By Jackie Augustine, Finger Lakes Times, July 7, 2020
Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes has been awarded a large grant in support of its Resiliency Center. This project was a finalist for the Downtown Revitalization program but ultimately was not selected. The mission and structure of the center are being worked on right now, but as I understand it, it will merge the expertise of Family Counseling in providing trauma-informed care with the unique needs and resources of the city of Geneva. While kids aren’t the exclusive focus of the programming, they will certainly benefit. That’s a really good thing because we know that the school district, the Geneva 2030 initiative, and Success for Geneva’s Children have been monitoring the ACEs of elementary school kids.
ACEs are “adverse childhood experiences.” As I wrote a few months ago, the ACEs scoring rubric was developed by pediatric researchers who observed direct correlation between troubled childhoods and a variety of troubling adolescent and adult behaviors.
The current ACEs scoring rubric assesses three areas: household dysfunction (substance abuse, violence, mental illness, etc.), neglect, and abuse. Additional research shows that a high ACEs score is correlated not only with risky behavior in adolescence but health issues such as cancer, heart disease, asthma, and chronic illnesses. Trauma experienced any time in life can have adverse physical and psychological effects, but that is particularly true in childhood, even when the effects remain latent in the system, not manifesting until years later.
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