Announcements

Catalog Home - National Children's Alliance

NCA’s Mental Health Institute trainings are officially moving to our brand-new platform—MHub! Enjoy super-easy registration, instant CE certificates, and plenty of new perks along the way.

More trainings are on the way, so stay tuned—and as always, we’re here if you have any questions!

Many of you have been asking about our 2026 training dates and registration links—and we’ve got some exciting news to share! We’ve been working behind the scenes to make your registration process smoother, your training experience even better, and your CE certificates instantly downloadable.

✨ Stay tuned for a big announcement coming soon—including the reveal of our full 2026 training calendar!

Visit NCA's Playbook
password: AllNCAMembers!1

To get your link and password to the Playbook containing your Accredited CAC or Accredited Chapter badge, you can contact membership@nca-online.org.

🚨 Don’t miss out—this is your last chance to grab a spot at our 4th Annual Seamless Conference on September 17–18!

Join colleagues from across the country for two days of learning, connection, and inspiration. We’ll dive into:
✨ Working with engaging caregivers
✨ Your role as a clinician on the MDT
✨ Knocking out your ethics training

It’s going to be a conference you won’t want to miss—we can’t wait to see you there! 🎉

Executive Directors—it’s time to head back to school! Join us this fall for the Executive Director Mental Health Academy, a six-session training designed to help you strengthen and expand mental health services at your CAC. Pack your (virtual) backpack, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for interactive learning, practical tools, and connections with peers across the country. Class starts September 11—don’t be late! 👉 Register here

We’re excited to share several valuable training opportunities available this fall through NCA Engage:

🔹 Working with MDTs and How They Impact Clinical Services
Explore the essential role of multidisciplinary teams in shaping and supporting effective clinical services. Learn best practices for collaboration and communication across disciplines.

🔹 Advanced TF-CBT PSB Intensive Learning Community – October 2025
Designed for clinicians with foundational TF-CBT knowledge, this intensive training focuses on implementing TF-CBT for children with problematic sexual behaviors (PSB), with a strong emphasis on clinical fidelity and real-world application.

🔹 Safety Planning, Clarification, and Reunification
Gain practical tools and strategies to support families through critical processes, including safety planning, caregiver-child clarification, and safe reunification.

📅 Don’t miss these chances to deepen your skills and connect with peers in the field, and even earn CEs!

Seamless has officially been approved for 10 CEs by NASW, in additional to NBCC!

Secure the early bird rate by July 31st, members save $100!

Homepage - 4th Annual Seamless Conference, VIRTUAL

There's still spots available in our August TF-CBT training! Earn up to 20 CEs, connecting with peers from across the country, and add an amazing therapeutic modality to your clinical toolbelt!

Early bird pricing for our annual Seamless Conference will be ending July 31st! Make sure you register before then because, really, who doesn't love saving money?!

Members save $100 a ticket, and non-members save $50.

A Fresh Look, New Events Management, and Calendar Improvements

Light Blue was selected to be the new background color for NCAtrak with an overwhelming 74% of the vote from 304 users. Buttons, menus, and tooltips were also updated to a more vibrant blue.

In response to the positive enthusiasm we received for the poll, the NCAtrak team has decided to continue conducting user polls like this on a monthly basis to guide our development decisions. The next poll will be conducted on July 1st with the question “What types of features do you want the NCAtrak team to prioritize more for development?”

This won’t be your last chance to decide the look and feel of NCAtrak! We understand that everyone has their own color preferences, including the need for accessible ‘high contrast’ and ‘dark mode’ templates. Based on your feedback, we’re including these visual customization options in our roadmap for 2026.

Release notes for this latest June 2025 update:

• New functionality was added to calendars and events within NCAtrak, including:
• Improvements to support "CAC Events", designed to track standalone events separate from cases, such as trainings, support groups, and fundraisers.
• New options to track both Registered and Unregistered attendance for the same event, including a calculated “Total Attendance”.
• New multi-select search box for adding Personnel or Clients to a CAC event, replacing the old checkbox option.
• Interactive options on the small menu calendar to either add events or view events for that day.
• Clearer options for sending separate appointment reminders to both personnel and clients.
• Improved functionality of the Calendar Dashboard, including double-click-to-create events that prepopulate the date and start time of a new event.
• Improved toggle options for viewing “All Day” and “Business Hours” on the Calendar Dashboard, with “Business Hours” as the start.
  
  
• We also made improvements and fixes to existing features, including:
• Improved security of the Password Reset workflow by requiring Username instead of Email. MFA now always required after resetting password.
• Added validation for Session Times of events, preventing events from having an end time earlier than the start time. This prevents negative time values for event reporting. When tracking a session or event that extends past midnight, users should add separate events for each date.
• Added Type-to-Search on dropdown lists, including the ability to search on lists like FI Observers, Personnel, and more. This restores a popular “speed key” functionality that was lost and expands it to all dropdown lists.
• Increasing the maximum-allowed character count for MDT Meeting and Prosecution Court Appearance comment boxes.
• Updates to reporting that includes the ability to query current age, combined VA services, filter by funding source, filter by outside referral source, and other changes.
• Fixed document upload errors for CEUs and MDT Meeting attachments.
• Fixed insurance reporting for reports involving victims and co-victims.

