ACE-Aware Community Partnership Initiative: Educating Greater Memphis about Adverse Childhood Experiences The goal of the ACE-Aware Community Partnership Initiative is to help produce trauma-informed citizens who are able to spread the word about the role of trauma and toxic stress in mental, physical, and behavioral health as well as share information about the range of resources available to help prevent ACEs or lessen their effects. Across Shelby County, organizations and civic leaders are sponsoring educational workshops hosted by the foundation. Any organization or institution interested in gaining an understanding of adverse childhood experiences, their impact on healthy development throughout life, and ways to prevent them as well as reduce their effects can contact the foundation to request a free ACE-Aware Education Workshop. These sessions are of various lengths, based on audience and needs. Promoting the Social Emotional Health of Students When it comes to students, the ACE Awareness Foundation is committed to working with Shelby County Schools leaders to meet the real needs of all students by promoting trauma-informed schools and restorative discipline. We believe that this can be accomplished within the context of providing social-emotional learning in all of our schools. This involves: ■ Helping students build the social, emotional, and behavioral skills they need to be successful in school and in life ■ Creating safe, positive, trauma-informed environments for all students, leading to greater academic success for all and a shrinking of the achievement gap ■ Mitigating the effects of ACEs and toxic stress through school-based interventions ■ Reducing the incidence of exclusionary discipline practices and thereby shrinking the school-to-prison pipeline Our vision is that schools across the county prioritize social- emotional health and the development of competencies in the same way they prioritize academics: by employing evidence-based approaches to capacity building. Our work is just commencing in this area. We have begun by seeking quality data about staffing, school climate, discipline practices, school readiness, and the felt needs of stakeholders, as well as by identifying existing school efforts to promote social-emotional health and reaching out to interested and influential stakeholders from across Memphis. We hope that, together, we can build interest, facilitate conversations, provide a forum for collaboration, identify common issues and potential solutions, and begin to develop a common language around social-emotional learning, trauma-informed schools, and restorative discipline practices. The long-term goal: Implement social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and restorative discipline across the county. A Statewide Partnership: Building Strong Brains Tennessee With leadership from the ACE Awareness Foundation and significant support from Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s Administration, Building Strong Brains Tennessee (BSB) was established to help the state’s children lead productive, healthy lives and contribute to the state’s success by preventing ACEs. The statewide effort is dedicated not only to raising public knowledge about ACEs but also impacting state policy in support of the prevention of ACEs and the reduction of community conditions that contribute to them. BSB Tennessee is supporting innovative local and state projects that offer fresh thinking and precise measurement of their impact on ACEs and toxic stress in children. The goal of obtaining sustainable funding to ensure a long-term commitment to reducing the impact of ACEs was achieved when the governor recommended and the legislature appropriated $2.45M in the recurring budget. Building a Movement Memphis is now a national example of how a community- wide alliance of families, educators, faith leaders, nonprofit managers, elected officials, law enforcement, and health care providers can transform a community. These efforts are already improving parenting and early child development in Memphis and Shelby County. With growing statewide support, we can make them scalable to extend solutions to other Tennessee communities. With a renewed focus on preventive measures and growing awareness and collaboration across sectors, we can and will have a positive impact on the health and wellness of future generations. The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Awareness Foundation is helping to create a Greater Memphis community—and catalyze a statewide movement—that understands the deep and long-lasting impact that childhood trauma can have across the life span and supports innovative strategies that prevent toxic stress or lessen its effects on children and their families. Knowing that repeated exposure to traumatic events in childhood is at the root of many poor adult outcomes, we believe that safe, stable, nurturing families and communities are the keys to healthy child development. Adverse childhood experiences—also called ACEs—can be physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; the loss of a parent through illness, death, divorce, or incarceration; or domestic violence or substance abuse within the family. Decades of research have shown that ACEs create dangerous levels of stress that can derail healthy brain development in children. And as the number of ACEs a child has experienced increases, so too does the risk for a range of negative outcomes as children grow up, such as depression, school failure, addiction, obesity, diabetes, and the adoption of risky adult behaviors that can lead to heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. However, the fact that chronic exposure to trauma can literally change a child’s brain chemistry and influence who they have the capacity to become is information that is only now gaining widespread acceptance. Fortunately, along with increased understanding of the impact of toxic stress has come a growing acknowledgement that ACEs are not destiny, and that supporting children’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development sets them on a solid path to a productive adulthood. ACE AWARENESS FOUNDATION Helping transform communities by revolutionizing policy & practice to better support the healthy development of our children ACEAwarenessFoundation ACEAwareness ACE Awareness Foundation, 22 N. Front St., Suite 165, Memphis, TN 38103 / 901-249-2456 www.ACEAwareness.org
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
ACE-Aware Community Partnership Initiative: Educating Greater Memphis about Adverse Childhood ExperiencesThe goal of the ACE-Aware Community Partnership Initiative is to help produce trauma-informed citizens who are able to spread the word about the role of trauma and toxic stress in mental, physical, and behavioral health as well as share information about the range of resources available to help prevent ACEs or lessen their effects.
