Category Archives: publications

Report: Youth Resilience

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Dear WestCoast Community,

Today WestCoast is releasing a new study, Strength Profiles of Youth Seeking Mental Health Services: Shifting the Perspective from Risk to Positive Assets. We focus on the qualities and resources that make children resilient in the face of toxic stress. 

Studying the strengths of over 2,300 youth who received services at WestCoast, we found that:

  • The majority of youth had several strengths, such as optimism, social skills, self-reliance, resourcefulness, talents and interests, and spirituality. 
  • Strengths are not equal. Coping skills and social skills especially lessen the impact of negative life experiences.
  • Youth rely on their skills and optimism to support their resilience when experiencing challenges.

In addition to helping youth manage adversity, providers and caregivers can promote healing by focusing on the positive aspects of a youth’s characteristics, skills and resources. Leveraging and building strengths must be part of every child’s development.

This report culminates our three-part series on how mental health needs are impacted by experience, and how needs and strengths are not mutually exclusive. 

We could not do this work without you. We also want to give a special thank you to the Zellerbach Family Foundation and our individual donors for supporting WestCoast’s research. 

With gratitude,

Stacey Katz

Read our Youth Mental Health Series here:

New Report: Community Violence and Youth Mental Health

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Today, WestCoast Children’s Clinic is releasing a new study, Spotlight on Community Violence: An Underrecognized Danger to Children’s Mental Health. This study focuses on the impact of community violence on youth mental health. 

Existing research suggests that community violence is a prevalent source of trauma for youth in the U.S. that also affects children’s emotional, behavioral, and physical development. Our study adds to this research by demonstrating that the effects of community violence on children’s mental health are as impactful as abuse and neglect.

We found that youth who witness or are victims of violence in the community have unique patterns of intensive mental health needs that include a higher likelihood of running away and suicide.

Photo of Oakland skyline and Lake Merritt

These findings, along with other research, strongly suggest that we need to address community violence in treatment. Community-focused interventions can help youth heal from collective trauma. Also, we must advocate for policy reforms that address the underlying conditions that give rise to community violence. 

Thank you so much for your continued support. We could not do this work without you.

Read more of our research here.

WestCoast research studies Exploitation and Gender

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WestCoast is releasing a new research study, Exploitation and Gender: Increasing the Visibility of Cismale, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming Youth. There is a common misconception that sex trafficking and exploitation only impacts cisgender girls. However, cismale, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth also experience exploitation, yet remain unseen by providers.

Young child on rope structure in a playground

Through focus groups with survivors and providers, we found that though indicators of trafficking are universal across gender identities, they are often overlooked or discounted for cismale, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth.

Based on our findings, we recommend the following: 

  • Incorporate gender inclusivity in trainings to combat myths about exploitation and gender.
  • Highlight the exploitative nature of survival sex, which may be more common among cismale, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth.
  • Implement universal screening to support identification of all vulnerable youth.

Our research also underscores the need to create welcoming, non judgemental, culturally relevant systems of care. Youth of all gender identities need safe environments where providers take their experiences seriously and can identify the signs of sexual exploitation.

We are grateful to our focus group participants and interviewees for sharing their time, expertise, and insight with us. 

To support WestCoast’s clinical, training, and research work, please consider donating today.

Acknowledgements:

This report was possible through the expertise provided by more than 30 focus group participants and interviewees. We would like to thank them for being generous with their time and for their willingness to share their thoughts, insights, and experiences. We are also grateful to all of the individuals who generously provided input and reviewed this report.

Sincere thanks to our consultants who provided candid feedback and helped steer this report in the right direction:

Thank you to the staff at WestCoast Children’s Clinic who provided significant support to carry out this project: Morgan Bernados, Leilani Diaz, Hannah Haley, Eden Moore, and Nick Nguyen.

New WestCoast Research: The Intersection of Trauma & Mental Health

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WestCoast Children’s Clinic is releasing a research study, Uncovering Trauma At a Community Clinic: Links to Mental Health Needs, the first in a three-part series on youth mental health. In this first paper, also published by the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, we discuss how patterns of trauma exposures among youth result in distinct mental health needs. 

For the youth WestCoast serves, we found that the impact of community violence on mental health is just as profound as child abuse and neglect: Youth who experience community violence exposure have the highest level of mental health needs. Additionally, youth that experience a single traumatic event often need as much intensive support as those that have experienced more than one trauma. As such, counting traumas is not as helpful as understanding the whole of the child’s experience when providing support. 

Taken together, our findings reiterate the importance of policy and community-level interventions that address poverty, racism and other environmental factors that deeply impact children and families’ lives.  

To read more about our findings and their implications, read the full paper here.

Thank you to the Zellerbach Family Foundation and our individual donors for supporting WestCoast’s research.

WestCoast report highlights the importance of universal screening for trafficking

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Today WestCoast Children’s Clinic is releasing a brief about the impact of universal screening on identifying children who are trafficked or vulnerable to sex trafficking. Our experience using the Commercial Sexual Exploitation – Identification Tool (CSE-IT) shows that universal screening is critical to both prevention and early intervention. 

