Martha Holden

Senior Extension Associate, Project Director, Residential Child Care Project

Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research

Curriculum vitae

Office

MVR Hall

Phone

607-254-5337

mjh19@cornell.edu

Biography

Martha J. Holden is a Senior Extension Associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the director of the Residential Child Care Project. As project director, she provides technical assistance to implement CARE, a program model for residential child caring agencies, Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System to residential and educational organizations, training programs in violence prevention, and a program in the Investigation of Institutional Maltreatment, throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Israel. In 1975 Ms. Holden received her M.S. in Mental Health Counseling from Wright State University. She was the lead editor and writer in the 2020 re-development of the Center's Therapeutic Crisis Intervention curriculum, Edition 7, in use from 1982 and the author of the book, CARE: Creating Conditions for Change, a program model for child caring organizations.

Ms Holden has published in Prevention Science, Children and Youth Services Review, Child Abuse and Neglect: An International Journal, Child Welfare, Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Problems,The Scottish Journal of Residential Care, Residential Treatment for Children & Youth, The Japanese Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, International Journal of Child and Family Welfare, and the Journal of Child And Youth Care Work. She has co-authored chapters in the books, Therapeutic Residential Care for Children and Youth: Developing Evidence-based International Practice, Understanding Abusive Families, For Your Own Safety: Examining the Safety of High Risk Interventions for Children and Young People, and Transforming Troubled Lives: Strategies and Interventions for Children with Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Difficulties. In addition to her extensive experience in training and curriculum development, Ms Holden served as an administrator of a residential child care facility overseeing the day to day operation of a residential treatment facility for children, including its education resources from 1979 - 1988. Throughout her career, Ms. Holden has been studying ways to prevent the occurrence of institutional abuse of children through training, investigating and influencing organizational culture.

Research activities

In the states of North and South Carolina (US) there was a specially funded research project supported by both The Duke Endowment and Cornell University that used a quasi-experimental design in which seven agencies implementing CARE were compared to seven matched non-implementing agencies. Cornell collected data on implementation, organizational functioning, and staff and child outcomes. These unique data resources, offered an opportunity to conduct a robust evaluation of the CARE model that can have implications for residential care nationally and internationally, as well as to qualify the model as an evidence-based program for residential child care.

In 2017, the RCCP was awarded a 4 year, 3 million dollar research and implementation grant from the Department of Justice to implement the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System for Schools in 19 Syracuse City elementary and middle schools and evaluate the impact of that program. This research study will began in 2018.

In 2018, the RCCP was awarded a 5 year 3 million dollar grant from SAMHSA, DHHS, to develop fidelity tools for both CARE and TCI, help organizations examine their own data to monitor change over time, as well as to encourage residential setting organizations to use evidence based and trauma informed programs.

Selected publications

Holden, M. J. (2023). CARE: Creating conditions for change (3rd ed.). Arlington, VA: The Child Welfare League of America.

Holden, M.J., Sellers, D.E., and Smith, E.G. (2023). The CARE Program Model. In: J.K. Whittaker, L. Holmes, Jorge F. del Valle, S. James (Eds.), Revitalizing Residential Care for Children and Youth (pp.139-153). Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197644300.003.0010

Izzo, C. V., Smith, E.G., Sellers, D.E., Holden, M.J., & Nunno, M.A., (2022). Promoting a Relational Approach to Residential Child Care Through an Organizational Program Model: Impacts of CARE Implementation on Staff Outcomes. Children and Youth Services Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106330

Nunno, M.A., McCabe, L.A., Izzo, C.V., Smith, E.G., Sellers, DE., Holden, M.J. (2021). A 26-year Study of restraint fatalities among children and adolescents in the United States: A failure of organizational structures and processes. Child & Youth Care Forum. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-021-09646-w

Izzo, C. V., Smith, E.G., Sellers, D.E., Holden, M.J., & Nunno, M.A., (2020). Improving relationship quality in group are settings: The impact of implementing the CARE model. Children and Youth Services Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104623

LeBel, J., Holden, M.J., Fauntleroy, D.A., Galyean, L., Martin, W.R., & Casicano-McCann, C. (2020). Residential transformation: Successful strategies and examples. In B. Caldwell, R.E. Lieberman, J. LeBel, & G.M. Blau (Eds.), Transforming residential interventions: Practical strategies and future directions (pp. 75-93). New York: Routledge.

Holden, M.J. (2019). A collection of notions about the other 23 hours. Residential Treatment for Children & Youth, 36, 21-26.

Holden, M. J., & Sellers, D.E. (2019). An evidence-based program model for facilitating therapeutic responses to pain-based behavior in residential care. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 10(2-3):6 63-80.

Whittaker, J.K., Holmes, L., del Valle, J.F., Ainsworth, F., Andreassen, T., Anglin J., Bellonci, C., Berridge, D., Bravo, A., Canali, C., Courtney, M., Currey, L., Daly, D., Gilligan, R., Grietens, H., Harder, A., Holden, M., James, S., Kendrick, A., Knowth, E., Lausten, M., Lyons, J., Mart.in, E., McDermid, S., McNamara, P., Palareti, L., Ramsey, S., Sisson, K., Small, R., Thoburn, J, Thompson, R., & Zeira, A. (2016). Therapeutic residential care for children and youth: A consensus statement of the international work group on therapeutic residential care. Residential Treatment for Children & Youth, 33(2), 89-106.

