NYU Langone’s Trauma Systems Therapy Training Center has developed an online training video series and curriculum for agencies interested in learning essential aspects of trauma-informed care.

Never Look Away: Acting with Clarity and Courage for Traumatized Children

The Trauma Systems Therapy Training Center has produced a nine-module, animated video series and an accompanying curriculum based on concepts and tools from Trauma Systems Therapy that covers essential aspects of trauma-informed care (such as assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, treatment engagement, advocacy, focused intervention).

The Never Look Away video series helps those responsible for caring for traumatized children to understand the child’s perspective and utilize this understanding to “never look away” from what is needed to help them. This pedagogy of this video series and curriculum applies case method techniques that center on two characters who have experienced traumatic events and who have significant problems related to their sense of safety and security in their worlds. The series engages participants to consider how to help these characters and the great many children like them to feel safe and secure in their worlds. The video series is entitled Never Look Away because this phrase encapsulates the central value used in TST for guiding the work with traumatized children and families.

This series is centered on two children, Ethan and Angela, who have experienced traumatic events and who have significant problems related to their sense of safety and security in their worlds. The series engages participants to consider how to help Ethan and Angela—and the great many children like them—to feel safe and secure in their worlds.

Each video module has a theme, described here:

• Never Look Away: The bedrock value for the work that must be conducted to care for traumatized children called Never Look Away is introduced. This imperative calls on those responsible to help traumatized children to understand what the child needs, and to be unwavering in the effort to provide it.
• Surviving: The central problem of traumatic stress is survival. This video introduces viewers to these survival systems and to their impact on traumatized children.
• Looking: The work to help traumatized children involves investigation, the process of looking for clues to understand the conditions under which a child shifts to a survival state. This video describes how to look for these clues.
• Remembering: By understanding how extreme reactions in the present can be related to past experiences of trauma, this video helps viewers understand how a traumatized child experiences their world.
• Caring: This video reviews the importance of interpersonal relationships in the child’s life, and the quality of the child’s attachments, for building hope and recovery.
• Doing: In this video, we describe how interventions are selected and implemented, based on the understanding that has been gained.
• Protecting: Sometimes the care that must be provided is done in the context of high risk: the child may be at risk to harm themself—or others—due to the child’s own impulses. This video details how the principles of intervention are implemented in contexts of high risk.
• Partnering: This video details the process of determining the partnerships that are needed, the way in which partnerships can be strengthened, and actions to take if the individuals needed in partnership are unwilling or unable to participate as partners.
• Bearing: The work required to help traumatized children is hard and requires an understanding of the personal toll of the work and the use of processes that can help to manage such toll. This video is designed to help those who care for traumatized children to take care of themselves.

In addition, we have a new series coming soon: Never Look Away for Foster Parents. View the brochure in PDF or SVG format.

Contact Us

For more information about Never Look Away, please contact Katherine Barral, program coordinator, at katherine.barral@nyulangone.org.