Across Shelby County, organizations and civic leaders are sponsoring educational workshops hosted by the foundation. Any organization or institution interested in gaining an understanding of adverse childhood experiences, their impact on healthy development throughout life, and ways to prevent them as well as reduce their effects can contact the foundation to request a free ACE-Aware Education Workshop. These sessions are of various lengths, based on audience and needs.
Promoting the Social Emotional Health of StudentsWhen it comes to students, the ACE Awareness Foundation is committed to working with Shelby County Schools leaders to meet the real needs of all students by promoting trauma-informed schools and restorative discipline. We believe that this can be accomplished within the context of providing social-emotional learning in all of our schools. This involves:
■ Helping students build the social, emotional, and behavioral skills they need to be successful in school and in life
■ Creating safe, positive, trauma-informed environments for all students, leading to greater academic success for all and a shrinking of the achievement gap
■ Mitigating the effects of ACEs and toxic stress through school-based interventions
■ Reducing the incidence of exclusionary discipline practices and thereby shrinking the school-to-prison pipeline
Our vision is that schools across the county prioritize social-emotional health and the development of competencies in the same way they prioritize academics: by employing evidence-based approaches to capacity building.
Our work is just commencing in this area. We have begun by seeking quality data about staffing, school climate, discipline practices, school readiness, and the felt needs of stakeholders, as well as by identifying existing school
efforts to promote social-emotional health and reaching out to interested and influential stakeholders from across Memphis. We hope that, together, we can build interest, facilitate conversations, provide a forum for collaboration, identify common issues and potential solutions, and begin to develop a common language around social-emotional learning, trauma-informed schools, and restorative discipline practices. The long-term goal: Implement social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and restorative discipline across the county.
A Statewide Partnership: Building Strong Brains Tennessee
With leadership from the ACE Awareness Foundation and significant support from Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s Administration, Building Strong Brains Tennessee (BSB) was established to help the state’s children lead productive, healthy
lives and contribute to the state’s success by preventing ACEs.
The statewide effort is dedicated not only to raising public knowledge about ACEs but also impacting state policy in support of the prevention of ACEs and the reduction of community conditions that contribute to them.
BSB Tennessee is supporting innovative local and state projects that offer fresh thinking and precise measurement of their impact on ACEs and toxic stress in children. The goal of obtaining sustainable funding to ensure a long-term commitment to reducing the impact of ACEs was achieved when the governor recommended and the legislature appropriated $2.45M in the recurring budget.
Building a Movement
Memphis is now a national example of how a community-wide alliance of families, educators, faith leaders, nonprofit managers, elected officials, law enforcement, and health care providers can transform a community. These efforts are already improving parenting and early child development in Memphis and Shelby County. With growing statewide support, we can make them scalable to extend solutions to other Tennessee communities.
With a renewed focus on preventive measures and growing awareness and collaboration across sectors, we can and will have a positive impact on the health and wellness of future generations.
The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Awareness Foundation is helping to create a Greater Memphis community—and catalyze a statewide movement—that understands the deep and long-lasting impact that childhood trauma can have across the life span and supports innovative strategies that prevent toxic stress or lessen its effects on children and their families.
Knowing that repeated exposure to traumatic events in childhood is at the root of many poor adult outcomes, we believe that safe, stable, nurturing families and communities are the keys to healthy child development.
Adverse childhood experiences—also called ACEs—can be physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; the loss of a parent through illness, death, divorce, or incarceration; or domestic violence or substance abuse within the family.
Decades of research have shown that ACEs create dangerous levels of stress that can derail healthy brain development in children. And as the number of ACEs a child has experienced increases, so too does the risk for a range of negative outcomes as children grow up, such as depression, school failure, addiction, obesity, diabetes, and the adoption of risky adult behaviors that can lead to heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses.