Izzo, C. V., Smith, E.G., Holden, M.J., Norton-Barker, C.I., & Nunno, M.A., Sellers, D.E. (2016). Intervening at the setting-level to prevent behavioral incidents in residential child care: Efficacy of the CARE program model. Prevention Science, 17:554-564.

Nishizawa, S. Kagami, Y., Anglin, J.P., Holden, M.J., & Grupper, E. (2015). Institutional care and treatment for maltreated children: Toward the collaboration with foster/adoptive care. Japanese Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. 17(2), 238-257.

Holden, M.J., Anglin, J., Nunno, M.A., & Izzo, C. (2014). Engaging the total therapeutic residential care program in a process of quality improvement: Learning from the CARE model. In J. Whittaker, F. del Valle, & l. Holmes (Eds.), Therapeutic residential care for children and youth: Developing evidence-based international practice. London, UK: Jessica Kinsgley Publishers.

Nunno, M. A., Sellers, D. E., & Holden, M. J. (2014). Implications of translational research for the field of residential child care. The Scottish Journal of Residential Care, 13(3).

Izzo, C.V., Aumand, B. N., Cash, B.M., McCabe, L.A., Holden, M.J., & Bhattacharjee, M. (2014). Exploration of the youth-adult relationship in residential care: Small glimpses from a large sample of youth. International Journal of Child and Family Welfare, 15 (1/2 Special Issue).

Holden, M.J., Holden, J.C., & Paterson, S. (2012). Developing Preventative Responses to Disruptive and High Risk Behaviours. In J. Visser, (Ed.), Transforming troubled lives: Strategies and interventions with children and young people with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, LTD.

Holden, M.J., Izzo, C., Nunno, M., Smith, E., Endres, T., Holden, J.C., & Kuhn, F. (2010). Children and residential experiences: A comprehensive strategy for implementing a researched-informed program model for residential care. Child Welfare, 89(2), 131-149.

Holden, M.J. (2009). Children and residential experiences: Creating the conditions for change. Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America.

Holden, M. J., & Curry, D. (2008). Learning from the research. In M.A. Nuuno, D.M. Day, & L.B. Bullard (Eds.), For our own safety: Examining the safety of high risk interventions for children and young people (pp. 107-126). Arlington, VA: Child Welfare League of America.

Nunno, M.A., Holden, M. J., & Tollar, A. (2006). Learning from tragedy: A survey of child and adolescent restraint fatalities. Child Abuse & Neglect: An International Journal, 30 (12), 1333-1342.

Nunno, M. A., Holden, M. J., & Leidy, B. (2003). Evaluating and monitoring the impact of a crisis intervention system on a residential child care facility, Children and Youth Services Review, 25(4). 295-315.

Professional activities

Martha J. Holden is a Senior Extension Associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the director of the Residential Child Care Project. As project director, she provides technical assistance to residential child caring agencies in implementing CARE, a residential care program model, the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System, a crisis prevention and management system for residential care organizations, training programs in violence prevention, and a program in the Investigation of Institutional Maltreatment, throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Israel.

As director of the RCCP, Ms Holden seeks to maintain a leadership role in developing innovative programs to enable child caring agencies to serve children, youth, and families more effectively by building strong linkages among research, outreach activities, and evaluation efforts. These relationships are viewed as cyclical: research leads to the development of innovative and effective outreach programs, which are carefully evaluated. Evaluation activities contribute directly to the adaptation and improvement of outreach programs and may also contribute to new research. In 2007, the RCCP was awarded the Human Ecology Extension, Outreach, and Public Service Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Extension/Outreach.

The Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System (TCI), Child And Residential Experiences (CARE), and the Institutional Abuse (IAB) components are the main components of the project. The RCCP’s TCI component works directly with child caring and educational organizations seeking to lower rates of aggressive incidents and high-risk physical interventions. The RCCP’s CARE component is a multi-level practice model that involves providing residential child care personnel with the capacity to implement a set of core practice principles that are solidly grounded in current social science literature and best practices standards and facilitating organizational changes to support and sustain the implementation of those core principles at all levels of the organization. In addition CARE has been evaluated using a sophisticated quasi-experimental design in North Carolina and listed with the California Evidence Based Clearinghouse at Level 3, Promising Research Evidence. The RCCP’s IAB component works with state and local authorities to train child protection professionals to prevent and remediate institutional maltreatment.

Public engagement activities

Martha J. Holden as principal investigator and project director provides technical assistance to child caring agencies in implementing CARE, a residential care program model, the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System, a crisis prevention and management system for residential care organizations, training programs in violence prevention, and a program in the Investigation of Institutional Maltreatment, throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Israel.

The RCCP’s TCI component works directly with child caring and educational organizations seeking to lower rates of aggressive incidents and high-risk physical interventions. The RCCP’s CARE component is a multi-level practice model that involves providing residential and foster child care personnel with the capacity to implement a set of core practice principles that are solidly grounded in current social science literature and best practices standards and facilitating organizational changes to support and sustain the implementation of those core principles at all levels of the organization. In addition CARE was evaluated using a sophisticated quasi-experimental design in North and South Carolina and listed as a level 3, promising research evidence, with the California Evidence Based Clearinghouse.

The RCCP’s IAB component works with state and local authorities to train child protection professionals to prevent and remediate institutional maltreatment.

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