporting Trauma Recovery Opportunities and Nurturing Growing Emotional Resilience).