A full ADDIE instructional design for a state child welfare agency, responding to a federal prevention services mandate and the agency's approved multi-year prevention plan.
A federal prevention services act restructured child welfare funding — making federal dollars available for prevention services, but only if those services are trauma-informed. This is not guidance. It is a prerequisite for federal reimbursement. This training was designed specifically for over 1,000 agency social workers, built directly from the agency's approved prevention plan and organizational data.
Organizational Context · Pre-Design Research
Before any design decision was made, I analyzed the agency's actual planning documents — the approved Prevention Plan and the Agency State Plan — alongside applicable federal and local legislation. The training is built from those sources, not adapted from a generic template.
Critical workforce finding: Agency social workers carry an average caseload of 34 simultaneous cases — more than double the 14-case average across other U.S. states and territories. The agency's own organizational assessment (completed by 75% of its workforce) found that 90% identified insufficient human resources and 64% identified insufficient technology as barriers. These findings shaped every design decision in this program.
Governance structure used: The Prevention Plan established six working subcommittees, two of which directly commissioned this training — the Trauma-Informed Workgroup (mandated to ensure TIC compliance) and the Workforce Development Workgroup (mandated to review the agency's training curriculum and address secondary trauma). Scientific partner: an independent research partner.
Evidence-based programs already approved: The agency's plan selected evidence-based programs for pilot implementation — plus a Core Curriculum in Child Trauma and a Wellness & Mindfulness Program for the workforce. This training is designed to prepare workers to recognize, refer to, and support these specific programs.
The Community's Collective Trauma Context
Every case scenario, facilitator script, and cultural reference in this program reflects the community's reality. The families agency workers serve exist within compounding layers of collective trauma that generic child welfare training does not address. I built those realities into the instructional design from the start.
A catastrophic hurricane caused thousands of deaths and left many areas without electricity for over a year. Agency workers are themselves survivors — many lost homes or had offices destroyed. This is not history. It is ongoing.
Economy significantly contracted over two decades. Federal oversight measures cut public services. Workers carry double the caseloads of mainland counterparts with fewer resources — a structural reality this training names directly.
A long and complex relationship with federal governance shapes how families respond to government intervention. The training prepares workers to understand and work with this distrust intentionally.
The southwestern earthquake sequence compounded existing crises. Workers in affected regions may themselves be in precarious housing while serving displaced families.
Isolation, domestic violence surge, parental mental health deterioration, school disruption, and economic contraction — layered onto all prior stressors for families already in the system.
Community values around family unity, personal relationships, mutual respect, and trust are not barriers — they are the cultural infrastructure of healing. This training builds on these values rather than working around them.
Design Process
Each document below is a standalone professional deliverable produced through the design process. The portfolio case study was assembled last, after all eight source documents were complete.
Curriculum Architecture
The curriculum follows the SAMHSA 4 R's — Realize, Recognize, Respond, Resist Re-traumatization — in direct alignment with the approved Prevention Plan. Cognitive demand is scaffolded progressively, from Remember and Understand in the early modules through Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create by the end.
Four Design Decisions
Every facilitation choice reflects trauma-informed values — predictable structure, no forced disclosure, learner agency, transparent communication. If the training contradicts what it teaches, it loses credibility before the first module ends.
Every case scenario, facilitator script, and cultural reference reflects the community's reality. A composite family scenario threads through Modules 1–3. Collective and historical trauma is named directly in the curriculum — not acknowledged in a footnote.
Agency workers have deep professional expertise and lived community knowledge. I designed TIC as a lens that builds on what workers already know — not a correction of prior practice. That distinction matters for engagement, and it matters for trust.
Awareness alone doesn't change practice. Every module includes observable skill practice with structured peer feedback. Every transfer task is tied directly to the worker's active caseload — not a hypothetical exercise they'll never use.
Learning Objectives
All 28 written at the correct Bloom's level, measurable, and tied to SAMHSA's framework. Filter by module below.
