Las Cruces city council member Kasandra Gandara was the first elected leader in New Mexico to reach out to us in our role as advocates for ACEs prevention and co-authors of Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment. After reading the book at the beginning of 2018, Councilor Gandara called us, and it turned into a reunion of three former child welfare workers. We had collaborated years earlier when Gandara was working for child protective services and her staff were attending the Data Leaders for Child Welfare program we had developed. The call kicked off a series of conversations about turning the book into a process for local community mobilizing and public awareness focused on preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
The councilor knew that it was vital to start a dialogue about the impact of trauma on children, students, parents, caregiving grandparents and the workforce with the residents she represented at City Hall. She organized a series of “Great Conversations,” community forums focused on the theme of childhood trauma. These conversations, a unique small group process developed and facilitated by Randy Harris, ask 20 participants to answer one question per session, listening closely to all responses. Questions presented in a series of great conversations focused on what impact trauma had on families and what were residents willing to do to end trauma. The feedback she received from residents was to make the prevention of ACEs and trauma a priority.
With her long-standing relationships in the county with family-serving agency leadership, Gandara was able to engage local agency leaders from the ten “surviving” and “thriving” sectors outlined in Anna, Age Eight. With experience in community engagement, the councilor organized a project christened the Doña Ana County Resilience Leaders with a countywide focus to bring together agency leaders from ten vital family service sectors.
When should we start? Now!
What is important to note is that this elected official did not wait months or years to write a proposal to fund Resilience Leaders, instead she identified the need to take on the epidemic of trauma and began work immediately. With support from us and local colleagues, she essentially set up the sign “Trauma Stops Here. Ask me how.” and has not stopped working tirelessly to create a countywide system with the goal of going upstream to address the root causes of ACEs. She leverages her position as a councilor to secure meeting rooms at city hall, provide food for community stakeholders and maintain a communications network with all city and county stakeholders, including leaders at New Mexico State University where she has taught.
The Doña Ana Resilience Leaders project has been meeting since August 2018, taking courses on the data-driven and cross-sector prevention of ACEs, including lessons on assessment, planning, action, evaluation and adaptive leadership. The group formed into ten task forces, each one focused on increasing access to a particular service, such as, behavioral health care, early child learning or housing.
Daring to Ask: How family-friendly are we as a city and county?
Councilor Gandara, working in collaboration with New Mexico State University and the Anna, Age Eight Institute, launched the Resilient Community Experience Survey to assess the capacity of parents to access vital services. It may very well be one of the first times in the nation that the parents in a county, across all socio-economic levels, were asked, “Can you get to the services you need to keep your family safe, healthy and resilient?” The survey, provided in English and Spanish, and implemented by Resilience Leaders members, provides an eye-opening document for every elected official, family-serving organization, foundation and the business community.
Any county with these survey results will never casually say, “Just link parents to services.” The data gathered provides a very sobering reality that for many parents, vital services are not within reach.
In late 2019, Councilor Gandara organized the Resilience Leaders’ Summit on Trauma-Free and Thriving Childhoods to present the findings from the survey. 300 local leaders and stakeholders, including the Lt. Governor and state and local lawmakers, learned not only to what degree parents struggled to access ten vital services, but why challenges exist across the city and county.
Doña Ana County was the first county in New Mexico to document how accessible (and inaccessible) the following ten services are to parents in both urban and rural settings:
- Behavioral health care
- Medical and dental care
- Housing
- Food
- Transport to services
- Parent supports
- Early childhood learning
- Youth mentors
- Community schools
- Job training
With the survey results identifying where and why service gaps exist, the Resilience Leaders can focus on capacity-building across ten interrelated sectors. Empowered by data, there’s no guessing about where to focus the work and how to move forward in a measurable and meaningful manner.
Setting a new standard for a “Family-Friendly” City
Councilor Gandara has a strategic plan for addressing gaps in the services identified in the parent survey. She has reached out to hundreds of county residents, increasing awareness of the emotional and financial costs of childhood trauma. Her strong coalition is empowered to assess, plan, act and evaluate as they follow the continuous quality improvement framework to increase access to services and ensure the user-friendliness and quality of services. The councilor is an advocate for working in alignment with existing efforts and knows, as an elected official, how the work of city and county government is strengthened when people collaborate with shared strategies and goals.
It is quite common to read in the popular media about a city proclaiming itself the “Best City for Families” or “The Most Family-Friendly City.” What Councilor Gandara has created is a new standard for every city and county government. She has developed the model for doing the hard work of connecting leaders and change agents to reach a shared vision: ensuring that within the borders of Doña Ana County and the city of Las Cruces, 100% of residents have access to ten vital services.
ACEs prevention is not about tinkering around the edges of abuse and neglect, it’s a long-term strategic data-driven action that is constantly evaluated. Gandara’s work is moving an entire county from lack of awareness, to being trauma-informed, then to the next vital step: the data-driven prevention of the trauma that diminishes the lives of all residents.
Only when the noble goal of serving every family is reached, can a city and county proudly proclaim itself family-friendly and child-centered. Resilience Leaders is showing the way for all of New Mexico’s counties and sharing all their successes and challenges with other localities.
What motivates a champion?
When asked why she committed to taking on the epidemic of ACEs, Councilor Gandara shares:
People ask why is all this important to me? From my decades of work in child welfare, I know first-hand the cost of abuse, neglect and trauma in all its forms. As I read Anna, Age Eight, I thought of all the “Anna’s” in the system I knew of that would not live to see their 10th birthday party. As a city official, I’m committed to every child and must connect the dots between healthy and safe children and successful students and readiness for work. It is my belief that if we generate awareness and engagement of our all our family-serving agency staff, businesses, community leaders and our policy leaders, we can prevent ACEs. We can not only be a healthier thriving community where every child is a priority, but a more economically vital one that supports every family.
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