Blog: Q&A: Increasing Access to Trauma-Informed Child Care in LA County

Since 1946, National Mental Health Awareness Month has been observed each May in the United States. To shed light on innovative, community-centered approaches to caring for the mental health and well-being of LA County’s youngest children, the Partnership is excited to share three deep dive interviews with leading early childhood service providers.

Below you will find an interview with Cristina Alvarado, Executive Director of Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles (CCALA), uplifting a unique program building the capacity of child care providers to offer trauma-informed care.

And, don’t miss the other interviews in this series on culturally tailored mental health care approaches in West and South LA with WIN and the intersection of young children’s mental health and the ongoing immigration crisis with Para Los Niños.

---

 

Please tell us about CCALA’s mission and the Trauma Informed Care Provider Training you offer as part of the Emergency Child Care Bridge Program?

Child Care Alliance of LA (CCALA) is a partnership of 10 agencies across LA County that administer child care vouchers and resource and referral programs to help families in need access high-quality child care. The Emergency Child Care Bridge Program emerged from a gap Sheila Kuehl identified ten years ago while serving on the Board of Supervisors: when a child is removed from their home and placed with a resource parent who is working, that family needs emergency childcare – sometimes within hours.

The Bridge Program has three components: emergency vouchers to quickly secure placement, navigation support to help resource parents find care, and Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) training for providers. That third piece is critical. When providers care for children who’ve experienced removal and trauma, they need the appropriate tools and training to be able to adequately address their complex needs. 

The TIC training is open to all LA County childcare providers, not just those currently serving foster children. Coaching is also available for child care providers, offering longer-term, personalized, and hands-on support to guide them in supporting the child to grow and thrive.

The TIC training is free to all child care providers in LA County, not just those enrolled in the Bridge Program. What was the thinking behind making it universally accessible?

Our goal is to meet providers where they’re at and provide flexibility. Even if a provider isn’t currently serving a foster child or a child who’s experienced trauma, sooner or later, they will have this need. 

Trainings are offered both in-person and virtually, and providers can choose whichever format works best for them. Since COVID, the virtual options have become more popular – partly for convenience, but also because some of the content gets personal. The curriculum asks providers to reflect on their own trauma, examine how it shows up in their work, and explore how that self-awareness can deepen their connection with the children in their care rather than create resistance. For some, that kind of reflection feels more comfortable on a screen.

That said, in-person sessions are intentionally offered throughout the county because providers also value the chance to connect with one another, share experiences, and build community across LA’s diverse childcare landscape.

Child care providers are often overlooked in mental health conversations – yet they’re on the frontlines with some of LA’s most vulnerable young children every day. What toll does that take, and how does the program support provider wellbeing alongside child wellbeing?

COVID made viscerally clear the support and preparation child care providers need and deserve due to their work on the frontlines of complex crises. When the pandemic hit, the Bridge Program was only two years old, but providers were suddenly among that group of essential workers still showing up in person. We also worked closely with Southern California hospitals to help essential healthcare workers secure child care so they could stay on the floor. Meanwhile, providers were navigating their own fear and uncertainty, many getting sick, while simultaneously absorbing the stress of children whose lives had been turned upside down.

Support during that period was less about formal curriculum and more about showing up and offering support – including through weekly webinars to answer questions, share information, and help providers feel seen and valued in an impossible moment.

That recognition is something we return to consistently: child care providers are professionals. They study brain development, trauma, and child attachment. And for young children – especially those in foster care whose worlds feel unstable – a provider can be the one safe, consistent adult they can count on every single day. That relationship is everything. 

It’s also important to understand who LA’s childcare providers are. Many are women of color, immigrants themselves, offering care in their home language to families in their own communities. That’s an invaluable cultural and linguistic bridge, but it also means providers often carry their own experiences of fear, displacement, and historical trauma.

The TIC curriculum takes that seriously. Rather than treating providers as blank slates, it acknowledges that everyone comes with their own history. By helping providers recognize and process their own trauma – including historical trauma – the program creates a deeper, more genuine connection to the children and families they serve. It’s not just about technique. It’s about making providers feel seen, so they can do the same for the kids in their care.

The curriculum covers everything from how trauma impacts brain development to self-care for providers — what module tends to be the most eye-opening for providers, and why?

Module 6 on “Strengthening Families” tends to be the most eye-opening for providers. It walks them through the risk factors that contribute to negative outcomes for children in foster care later in life, and helps providers make connections between a child’s history and the behaviors they’re seeing in their setting. It also covers the full web of relationships involved – with the child, with the family, and with other support systems – and introduces tools for self-regulation and self-care.

That self-care piece is something the program emphasizes strongly. Providers are often absorbing a significant amount of secondary trauma in this work, and building their own resilience isn’t a side note – it’s central to their ability to show up consistently and safely for the children in their care.

How does CCALA address ongoing resource gaps for child care providers who are providing critical services to diverse communities across Los Angeles? 

For us, everything comes back to this core truth that child care providers are professionals and community anchors who deserve the same investment as any educator. Giving them the support and resources enables them to provide critical services in the communities that need them most and connect families with critical resources and referral agencies. 

Even while public school teachers still face significant resource gaps throughout LA County, they consistently receive professional development as a matter of course. But, home-based childcare providers – who often literally transform their homes into learning environments – have far fewer professional development opportunities, often work in isolation, and are concentrated in the communities with the greatest need. The Bridge Program’s training and peer learning infrastructure is one way to close that gap.

CCALA builds provider capacity not just through formal training, but through ongoing peer learning. Connection Cafés and Communities of Learning – facilitated by partners like SEEDS at UCLA – give providers a space to share challenges, ask questions, and grow together. The learning is never one-size-fits-all: the same module can generate entirely different conversations with different groups, and some providers return to repeat trainings because the content is that meaningful.

Mental Health Awareness Month is a good moment to zoom out — what would it mean for LA’s child care system if every provider in the county had access to trauma-informed training and coaching? How can funders help support that goal?

When a child care provider gets licensed, they’re required to have first aid training to care for a child’s body, but there’s no equivalent requirement to care for a child’s mind. That gap needs to close. Mental health training should be as fundamental to child care licensing as CPR, because providers will inevitably encounter children carrying significant trauma, and without the right tools, even the most caring adult can feel lost.

That preparation matters – so that carers can have the tools they need to give children a safe space, help them grow, and help them play – whether it’s in the classroom or a family child care home, a preschool, or an infant center. 

We need to be a kinder society – one that cares not just for children, but for the people who care for them. That means expanding access to mental health training, adequately funding the programs that deliver it, and treating the social-emotional well-being of our youngest children as the public investment it truly is.