Restoring hope for 30 years
Mt. Hope Family Center celebrates anniversary with community roundtable and symposium
susan.hagen@rochester.edu
In 1979, Mt. Hope Family Center opened its doors to a small group of preschoolers struggling with the effects of abuse and neglect. Three decades later, the University program is one of the nation’s leading research sites for the study of trauma on child development and family relationships and one of the region’s most valuable resources for children and parents in crisis, helping more than 800 families annually.
Before his lecture at the Interfaith Chapel, Manute Bol visited children at the Mt. Hope Family Center.
To celebrate those years of discovery and outreach, the center hosted a 30th anniversary symposium and community roundtable focused on its core mission: translating the latest scientific discoveries about childhood trauma into effective and proven interventions. Last week, “Frontiers in Translational Research on Trauma” brought to Rochester six of the nation’s foremost authorities in developmental psychology and psychopathology. The presenters explored new findings in neuroscience, biology, and psychology about children who have experienced abuse and discussed promising treatments for restoring well-being.
The symposium builds on Mt. Hope Family Center’s ongoing efforts to share the insights of its staff’s psychological research with academics, educators, community leaders, medical professionals, and therapists.
“The center is a national leader in bridging the academic and social policy worlds,” says Dante Cicchetti, former center director and the current McKnight Presidential Chair at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development. “It has made significant contributions to defining the field of developmental psychopathology, to conducting research on evidence-based interventions, and to increasing the availability of services to vulnerable children and families, both in Rochester and across the nation.”
Kathleen Plum, director of the Monroe County Office of Mental Health, points to the center’s work on early intervention, attachment, and resilience as some of its most promising because such research holds the key for helping families heal and cope over the long term. “It’s very important to keep kids from becoming chronically dependent on the mental health system,” she says.
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