UConn Health Lands $3 Million SAMHSA Grant for Foster, Adoptive Families

UConn Health will use a $3 million federal grant to build a new clinic for children in Connecticut's foster, kinship and adoptive care systems, the university announced on October 7. The five-year award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration expands trauma-informed mental health services through the health system's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic.

The money establishes the UConn Health Foster-Adoptive Clinical and Enrichment Services Center, or FACES. Clinical psychologist Damion Grasso will co-direct it with fellow UConn Health psychologists Carolyn Greene, Rocio Chang, David FitzGerald and Julian Ford.

A population with unusually high trauma exposure

Grasso, who is both a clinician and a foster and adoptive parent, said the need is structural rather than incidental. Children entering the child welfare system almost universally arrive with a history of maltreatment, family separation or both, and many have accumulated multiple forms of trauma before adolescence.

"These experiences can affect emotional, behavioral, social, academic, and developmental functioning and, when left unaddressed, increase the risk for lifelong mental health and substance use problems," he said.

Connecticut had nearly 2,900 children in foster care and more than 5,000 families raising children adopted through the child welfare system in fiscal 2025, according to Grasso. Altogether, more than 8,000 children in the state live in foster, kinship, adoptive or pre- and post-adoptive families. Children in that group are more likely than peers in the general population to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions, and trauma-related difficulties can destabilize placements — a problem that compounds itself, since more than one in four children experience three or more placements during their first year in care.

Screening, caregiver training and a workforce plan

FACES is designed to work on three tracks at once: evidence-based screening, assessment and treatment for children; support and training for the adults raising them; and training for the broader behavioral health workforce that serves these families, addressing both the trauma itself and related mental health and substance use challenges.

Grasso said access to specialized care remains limited by waitlists, workforce shortages and a relative scarcity of providers trained in trauma, attachment and foster-adoptive issues.

"Over the five-year project, FACES aims to serve more than 4,100 foster and adoptive children and their caregivers, train 900 foster and adoptive parents, and strengthen the trauma-informed competencies of more than 600 behavioral health and community providers across Connecticut," he said. The program will also support caregivers directly, which the team describes as a condition for children stabilizing, because outcomes improve for both caregiver and child when caregivers have access to trauma-informed services, peer support and effective parenting interventions.

What success would look like

David Steffens, chair of UConn Health's Department of Psychiatry, said the federal award recognizes the department's existing expertise in assessing and treating childhood trauma and will let the team extend its reach well beyond the Hartford area.

"This funding will enable the team to expand trauma-based care we provide to include services for those children and families involved in foster care and adoption not only in our area but across Connecticut," Steffens said.

Grasso said the project's measured outcomes — families served, parents trained, providers upskilled — matter less than whether a struggling family can actually find the door.

"While we will be tracking numbers and measuring outcomes over this five-year period, true success would mean that a Connecticut foster or adoptive family that is struggling is aware of and can engage with our services to support child and parent mental health and family stability," he said.

Why the funding stream matters

The grant arrives at a moment when federal behavioral health funding has been volatile. SAMHSA discretionary awards have been the target of both expansions and cuts over the past year, and programs that pair mental health treatment with substance use prevention are among those whose budgets shift with each appropriations cycle. The FACES award is a five-year commitment for a population that sits at the intersection of several systems — child welfare, juvenile courts and behavioral health — and often falls between them.

The link between childhood trauma and later substance use is well documented, and the same overlap drives demand for dual diagnosis care for adults whose mental health and substance use conditions are treated together. Connecticut's approach also echoes other states' efforts to build treatment capacity around families already in contact with child welfare agencies, including Iowa's at-home addiction recovery program, the first of its kind to receive federal approval.

"By expanding access to effective services, supporting caregivers, and strengthening the workforce that serves these families, we hope to help more children heal, thrive, and remain connected to the people who care about them," Grasso said.