Early identification and intervention prevent prolonged abuse

Most children experiencing exploitation go two or more years before anyone notices the signs. After implementing a universal screening protocol, child welfare staff in one large urban county identified ten times as many trafficked youth.

“Screening universally was a game changer for us. It allowed us to do more than just verify our gut instinct about cases. We started to see how all the complicating factors point to exploitation. We’re better able to recognize the abuse.” 
– Child Welfare Manager, large California County 

Universal screening can be implemented in any setting

Screening universally with a validated tool like the CSE-IT only takes 3-5 minutes to complete. WestCoast has trained providers in 20 states to use the CSE-IT in settings such as child welfare, juvenile justice, schools, foster family agencies, child advocacy centers, healthcare settings, and homeless shelters. These agencies range in size and staff capacity, demonstrating that universal screening is feasible in all systems and settings. 

As of this publication, providers have screened nearly 134,000 youth using the CSE-IT, and identified 15,197 youth, or 11%, as having a clear concern for exploitation. If you are interested in learning more about the CSE-IT, please contact us at screening@westcoastcc.org.

To increase the number of exploited youth that get the help they need, please consider donating to WestCoast Children’s Clinic today.

WestCoast brief highlights scope of trafficking in Alameda County

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Today, WestCoast Children’s Clinic is releasing a brief describing the prevalence of child sex trafficking in Alameda County using data from the Commercial Sexual Exploitation Identification Tool (CSE-IT) collected between 2016 and 2021. In order to effectively serve victims of trafficking, we need to understand the scope of the problem. Here’s what we found: 

1 in 7 system-involved youth had clear signs of trafficking     

Of 2,204 children under the age of 18 who were screened, 348 youth (15.8%) had clear signs of trafficking and an additional 565 children (25.6%) had possible signs of being exploited. 

Gaps in screening result in ongoing exploitation

Universal screening using a validated tool like the CSE-IT is the most accurate way to understand how many youth have signs of sex trafficking. However, only four agencies in Alameda County conduct universal screening, resulting in an undercount of youth experiencing exploitation. 

Screening is only the first step 

Screening for signs of trafficking should be part of a Universal Screening and Response Protocol that guides next steps, such as getting youth the help they need, safety planning, and mandated reporting. 

If you are interested in learning more about the CSE-IT, WestCoast’s research, or implementing screening in your agency, please contact us at screening@westcoastcc.org.

A Guide to Mental Health Treatment for Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth

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After a decade of providing community-based mental health services to youth who are commercially sexually exploited, WestCoast Children’s Clinic, in collaboration with the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice and the National Center for Youth Law, has developed a new framework for treatment: Psychotherapy for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children: A Guide for Community-Based Behavioral Health Practitioners and Agencies.

The guide describes the core components of treatment, the impact of ongoing trauma, and the importance of understanding exploitation in the context of social injustice and systemic oppression.

As awareness of child sex trafficking grows and systematic screening for signs of exploitation improves, the need for information about how to serve youth who are sexually exploited is all the more urgent. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley heard this echoed throughout California:

“The Human Exploitation and Trafficking (H.E.A.T.) Institute held seven summits across California in 2015 – 2016. In every community we visited, professionals called for more guidance on effective mental health treatment for trafficked youth. This framework advances our ability to help children who are sexually exploited and those professionals who provide psychological counseling and support.”

You can download the Guide here.

Thank you,

Stacey Katz, PsyD
Chief Executive Officer, WestCoast Children’s Clinic

Jesse Hahnel, Esq.
Executive Director, National Center for Youth Law

Julian Ford, PhD
Director, Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice, University of Connecticut Health Center

WestCoast Children’s Clinic presents at the annual Society for Personality Assessment conference

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Assessment Program Director, Barbara Mercer, and Assistant Program Director, Audrey Rosenberg, each presented a paper in a Symposium at the Society for Personality Assessment, an annual international conference, this year in San Diego. Barbara’s talk entitled “Living With Danger: Attachment and Complex Trauma in Oakland, California” was part of a Symposium called An International Perspective: Assessment’s Role in Uncovering and Coping with Client Trauma. Audrey’s talk “Beyond the Dyad: How an Organization can Support Supervisors who are Working with Unlicensed Trainees who are Testing High-Risk Youth” was in a Symposium on The Art of Supporting Supervisors: Supervision of Psychological Assessment.

Judy Wan, our pre-doctoral intern and next year’s post-doctoral resident, gave a poster session, Therapeutic Assessment with Adolescents: A Time-Series Design Examining Changes in Family Functioning. Her poster is on display in the hallway near the kitchen.

Eching Ho, who will be starting per postdoctoral residency with us in September, gave a poster session, Role of Acculturation and Enculturation on Chinese American Adults’ Perception of Child Psychological Assessment Models.