Choosing to end the epidemic of ACEs. Or not.

Because we are living in an epidemic of childhood trauma, we view each city with the eye of epidemiologist who is seeking to understand just how many children are living in homes with trauma-inducing levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

ACEs include many forms of abuse and neglect and act like a virus, often being passed from one generation to another.

As we traveled to do a talk on preventing ACEs and trauma in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we knew that it has a population of approximately 560,000 people. This meant that about a quarter of the population—140,000 children, women and men—have endured or will endure three or more ACEs. 

As we facilitated our forum on creating a countywide data-driven ACEs prevention program to a group of local government and non-governmental agency leaders, we were not abstract.

We shared, “To be clear, we are talking about 7 of the 28 third graders in Ms. Ortiz’s class going home after math class to three of the following: hunger, lacking the tools for hygiene or access to health care, watching adults fight and threaten, living in households where adults have untreated mental health challenges, sharing space with adults misusing substances, parents are separating or involved in activities leading to incarceration. Or maybe the kids just feel profoundly uncared for and unloved.”

As we wrote in our book Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and prevention, we all pay for trauma. As the readers of this blog know so well, the costs are both emotional and financial. Our traumatized kids can’t learn at school. Our adults with untreated trauma can’t keep a job. Parents who were once neglected may, in many situations, find raising children very challenging due to lack of supports.

The public will say, “Doesn’t child welfare deal with all of this?”

We always counter with,  “Most ACEs are never seen by child protective services, so most of our kids suffer in silence.”

Can this trauma ever end? The question is difficult to answer, especially in this country. We live in a distracted society used to violence and certainly numb to reports of child abuse. In New Mexico, reports of children being starved, beaten and worse have gone from yearly to monthly to weekly news. Soon abuse reports will be like the daily weather report, “Today’s chance of neglect is high with more trauma and sun expected.”

We are not making light of a situation that is, quite literally, deadly serious. We are merely asking you, the reader of this article, to consider what role you can have in ending this epidemic of childhood trauma.

Our to-do list for ending the epidemic of ACEs is short and we are learning how to get it done by our pilot ACEs prevention projects in Las Cruces, New Mexico and Owensboro, Kentucky.

It takes one local champion. Both our pilot sites were developed by women who read Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment and reached out to our non-profit collective and said, “We are doing this. How do we put the lessons of Anna, Age Eight into place to end ACEs?”

It takes connections and courage. Both our pilot site leaders are brave activists and also very connected to the community. They knew taking on data-driven work meant challenging how city hall, county gov't and school boards face ACEs. ACEs prevention means insisting that the safety of all our children be made the top priority. It’s not that our elected officials don’t care, it’s that they are pulled in so many directions that childhood trauma never seems to make the list of priorities. That is changing in Las Cruces and Owensboro.

It takes commitment. Our pilot sites spent six months mobilizing the community and reaching out to agency leaders in the health care, education, early childhood learning, parent supports, education and youth mentor sectors. Our local champions formed an advisory and organizing group to launch the program. They talked with co-workers, faith-based organizations, hospital staff, civic groups, business people and local lawmakers on every level. Through contacts and social media, they were able to generate excitement for a new way of preventing abuse and neglect.

We can learn much from the hard work and courage in Las Cruces and Owensboro.

1. They have a blueprint for prevention that is data-driven and cross-sector, including a logic model, organizational chart and workflow process to guide all local work.
2. They have a web-based course on the data-driven prevention of ACEs that agency leaders are taking to understand the needs of families and to improve their service for families.
3. They are forming Task Forces to focus on building ten sectors/service areas that have been shown to empower families and reduce maltreatment. (The ten Task Force guidelines -in draft form for your review and comments- are attached)
4. They are reaching out to school boards to develop policy on ACEs
5. They are talking with the city manager, council members and foundations about how systemwide ACEs prevention can be strengthened with funding.
6. They are communicating with county leadership to ensure that rural county residents have access to services shown to reduce ACEs.
7. They are working in alignment with all the positive work that is currently being done. No reinvention of wheels. Instead, all Task Forces will focus on addressing gaps to ensure a seamless system of safety and care for families.

Time to choose.

We cannot continue to allow our children to endure more trauma when it’s predictable and preventable. Our boys and girls and their parents deserve so much more. When we make our communities safe for our children, we make our communities safe for everyone. We all have a stark choice to make: start collaborating, problem-solving, electing caring leaders, and treasuring each child—or watch our most vulnerable communities descend further into resignation, isolation, desperation and trauma.