For users of the Care Process Model – Pediatric Traumatic Stress (CPM-PTS) screener, we’ve updated the screener connection so that it will pre-populate with the following:

1. CAC name
2. Case number for the current in NCAtrak
3. Full Name of the user administering the screener

The CPM-PTS screener is a free assessment tool for traumatic stress made available in partnership with PIPS at the University of Utah. Contact support@ncatrak.org for training information, or learn more about the screener by clicking here: https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/cpmpts/

Make your voice heard!

The NCAtrak development team wants your input on changing the background color of NCAtrak. Vote for your favorite option by June 17th and the team will incorporate it into the upcoming June 24th updates.

You are welcome to leave any additional feedback you may have for the NCAtrak team in the "Comments" box on the form.

Click here to vote: https://forms.office.com/r/L8d7G0UiiW

Dear CAC leaders -

Customized invitations for the 2025 CAC Census Survey were emailed to CAC directors or primary contacts on Tuesday, June 3rd.  This survey gathers data from all CACs and serves as a comprehensive snapshot of our field at a point in time. The participation of each and every CAC is critical to ensuring that all CACs' unique needs and experiences are reflected.    

We are asking all CACs to complete the survey by July 3rd.  Sometimes, invitations are diverted to spam -  If you did not see your emailed invitation and custom survey link, or if you have any questions about the survey, please reach out to Erin Casey at omscoordinator@nca-online.org.

Results from past Census surveys have been used to highlight successes in the field, to identify training and resource needs, to pinpoint emerging trends, and to support advocacy for funding and other resources to support your work.  Findings are shared back with the field to support work at the local, national, and regional levels - examples of past resources that are supported by the Census can be found on the Census page of NCA Engage. 

Thank you in advance for your help with this important effort to highlight the successes and needs in the field!

Grab your spot for our 4th annual Seamless Conference with Early Bird pricing, today! This is THE only conference designed specifically for mental health professionals working in, or with, Child Advocacy Centers.

Yes, this is a fantastic conference, but don't take our word for it. Here is some feedback from 2024 Seamless...

"Absolutely the best conference, every topic was incredibly relevant and informative."

"The topics covered were so important to our everyday practice.  For a clinician like me who has just returned to trauma work and an agency all of these trainings were crucial for my understanding of the current pulse of practice and community"

"Engaging and dynamic speakers, good support from the moderators, compelling material and helpful resources"

The planned outage to migrate and upgrade the servers and infrastructure of NCAtrak was completed successfully. The team confirmed through testing and review of system health reports that all core NCAtrak services are healthy.

If you encounter an issue or have questions about the upgrade, please contact the NCAtrak support team via the following options:

1. Online at https://support.ncatrak.org/
2. By email at support@ncatrak.org
3. Within NCAtrak by clicking the "Click here to log a comment" message at the bottom of every NCAtrak page.

Please do not share any PHI or other HIPAA-protected information when contacting the NCAtrak Support team.

A planned outage of NCAtrak is scheduled to occur on May 6th, 2025 between 10pm to 1am Eastern Time.

This planned outage was previously announced several times in the past month but was cancelled each time due to different open action items being discovered during our pre-migration checklist. The team has successfully completed a dry run of the system migration and cleared the pre-migration checklist in preparation for tonight's planned outage.

This is part of a planned upgrade to the cloud infrastructure of NCAtrak and will provide the following benefits:

• Enhances performance for Custom Reporting when using complex queries or querying a large date range.
• Increases database backup retention window from 30 days to 4 months.
• Strengthens security and access controls for backend NCAtrak resources.
• Eliminates multiple root causes of unplanned outage incidents.
• Improves overall responsiveness and reliability of the NCAtrak application.

If you have any questions, please contact the NCAtrak Support team via any of the following methods:

1. Create a support ticket at the following link: https://support.ncatrak.org/
2. Send an email to support@ncatrak.org
3. Send a message within NCAtrak by clicking the link at the bottom of every page NCAtrak that says "Click here to log a comment, suggestion or incident with NCA."

Note: As a long-term fix to this incident, the team has a planned outage of NCAtrak taking place on 10pm-1am Eastern Time on Wednesday, April 30th, 2025.

An incident impacting the availability of the NCAtrak application started at 12:45pm on April 23, 2025. The incident was described as an system issue preventing normal navigation of the application and erroneously displaying the "User Feedback" form.

Upon investigation of this incident by the NCAtrak team, the cause of the incident was identified as a limitation of the current infrastructure that was the cause of a similar incident that took place on March 14, 2025. Once the cause was identified, the team initiated a restart of the NCAtrak application at 1:08pm to clear the issue and resolve the outage.

This issue will be resolved in the long-term by completing the server upgrade currently being performed by NCA's contractors. This upgrade requires a planned outage of the NCAtrak application, which has been rescheduled to take place 10pm-1am Eastern Time on Wednesday, April 30th, 2025.