| # | Module | Learning Objective | Bloom's Level | SAMHSA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | M1 | Define trauma using the 3 E's framework (Event, Experience, Effect) and distinguish between acute, chronic, complex developmental, and collective/historical trauma | Remember / Understand | Realize |
| 1.2 | M1 | Explain ACEs research findings and their documented relationship to health, mental health, and child welfare involvement across the lifespan | Understand | Realize |
| 1.3 | M1 | Describe the community's collective trauma context (disasters, austerity, seismic events, COVID-19, historical factors) and connect to agency case realities | Understand / Apply | Realize |
| 1.4 | M1 | Identify how traditional child welfare investigation models may inadvertently re-traumatize families and why the federal prevention mandate requires a paradigm shift | Understand / Analyze | Realize |
| 2.1 | M2 | Explain how chronic stress and trauma alter brain development, with reference to the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, and HPA axis stress response | Understand | Realize |
| 2.2 | M2 | Describe the Window of Tolerance model and identify behavioral expressions of hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal in children, adolescents, and adult caregivers | Understand / Apply | Realize |
| 2.3 | M2 | Apply Polyvagal Theory to explain why safety must precede collaboration in family engagement, and how worker presence activates or deactivates the family's threat response | Apply | Realize |
| 2.4 | M2 | Reframe at least three behavioral presentations common in agency cases (e.g., aggressive parent, non-responsive teenager, withdrawn child) from deficit lens to trauma-informed lens | Analyze / Evaluate | Realize |
| 3.1 | M3 | Use SAMHSA's 6 Core Principles (Safety, Trustworthiness, Peer Support, Collaboration, Empowerment, Cultural Humility) as a screening framework for evaluating family interactions | Apply | Recognize |
| 3.2 | M3 | Identify developmental trauma indicators in children ages 0–3, 4–12, and 13–17, distinguishing trauma-driven behavior from developmental regression | Understand / Analyze | Recognize |
| 3.3 | M3 | Recognize trauma responses in adult caregivers — including emotional dysregulation, guardedness, hypervigilance, and apparent non-engagement — and differentiate from willful non-compliance | Analyze | Recognize |
| 3.4 | M3 | Apply the appropriate agency referral pathway for federally approved evidence-based services based on trauma-informed screening indicators | Apply | Recognize |
| 4.1 | M4 | Conduct a trauma-informed initial home visit using the OARS framework (Open questions, Affirmations, Reflections, Summaries) from Motivational Interviewing — explicitly included in the agency's Prevention Plan | Apply | Respond |
| 4.2 | M4 | Use strengths-based, trauma-sensitive language in Spanish in family interactions — avoiding deficit framing, coercive tone, and re-traumatizing questions | Apply | Respond |
| 4.3 | M4 | Demonstrate co-regulation strategies — adjusting one's own tone, pace, and physical presence to reduce threat activation in a dysregulated family member | Apply | Respond |
| 4.4 | M4 | Adapt engagement strategy when a family member is in active threat response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) using evidence-based de-escalation consistent with TI principles | Apply / Evaluate | Respond |
| 5.1 | M5 | Develop a trauma-informed family service plan integrating strengths, cultural assets, and family voice using agency case management documentation standards | Create | Respond |
| 5.2 | M5 | Conduct a trauma-informed safety and risk assessment using collaborative, non-coercive approaches that gather necessary information without re-traumatizing families | Apply / Analyze | Respond |
| 5.3 | M5 | Facilitate a trauma-informed family team meeting, structuring agenda to prioritize family voice, minimize power imbalances, and reinforce safety for all participants | Apply / Create | Respond |
| 5.4 | M5 | Write case notes using strengths-based, rights-preserving language avoiding deficit labels and diagnostic over-reaching, in compliance with agency documentation standards | Apply | Respond |
| 6.1 | M6 | Distinguish between Secondary Traumatic Stress, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout — identifying organizational and individual contributing factors | Understand / Analyze | Resist |
| 6.2 | M6 | Assess their own current STS symptom profile using the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL-5), interpreting scores with accuracy and without shame | Apply / Evaluate | Resist |
| 6.3 | M6 | Apply at least two evidence-based self-regulation strategies from the agency's Wellness and Mindfulness Program (somatic grounding, cognitive reappraisal) in a practice scenario | Apply | Resist |
| 6.4 | M6 | Create a personalized professional sustainability plan identifying STS risk factors, protective factors, early warning signs, and at least three specific mitigation strategies | Create | Resist |
| 7.1 | M7 | Evaluate the agency's team environment against SAMHSA's organizational trauma-informed self-assessment criteria, identifying at least three areas for improvement | Evaluate | Resist |
| 7.2 | M7 | Apply trauma-informed supervisory practices — including reflective supervision, parallel process awareness, and STS check-ins — in a case consultation scenario | Apply | Resist |
| 7.3 | M7 | Develop a team-level 90-day action plan identifying feasible policy or procedural changes to advance trauma-informed practice in their specific regional office | Create | Resist |
| 7.4 | M7 | Connect their TIC practice to the agency's federal compliance obligations, articulating how trauma-informed services enable federal reimbursement | Understand / Apply | Resist |
Phase 3a · Module 1 Storyboard — Sample
The storyboard is the most detailed document in any eLearning project — a slide-by-slide specification that serves as both the development brief for the developer and the review document for the SME. Module 1 covers 30 slides across 8 content sections, with full Spanish narration scripts written for each.
Sample Slide Specification — Slide 05: The 3 E's of Trauma
Design Decision — Composite Family Scenario
The composite family scenario (a representative child welfare family in the community, post-disaster) is introduced at Slide 4, returns at Slide 13 after the ACEs content, and threads through Modules 1–3 as a progressive practice anchor. This is a story-based learning technique: workers build a relationship with a case and watch their own understanding deepen from module to module. The ACE Score Reflection is informational only in the async eLearning — the private scored version is reserved for the facilitated live session where a trained facilitator is present. That boundary is a deliberate trauma-informed design choice, documented explicitly in the storyboard so no developer overrides it.
Phase 4 · Evaluation
Evaluation was designed before delivery, not after. For a training that directly affects child welfare outcomes and must satisfy federal compliance reporting, getting measurement right is not optional.
Full Deliverable Set
One document per phase — produced in sequence, not summarized after the fact.
About the Designer
I designed this program while supporting a child welfare agency's implementation of a federal prevention services mandate. Every decision was grounded in the primary source documents — the agency's Prevention Plan, the State Plan, applicable legislation, and the federal statute. I did not adapt a generic template.
The work covers the full instructional design cycle: organizational context research, needs identification, objective writing, instructional strategy, curriculum design, materials specification, and evaluation architecture — each produced as its own document, not summarized after the fact.