Raising public awareness of ACEs and translating ACEs knowledge into action was the theme of a June 23 virtual New Jersey ACEs Collaborative press conference (click here to view the 45-min event and here for the press release). The overarching goal of the collaborative is to make the state “Trauma-Informed and Healing Centered.”
We need to have more people “shouting from the rooftops” and taking action to address the root causes of ACEs, said Dave Ellis, Executive Director of the New Jersey Office of Resilience.
Ellis led a diverse panel that reflected the campaign’s prioritization of education and law enforcement as a starting point to implement the goals of the collaborative. The speakers included Katie Stoehr, deputy commissioner of operations for the NJ Department of Children and Families; First Lady Tammy Snyder Murphy; Amanda Adams of the NJ Education Association (NJEA); Angel Santiago, 2021 NJ Teacher of the Year; Jennifer Davenport of the Office of the Attorney General; and Chief Chris Leusner from the Middle Township Police Department. While the campaign starts with educators and law enforcement personnel, Ellis says everyone needs to be knowledgeable about ACEs.
The ACEs Collaborative includes the Office of Resilience, NJ Department of Children and Families, and three foundations— The Burke Foundation, The Nicholson Foundation, and the Turrell Fund. A community advisory board helped plan the “Actions4ACEs” campaign over the past six months, according to Ellis.
Earlier this year, the Statewide Action Plan was released (click here for a PACEs Connection article with details on the plan) that included a core strategy focused on ACEs public awareness and mobilization. One action step was to establish “a virtual learning community for ongoing stakeholder education and collaboration between trauma-informed/ healing-centered organizations across the state.” Resources assembled as part of the action step are described in the final section of this article.
Dave Ellis, Office of Resilience, and Katie Stoehr, Dept. of Children and Families
Setting the stage
Deputy Commissioner Stoehr called the launch of Actions 4 ACEs “an exciting and necessary public awareness campaign.” She highlighted that the research subsequent to the ACE Study shows that trauma stems beyond problems within the family and “can also result from community problems, such as community violence, systemic racism, entrenched poverty, and an unprecedented health crisis like COVID-19.”
Stoehr finds hope in the knowledge of positive and adverse experiences. “But the effects of ACEs can also be disrupted by the involvement of just one caring, competent, and compassionate adult who shows interest, who engages with empathy and kindness, and who builds resilience in children by showing them that we're all so much more than the accumulation of any negative experiences,” she said.
First Lady Murphy’s advocacy on maternal and infant health encompasses ACEs
Murphy’s signature issue as New Jersey’s first lady is maternal and infant health— addressed through Nurture NJ, an initiative to make the state the safest and most equitable place in the nation to deliver and raise a baby. She sees an alignment of strategies to address child and maternal health and ACEs—address the whole person across the lifespan, expand health care access, and break down silos among service agencies so families get the support they need.
“As ACEs contribute to negative birth outcomes, they can also lead to a cycle of trauma that revisits each successive generation," she said. "But the cycle can be broken.We can begin to create these healing spaces in our schools and communities. And our educators and law enforcement professionals are perhaps the most essential part of this important endeavor.”
The role of the NJ Education Association and 2021 Teacher of the Year
Dave Ellis came to New Jersey from Minnesota about a year ago to head the Office of Resilience—a move that had its inspiration a half dozen years ago when Amanda Adams attended one of his trainings. She saw the information he presented as something that would be valuable and transformative for all school personnel.
Adams invited Ellis back to train a group of 25 to train others and now there are close to 100 train-the-trainers. “Our goal is to reach all 200,000 NJ EA members with these messages, including teachers, teachers, aides, food service workers, custodial staff, and others,” she said. “I knew that this information was the key to supporting educators and students, especially in our most challenging learning environments. And one of the most important things that I have learned is that when we stop asking students, what's wrong with you, and we'll begin asking them what happened to you and how can I help, relationships are built and the healing process begins.”
The Office of Resilience has made sharing this information a priority. It held a free statewide training in June and plans others for July and August.
Santiago said his involvement in the ACEs Collaborative has been “a beautiful opportunity” and the resources that have been assembled for the public awareness campaign are extremely valuable to educators. The campaign embodies the value that “compassion must come before curriculum,” he said.
He also noted that the collaborative provides “a tangible resource and a central location that professionals from education to health to public safety can reference and collaborate to find innovative solutions for children experiencing ACEs.”
He described how his involvement with the collaborative has impacted him: “I always knew that some of my trauma was mirrored in my students. But the ACEs Collaborative has conceptualized this idea. And perhaps this is why being part of this team has fed my soul. For me, this is personal and professional. Working with these different professionals has shown me that we as educators have partners, other people within our proverbial villages to brainstorm and in turn create a safe, safe and healthy community for our children. And I pledge to train my fellow colleagues about the importance of this information, and how they can become involved.”
Role of Law Enforcement and Handle with Care
Jennifer Davenport with the state Attorney General’s office highlighted the state’s Handle with Care program and how it helps mitigate the impact of trauma on children. In October 2020, NJ Attorney General Grewal issued the Handle With Care Directive, requiring law enforcement officers to promptly notify a child's school if the child is involved in or witnessed a traumatic event, reported Davenport. She said her department will take action this summer to encourage the state’s 38,000 law enforcement officers to learn about ACEs and have conversations about how this information can help find additional ways to serve and protect all the state’s residents.
The final speaker, Chief Chris Leusner from the Middle Township Police Department, was recognized as an important youth advocate and leader in the effort to educate enforcement personnel in his own town and throughout the state. He held up the work being done “to tackle the causes of crime and social disorder” but emphasized the need to “go upstream to tackle the true root causes of people coming in contact with the criminal justice system and police officers and that’s our kids being exposed to ACEs.” He said knowledge of ACEs transformed his view of community problem-oriented policing. “We can do this through cross sector collaboration, and police youth engagement with the goal of building resiliency in our kids,” said Leusner.
Leusner is helping to take the Handle with Care program statewide. He said the program was launched in his town in September 2018 and recorded 110 referrals in the first school year. “The last thing we want to see is the school take action to compound the trauma because they did not know that something happened," he said. He believes the ACEs work is “one of the most important things we can do to impact people's lives in a positive way to prevent crime, to build healthier communities, help build trust in our communities.”
Resources for NJ and other states
A post by the community manager of the NJ Resilience Coalition site on PACEs Connection, Dwana Young, asks the reader “How will you act the address ACEs in your community?” and provides resources to help amplify the messages of this campaign. Among many resources are two versions of flyers that say either “Share a Game” or “Share a Conversation,” followed by the statement “2 out of 3 children have experienced trauma, 3 out of 3 adults can help.”
While the focus is on NJ and the guidance is written for its residents, other states could benefit from their work. Visit Actions 4 ACEs website to find educational materials and a curated list of resources to help mobilize the community for understanding and action. Other resources are linked in the bullets below:
- Use the campaign social media toolkit to spread the word on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram
- Share educational materials and resources with your colleagues and communities
- Follow the campaign on social media using the hashtag #Actions4ACEs
The move from Minnesota to New Jersey wasn’t in Ellis’ life plan but now “I look at every child in the state of New Jersey, the same way I looked at children in Minnesota. They're all mine,” he said.
He didn’t come to New Jersey with a plan for the work of the Office of Resilience, said Ellis, but he did have a plan for developing a plan. It can be summarized this way—community, community, community. State governments can take programs to scale, foundations can provide funding, but true, innovative ideas emerge from the community, he said.
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