Amid the chaotic three-ring circus called a national election that may take days, weeks or months to conclude, we voted for the person best qualified to make the USA the best place to be a child.
You.
By voting, we don’t mean choosing who was on the ballet. Sure, we know how important our elected leaders are on the city, county, state and national levels are. In our work, devoted to ensuring that childhoods are safe from adverse childhood experiences, trauma and social adversity, our entire strategy is focused on partnerships with elected leaders and stakeholders in every county. We know that the local challenges that doom our boys and girls to abuse, neglect and hopelessness can only be solved by local people working together.
But back to voting for you. If you’re reading this it means you take the time to read ACEs Connection, knowing you will be seeing different perspectives. That already makes you unique, a person open to reading new ideas and insights.
We may not know you, but we do know that you believe all children should be safe from harm. We know this because we have traveled the state to share what puts our kids at risk for a variety of problems and we have yet to hear a person--whether in community forums or in anonymous emails say, “I don’t care what happens to children.” Quite the opposite is true. We have found universal agreement from all political stripes with the consensus that no child should have to suffer because the services that could help them don’t exist.
Where we have different opinions is on how we ensure the safety of our nation’s children. And that’s all part of the process, having community dialogue about various ways to make every county trauma-free. Unlike other online environments, at ACEs Connection we have a history of speaking with respect and agreeing to disagree. This civility is woefully missing from the national conversation about who should lead us.
With dialogue we build a bridge to solutions. And we voted for you, a thoughtful reader of ACEs Connection, because we wish to share the important work that lies ahead--and this will be true no matter who wins the presidency. Setting the standard for how we treat every child will only come from the adults in each of our fifty states. And this standard of care, education and empowerment will be set county by county across the country This means that the elected leaders and public-minded residents of Seattle-King County in Washington State will decide what percentage of their children, and the parents who guide them, can access timely health care, quality education, food security programs and safe housing. Santa Fe County in New Mexico may have a different percentage in mind.
In our 100% Community initiative in New Mexico, we are honored to be working with stakeholders in the counties Dona Ana, San Miguel, Socorro, Taos, Rio Arriba, Otero, and Valencia who have decided on the goal of 100% of children and families having access the vital services for surviving and thriving. We know that preventing ACEs means ensuring 100% of our families have access to medical care, mental health care, food security programs, housing security programs, transport to services, parent supports, early childhood learning, community schools with health centers, youth mentors and job training.
Our initiative, for you to consider supporting, has seven steps. They include surveying families to ask about their access to vital services. From there we can identify where barriers to services exist and begin the process of building or strengthening those services so that all children, parents and caregiving grandparents can easily access them. A priority is access to timely health care as part of COVID-19 prevention, along with job training to address our economic challenges.
We end with gratitude to you. We voted for you, as an ACEs Connection reader, to consider our mission of making every child a priority. We know for a fact, the hard work ahead is ours to commit to locally. While we will also hope that compassionate leadership exists in Washington, DC, to achieve our goal of ending ACEs we will depend on thoughtful people like you working in your hometown.
About the authors of this article: Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD and Dominic Cappello are the authors of 100% Community: Ensuring 10 vital services for surviving and thriving and Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment.
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