For any questions or concerns, please reach out to the NCAtrak support team either by email at support@ncatrak.org or via our online ticketing system at support.ncatrak.org/support/tickets/new

A planned outage of NCAtrak has been rescheduled pending new availability from the development team and a new outage window will be announced on Wednesday, April 16th. The outage was originally scheduled to occur on Saturday, April 12th, 2025 between 8pm to 11pm Eastern Time.

This is part of a planned upgrade to the infrastructure of NCAtrak and is designed to provide the following benefits:

• Enhances performance for Custom Reporting when using complex queries or querying a large date range.
• Increases database backup retention window from 30 days to 4 months.
• Strengthens security and access controls for backend NCAtrak resources.
• Eliminates multiple risk factors for unplanned outage events.
• Improves overall responsiveness and reliability of the NCAtrak application.

FAQs

Does this outage put my case data at risk?
No, we are taking several precautions to ensure case data is not impacted by this upgrade, including creating multiple redundant database backups both before and after the start of the outage. The purpose of the outage window is to allow the NCAtrak development team to perform the upgrade with the least possible risk of data loss.

Will this system upgrade increase the cost of my NCAtrak subscription?
This will not increase the cost of NCAtrak beyond the planned annual price increases that were announced for 2024-2028. This system upgrade was made possible by the 2025 subscription price increase and is intended to improve the long-term performance and capacity of NCAtrak.

Who do I contact if I have questions or concerns?
You can contact the NCAtrak Support team via any of the following methods:

1. Create a support ticket at the following link: https://ncatrak.com/get-help
2. Send an email to support@ncatrak.org
3. Send a message within NCAtrak by clicking the link at the bottom of every page NCAtrak that says "Click here to log a comment, suggestion or incident with NCA."

Have something valuable to share with your clinical colleagues? We invite you to submit an abstract!

NCA's Institute for Better Mental Health Outcomes is soliciting abstracts for presentations for the 4th annual Seamless Conference on September 17-18, 2025. The deadline to submit an abstract is 11:59pm PT Friday, Aprill 11th, 2025. The target audience for this conference is comprised of licensed mental health providers working in or with Child Advocacy Centers. We encourage presenters with expertise relevant to the target audience from diverse backgrounds to submit abstracts for presentations.

We are now accepting abstracts for the 2025 Seamless Conference! This virtual event, scheduled for September 17 & 18, is designed for clinicians working at or with Child Advocacy Centers. We are seeking innovative training topics for this year’s conference. The deadline to submit your abstract is April 11!

Please reach out with any questions, jbolton@nca-online.org

A 9 week course on all the B's of Child Physical Abuse including:

March 5th:  Block Physical Abuse: Solutions presented by Stacie LeBlanc, JD, MEd, FAPSAC & Darrell Armstrong, EdS-MFT, MDiv, DDiv

March 12th: Baffling, Bizarre, Beyond Belief Child Abuse Cases presented by Debra Esernio-Jenssen, MD, FAAP 
Resources 

(FRIDAY) March 21st: Bogus Physical Abuse: Mimics of Maltreatment presented by Michelle Greene, DO
Resources

March 26th: Brains: Abusive Head Trauma presented by Randell Alexander, MD, PhD
Resources 

April 2nd: Burns: Pediatric Burns and Their Medical Mimics in Child Maltreatment presented by Lauren Burge, MD
Resources 

April 9th: Bull: Medical Child Abuse: Detecting, Surviving and Healing from Unprecedented Bull presented by Rebecca Gill, MD, Jordyn Hope & Brian Fleming

April 16th: Bones/Fractures presented by Dr. Adrienne Atzemis

April 23rd: Brains and Backlash: Medical Diagnosis, Legal Controversies, and Prevention Strategies for Abusive Head Trauma presented by Vincent J. Palusci, MD, MS, FAAP, FAPSAC
Resources

April 30th: Bruises and other Boo-Boos: Skin Injury presented by Dr. Adrienne Atzemis

Join us this April 2-4 for Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention training!

CFTSI is a brief (5-8 session) evidence-based treatment that can help lower the stressful symptoms children experience after a traumatic experience so they can heal and recover. It’s an invaluable treatment to add to the list of services offered by our CACs. Because CFTSI is both short and effective, it can help reduce the need for longer term care, cut down on waitlists, and allow clinicians to serve more children. 

Ready to learn? Apply now! Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

Any questions? Please reach out to Jami Bolton, jbolton@nca-online.org

We are excited to announce that NCA has developed community page on NCA engage for the Care Process Model-Pediatric Traumatic Stress (CPM-PTS).  We will be providing regular training on the CPM-PTS (https://learn.nationalchildrensalliance.org/training-calendar) and are excited to also announce we will be providing an open consultation group for those trained in the CPM-PTS.  This will be on the 4^th Wednesday of each month, from 1:00-2:00 pm (Eastern Time).  Check out the CPM-PTS page on NCA’s website (https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/cpmpts/).  And lastly, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, gsidoli@nca-online.org. 

Join us in our nation's capital or virtually from the comfort of your desk June 9-11 for the 2025 NCA Leadership Conference. Early Bird prices end on March 30th. Learn more and register here. 

The 2025 Recognition award nominations are now live! Learn more here.