Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI) is an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needsTBRI clients. The goal is for all Center employees to implement the aspects of TBRI relevant to their position, and in accordance with TBRI’s three core principles:

• Connecting Principles for attachment needs
• Empowering Principles to address physical needs
• Correcting Principles to disarm fear-based behaviors.

The foundational principle that supports all interventions with clients is Connection.

Because The Center serves adolescents from “hard places,” TBRI offers tools for intervening in the difficult, day-to-day moments while clients are in residential treatment. In addition, proactive teaching takes place in activities like nurture groups and recreation, in order to address needs before they become problematic.

Beyond emotion regulation and behavior change, helping each client learn to trust caring adults is one of the Center’s ultimate goals. By learning see the “whole child” (including their bodies, brains, beliefs and behaviors), staff members can meet clients’ unique needs more effectively. This “whole child” approach can then be implemented by parents as their child returns home, thereby helping the adolescent integrate new methods for connection, coping and behavior change with their primary caregivers.

The Center’s dedication to providing trauma-informed care includes ongoing TBRI training for administrators, direct care staff members, and clinicians through a collaborative relationship with TBRI developers and researchers at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University. For more information on TBRI,

please visit https://child.tcu.edu/