MAC's Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) works to ensure that children affected by family violence succeed in school. To reach this goal, TLPI advocates for laws and policies that create safe and supportive school environments sensitive to the needs of traumatized children. Like all MAC efforts, TLPI uses multiple strategies to achieve its goals, including outreach to parents and professionals, coalition building, policy analysis and report writing, case advocacy, and legislative and administrative advocacy.

The Initiative is currently engaged in the following activities:

1. Disseminating the landmark report and policy agenda, "Helping Traumatized Children Learn: supportive school environments for children traumatized by family violence," to educators and policy makers around the state and nation;
2. Providing education and training sessions for policy makers, educators, and advocates on the impact of trauma on learning and the ways in which schools can become supportive environments;
3. Building a coalition to advocate for laws and policies (such as MGL ch. 69 sec. 1N(b)) that enable traumatized children to focus, behave and learn in their classrooms and schools--email us today to join this important coalition of people who support children;
4. Working with experts in neuropsychology, trauma psychology, language, and education to develop guidelines for making educational evaluations and consultations trauma sensitive; 
5. Conducting outreach and training to domestic violence shelters for staff and survivors of domestic violence (the brochure "Domestic Violence Can Hurt Your Child at School," in both English and Spanish, can be downloaded for your reference);
6. Engaging in a partnership with the Harvard Law School’s clinical program, Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center (LSC). In this partnership, the LSC provides high quality case advocacy on behalf of battered women and their children in special education. The dual goal of this partnership is to pioneer cutting-edge casework in special education on behalf of traumatized children and to use the casework to inform the public policy initiatives of TLPI;
7. Chairing the Task Force on Children Affected by Domestic Violence, a statewide interdisciplinary collaboration whose goal is to address gaps in advocacy and services for children affected by domestic and other forms of family violence.

 For further information about the Initiative, send us an email. 

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