Trauma-informed care

Legislators, caregivers and the media increasingly recognize that childhood adversity poses risks to individual health and well-being. The original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study has helped raise public awareness about this critical public health issue.

The efforts of pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris to address of trauma experienced early in life have vaulted her to national attention. In September, Burke Harris earned recognition from the Heinz Foundation for her work to establish a system to screen and treat children who are dealing with toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as abuse, neglect, poverty and violence.

When the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities released its groundbreaking report this past March, it helped launch a national dialogue about child safety, and most importantly, shifted the current narrative around maltreatment-related fatalities in a significant way.

The people who are doing most of the pioneering work to integrate trauma-informed, resilience-building practices based on ACEs research (writ large) are doing so in cities and counties across the U.S.

At the Center for Youth Wellness policy convening on childhood adversity in San Diego last Thursday, I kept asking myself if we were having a new conversation or an old conversation, but with different people at the table.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Congress should find more ways to financially support peer networks and advocacy led by current and former foster youth, said a group of young advocates at a briefing held at the U.S.

San Francisco’s Bayview district is best known for its gun violence, drugs, pollution and poverty, and not much else. But a community health clinic’s radical approach to healing children may change all that by turning the impoverished neighborhood into an epicenter for trauma-informed care.

Displaced children and adults represent a unique subgroup within the U.S. population. While displacement can occur for a variety of reasons, for many, trauma is central to experiences prior to, during, and post-migration.