The other day, I heard about a funder who was advised by a consultant to get “out of the ACEs bubble” and move on to something else.
That’s like telling geologists to move on from plate tectonics (how continents ride on moving plates to cause earthquakes and volcanoes). Or telling biologists and physicians to move on from germ theory, which showed that bacteria and viruses cause disease, not “bad air” (!).
The science of positive and adverse childhood experiences is just as revolutionary as plate tectonics and germ theory because it explains the link between the adversity that people experience in childhood and the adult onset of chronic disease and unwanted, unhealthy and criminal behaviors. It also shows that substituting understanding, nurturing and healing practices for blame, shame and punishment can—and has—already drastically reduced teen violence and suicide, batterer recidivism, school absenteeism, school suspensions and expulsions, deaths from opioids, and revolutionized dozens of family courts. In other words, we’re moving on from thinking that people do bad things because they’re bad people. That’s like saying disease is caused by bad air! And we’ve only scratched the surface.
In my last post, I pointed out how funders focus more on short-term funding cycles, rather committing to the long term. And how even what funders had thought of as “long-term” isn’t long enough.
The two examples of long-term funding (that should have been continued) were the California Wellness Foundation, which launched the Violence Prevention Project (VPI) that supported violence-prevention programs and research for 10 years in 1992, and the Family Policy Council that supported integrating ACEs science in 42 communities from 1994 to 2012 in Washington State.
The VPI’s components included policy, community grants, a leadership program, and a research program. The VPI was extremely successful: California banned Saturday Night Specials, the gun of choice in those days; this led to other gun-control measures in the state. Besides VPI funding, the state provided $50 million in grants to 18 communities to reduce juvenile crime. Communities established a cross-sector approach to managing the funds. The projects provided mentoring and support to thousands of youth across the state, local gun-violence programs proliferated, including “community violence interrupters”. The state budget for preventing youth violence grew to $370 million in 2002. In 2003, the funding stopped. The foundation moved on to other projects.
The communities that participated in the Family Policy Council network set up local public health and safety councils and all participants were educated about ACEs. Their state-wide youth wellness project addressed seven major problems: child abuse and neglect, family violence, youth violence, youth substance abuse, dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, and youth suicide. Because communities understood that ACEs were at the root of all these problems, some communities saw improvements in five problems at the same time. In one county, suicides and suicide attempts dropped 98%. Per-year avoided caseload costs in child welfare, juvenile justice and public medical costs associated with births to teen mothers were calculated to be over $601 million, an average of $120 million per year, for a public investment of $3.4 million per year. In 2012, the state legislature defunded all of the networks and the Family Policy Council.
What if these two efforts had been funded appropriately for another 20 years? The VPI could have integrated policies and practices based on PACEs science and had their communities join PACEs Connection in 2012 to engage with other communities in a long-term learning collaborative. The Family Policy Council could have had their communities join PACEs Connection so that they could have worked together to continue to develop ever more innovative approaches to solving our most intractable problems, have a place to tell their stories and to continue to develop relationships.
Contrast this to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), which was launched nearly 30 years ago. It began with five sites in the mid-1990s and grew to more than 300 jurisdictions in 40 states and the District of Columbia by 2019. It reached one-third of the total U.S. population, according to the JDAI web site. Because of the foundation's remarkable continuity, most jurisdictions permanently incorporated the alternatives to confinement, and now a second and third generation of reformers are carrying out and adding to the pioneers’ work. Based on the latest available data from 2018, sites reduced detention admissions by 57 percent and average daily population by 50 percent. Many counties were able to close their juvenile detention facilities. The JDAI has passed the tipping point to achieve permanent change and can now take this project to the next level: It added a project called Reducing Youth Incarceration, as well as a national training-for-trainers institute that launched this year.
As the Annie E. Casey’s JDAI project has shown, permanently changing our most intractable problems takes time, commitment and determination. This approach works. Their goal was to eliminate the need for juvenile detention centers, and they are more than half-way to their goal.
It took the biology and medical community hundreds of years to ditch the miasma, or “bad air”, theory of disease, only beginning a solid shift in the 1890s. Even though germ theory had been proposed in 1546, it wasn’t until we had the tools, particularly the invention of the microscope, that there was no turning back. Plate tectonics wasn’t accepted until the mid-1960s, and the communities that integrated earthquake damage-prevention techniques in the form of building codes, emergency response, and education of the public don’t have nearly the number of deaths, injuries and damage as those communities who haven’t.
Although we are still learning about the science of positive and adverse positive experiences, we have enough information about what happens in the brain and the body and we have enough data from pioneers to double-down and make long-term commitments to integrating practices and policies based on PACEs science. We're swimming in an ocean of trauma and don't know we're wet. Let's grow that "aces bubble" to include everyone and everything!
If you agree, please support our work! We’re in this for the long haul!
WE NEED MEMBERS WHO ARE WILLING AND ABLE TO DONATE MONEY!!! Whatever you can afford will certainly help. Over the last two weeks, we’ve had a few members already donate significant amounts ($1,000 to $10,000). For that, we are extremely grateful. DONATE HERE!
AND WE NEED MEMBERS WHO CAN CONNECT US WITH FUNDERS—foundations, corporate givers, individuals—who are in the position of providing large donations. Please reach out to them and explain what our PACEs/trauma-informed movement has already achieved and can achieve, with their partnership and assistance.
If you have questions, or want to connect us with a funder, email me at jstevens@pacesconnection.com or call 707-495-1112.
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