However, the fact that chronic exposure to trauma can literally change a child’s brain chemistry and influence who they have the capacity to become is information that is only now gaining widespread acceptance.
Fortunately, along with increased understanding of the impact of toxic stress has come a growing acknowledgement that ACEs are not destiny, and that supporting children’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development sets them on a solid path to a productive adulthood.
ACE AWARENESS FOUNDATIONHelping transform communities by revolutionizing policy & practice
to better support the healthy development of our children
ACEAwarenessFoundation
ACEAwareness
ACE Awareness Foundation, 22 N. Front St., Suite 165, Memphis, TN 38103 / 901-249-2456 www.ACEAwareness.org
HOW THE ACE AWARENESS FOUNDATION CAME TO BE HOW WE DO ITFrom the Roots UPP The Foundation’s Signature Initiative: Universal Parenting Places
To support the healthy development of Memphis children, their families, and the community, the ACE Awareness Foundation developed Universal Parenting Places—UPPs. These judgment-free zones are places where parents come for help with family-related issues and concerns, both big and small. They receive professional counseling, information, emotional support, and referrals; participate in stress-reduction exercises, parent-child activities, and discussion groups; and build social support networks that extend far beyond the walls of the UPPs.
Open to all families, regardless of income, the UPPs utilize the latest findings from neurobiology and family therapy to provide parents and other caregivers with guidance and experiential learning to assist them in preventing common childrearing challenges from becoming chronic problems. One-on-one counseling sessions also help parents identify ACEs they experienced that may be affecting the ways they parent. In addition, through alternative therapies that include parent-child music and dance activities, family drumming circles, and improvisational theater, the UPPs employ the arts to offer unique opportunities for children and parents to relax and have fun while building strong parent-child bonds.
The UPP model employs a strengths-based approach to parenting that is designed to demonstrate how front-end, preventive health care can promote the physical, emotional, and behavioral health of families—and help change the way trauma and its effects are understood and approached.
The first UPPs opened in 2015 in two locations: Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women, the only freestanding women’s hospital in Memphis, and Knowledge Quest, a longstanding nonprofit organization that promotes youth and community development in South Memphis.
Two additional UPPs opened in 2017. UPP at Perea Preschool is operated by Church Health, which provides healthcare to the working uninsured and their families and is the largest faith-based healthcare organization of its type in the U.S. UPP at Christ Community Health Services, which is the largest primary healthcare provider in Shelby County, operates at the Raleigh Health Center in North-Central Memphis. There is also an UPP at Leland Medical Clinic in Leland, Mississippi, which was established in 2017 with financial support from the ACE Awareness Foundation.
In 2014, the Shelby County ACE Awareness Task Force was formed to determine the prevalence and impact of toxic stress on the health and well-being of the community. That same year, the task force, comprised of community leaders, activists, providers, and representatives from public and private institutions, commissioned a random digit-dial telephone survey of Shelby County residents. The survey contained questions about childhood maltreatment, family dysfunction, and neighborhood safety, as well as current health status and behaviors.
The responses of 1,506 Shelby County residents revealed not only that ACEs are common, but also that adults of all races and ethnicities experienced ACEs.
Shelby County ACEs Survey Results
Among respondents:
52% One adverse childhood experience
21% Two-three ACEs 12% Four or more ACEs
In addition:
41% Were bullied as a child
37% Witnessed someone being shot or stabbed while growing up
22% Witnessed violence between adults in the home
20% Experienced childhood sexual abuse
The task force released the survey findings, which showed links between chronic exposure to traumatic events throughout childhood and negative behaviors and health conditions as adults. The results convinced task force members that focusing on preventing trauma during a child’s early years and providing support for parents would increase the chances for children’s successful transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.
That decision led to establishment of the ACE Awareness Foundation in 2015, with a focus on three major objectives:
1. Educate Greater Memphis about adverse childhood experiences
2. Support the healthy development of children and their families in order to prevent ACEs and mitigate their negative effects
3. Change local and state systems and practices to support prevention efforts
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?HOUSEHOLD DYSFUNCTIONABUSE
Physical
Sexual
Emotional
NEGLECT
Physical
Emotional
Mental Illness
Incarcerated Relatives
Mother Treated Violently
Substance Abuse
Divorce
Source: The Truth About ACEs by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Related Documents
