The Trust is interested in hearing from applicants who can facilitate deep community engagement efforts to learn about and map the root causes of trauma and toxic stress in our county. Proposals should also include plans to assess the alignment and efficacy of our community’s current efforts to prevent and mitigate trauma and toxic stress in the early years. Finally, proposals should outline a planning process that culminates in actionable recommendations about how to create more trauma-informed and healing-centered early childhood systems in our community.

Proposals can focus their assessment efforts on just one service system within the early childhood system (e.g., early childhood education; pediatric health; early intervention; social services) or can focus more broadly across the larger early childhood system. Proposed activities could include learning from trauma-informed approaches taken by other communities across and outside of our state, as well as broad-based awareness raising about toxic stress, trauma-informed care, secondary traumatic stress, and racial equity. Competitive applications will include concrete plans for how to deeply engage and center the experiences of the communities that disproportionately suffer from trauma and toxic stress in their mapping, assessment, and planning efforts.