When Pamela Northam became the first lady of Virginia after her husband, Ralph Northam, was elected governor four years ago, she brought with her a deep awareness of how childhood trauma shows up in a child’s life. She had worked as a pediatric occupational therapist and also as an educator—experiences that shaped the focus of the work she spearheaded as the chairperson of the Virginia Children’s Cabinet.
“We know how important those earliest years are in childhood, when the brain is developing, and how much adverse childhood experiences can affect the developing brain,” she says. “We knew that this was an area that we really wanted to move the needle on, and this is where equity begins.”
Gov. Northam created Virginia’s Children’s Cabinet by executive order in 2018. Under the first lady’s leadership, a top goal has been spreading trauma-informed care far and wide throughout the state. To help do so, she and the governor brought in the heads of the departments of education, agriculture, health and human resources and public safety, as well as an adviser on childhood trauma and resilience.
In addition, she and the cabinet already had a flourishing network of trauma-informed community groups around the state to tap into. (See this story and this story featuring some of Virginia’s trauma-informed community work.) During the Northam administration, which is in the final weeks of its four-year term, the Children’s Cabinet also worked on hunger, early childhood education, maternal and infant health and student safety in schools.
Pamela Northam recently organized a Road to Resilience Tour in four regions across Virginia where 19 of the state’s network of 27 trauma-informed community groups (TICNs) are located. The tour included representatives from nonprofits and other organizations that serve children and families. The purpose of the sessions, she said, was to find out how the TICNs helped their communities weather the uncharted terrain of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what their most pressing needs were.
The information that her team gathered from the tour “will help inform the governor’s outgoing legislative and budget priorities,” she said. (Governors in Virginia cannot serve two consecutive terms. The outgoing governor sets the budget for the incoming governor.)
At the Northern Virginia meeting, representatives from trauma-informed community networks from Alexandria, Fairfax, Arlington and Loudoun, Northern Shenandoah Valley and Greater Prince William counties shared highlights of how they responded to the profound needs that arose during the pandemic. They took the following actions, among others:
- Alexandria held an all-day trauma and resiliency summit in May attended by 142 people, which informed the county’s agenda on social needs.
- Arlington developed 30-second PSAs about mental health services and resilience, each garnering 500,000 impressions. These included one at the beginning of the pandemic describing services available through the Department of Child and Family Services and the Department of Behavioral Health; another PSA promoted resilience and the importance of social connections.
- Fairfax County had a group of 30 people undergo training in the ACE Interface curriculum prior to the pandemic; they were able to switch to virtual trainings, including presentations in Spanish.
- Loudoun County recognized that some of its workers sorely needed training to prevent secondary trauma from taking root in their staff. So, they held a special trauma-informed training for 100 supervisors, who then trained their staffs.
- Northern Shenandoah Valley delivered food to community members, along with hard copies of a list of resources in their community, after learning that many community members lacked computer access or online navigation skills.
As the conversation during this hour-long meeting pivoted to what these organizations needed from the government to expand trauma-informed practices, a common theme was bridging the gaps created by silos among service organizations.
“Families don’t live in nice little categories like how our organizations are structured. We need something that supports integrated services, working across systems and with peer partners in the community,” said Stacey Hardy-Chandler, PhD., the director of the Center for Children and Families in the Department of Community and Human Services for the City of Alexandria.
Participants also suggested that the next administration:
- Bolster special education staffing.
- Recruit and train trauma-informed staff and mental health counselors to meet the needs of linguistically diverse families in domestic violence shelters.
- Expand trauma-informed training to reach the state’s entire behavioral health workforce.
- Provide resources and education so that equity is better integrated into trauma-informed trainings.
Recommendations for further action from other meetings included a call for more affordable housing for teachers, firefighters and law enforcement in the Eastern Shores area of Virginia. Other representatives brought up the need of more broadband to close the digital divide among students, and the need for recognizing racism as a public health crisis.
The call for building awareness around the trauma of racism and making it part of all trauma-informed training was echoed in other meetings. A representative from the Northern Neck of Virginia said that raising the minimum wage and providing parental leave and sick leave to workers would go a long way in helping to prevent mental health challenges among parents.
The first lady told the gathering in Northern Virginia that their concerns would help inform the Northam administration’s outgoing priorities, but that she couldn’t do it alone.
“We want to emphasize that we could put all this out there in a nice package with a bow,” she said. “But really to push it forward, it’s going to be your voices, your stories, your truths. We need you to help drive it home.”
The full recording of the meeting in Northern Virginia, as well as the other meetings that were part of the First Lady’s Road to Resiliency Tour, are available here.
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