Sheba Psychiatry’s Nationwide Approach to Childhood Trauma Screening

Models of pediatric trauma care that wait for a child or family to come forward can miss those who never ask for help. Dr. de la Fontaine has built her program around a different premise: that the beginnings of recovery should not be confined to hospital walls. The result is a structured, research-based effort built to meet the needs of families, communities, schools, social services, and most importantly of all, children themselves.

In Dr. de la Fontaine’s words, “We don’t wait for children to approach us, but rather go into their natural settings and identify children who might otherwise not be heard or seen.”

Screening to Reach Children Where They Are

Trauma in children can present subtly, and family members and teachers don’t always know what to look for. Signs can surface as hyperactive behavior, temper tantrums, or sudden difficulty separating from a caregiver—reactions easily misread as behavioral problems rather than what they actually are: a child trying to process and cope with something overwhelming that they may not have the tools yet to understand.

Therefore, working within Sheba Psychiatry and the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Dr. de la Fontaine and her team developed a screening initiative to help identify signs of trauma hiding in plain sight. Rather than waiting for children to reach the clinic, the program brings that evidence-based screening model directly into schools and communities. The goal, as she puts it, is to “help municipalities, education systems, medical systems, and welfare recognize the needs of children.” Her team is actively working to reach 60,000 children nationwide.

Schools are central to meeting this goal, not only as screening sites, but also as active partners. Through the Trauma-Informed School model, Sheba trains educational staff directly to perform accurate assessments and connect children to care earlier. By building that knowledge directly into schools, the model strengthens the capacity of entire systems, not just individual providers, to recognize and respond to pediatric PTSD proactively.

From Identification to the Right Treatment Response

While screening is crucial to providing continuity of care, it is only the first step. Once identified, each child still needs access to effective treatment. One such approach is trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, or TF-CBT. 

TF-CBT was created specifically for children and adolescents to help them stabilize, process traumatic experiences, and redevelop a sense of safety. It is among the most researched trauma treatments available for children, with randomized controlled studies showing that roughly 80 percent of children who complete it show reduced PTSD symptoms by the end of treatment.

Sheba serves as Israel’s national training center for TF-CBT, and Dr. de la Fontaine is one of only two certified trainers of this method in Israel. Framing her team’s continued efforts, she states, “We implement evidence-based protocols that have been found to be effective and we work hard to disseminate these protocols and strategies to a wide audience of providers and educators.”

A Model Built to Expand Beyond Israel

For Dr. de la Fontaine, the value of the National Child & Adolescent Trauma Program’s work extends far beyond Sheba’s campus. As she explains, “Our work here at Sheba has become oriented towards large scale and impact. We’re thinking about the child sitting in the therapy room with their parent, and we’re thinking about that child once they leave our clinic and they go into their school, community, and environment.”

With demand for mental health care continuing to grow globally, meeting that need requires more than expanding clinical services; it requires systems capable of reaching children wherever they are. By connecting early identification, clinical treatment, schools, families, and communities, Sheba’s integrated model offers a framework that healthcare systems around the world can learn from and adapt.

That vision reflects the same commitment to clinical excellence and innovation that has helped earn Sheba recognition among the World’s Best Hospitals by Newsweek for eight consecutive years.