PHC 6534 - Preventing ACEs in Military Families

The consequences of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, can have a detrimental effect on the individual child and their family. Adverse childhood experiences are defined as traumatic events that a child experiences between the ages of 0-17. Examples of these include, but are not limited to, experiencing or witnessing violence, abuse, or neglect. Particular individuals are more susceptible to experiencing ACEs in their lifetime, such as children of military soldiers, thus resulting in the potential to experiences major health issues and outcomes.⁹ To prevent and build resilience among these families, this program will set out to provide support to families with young children who have immediate family members deployed. Through this program, our goal is to improve the future health outcomes of children and prevent ACEs of military families.

A public health framework is utilized for this program in hopes of preventing and promoting the importance of prevention of ACEs in military families. Public health aims to deliver the maximum benefit for the largest population of individuals.² The planned program follows both the primary and secondary prevention levels. This is done by initially trying to ensure prevention and provide support to the military families and their children, but also recognizing that a potential problem is arising and providing those specific individuals with a different kind of support.⁷ With this program, the importance of showing that a healthy mental health state for children, and their families, it vital to ensure these individuals are at their best mental state for their deployed loved one.

The focus of this project will largely be on the relationship and community levels of the CDC’s Social-Ecological Model. Both the relationship and community levels of this framework rely on an individual’s surroundings, whether it is who they are around at home or out at school and the playground. There are four different levels, all of which overlap and connect to one another, making it necessary for this program to act across multiple levels.¹ At the relationship level, the program aims to focus on the child’s closest relationships. This can consist of the parents, siblings, and other family members (i.e. grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles). By having child health professionals available and present at the weekly events, it will allows for parents and their children to participate activities that are promoting healthy relationships among the parent and child. The goal is to help with strengthening communication and problem-solving skills among these families with a deployed, or soon to be deployed, family member. The community level aims to prevent any potential trauma by looking at the child’s settings and this will be done throughout the program by having the weekly events for the children and their families at the community center on the base. This will allow for a safe setting, where everyone attending can feel comfortable and relaxed, forgetting about the daily stressors of life for just a few short moments. In the end, the main goal is to target the specific individual level of the Social-Ecological Framework by addressing the two most important levels that can have a major impact on the individual.

To ensure trauma-informed principles are utilized correctly, the program will follow the SAMHSA’s six (6) trauma-informed principles. Of the six principles, our program will focus on heavily on the first three: safety, trustworthiness and transparency, and peer support.⁸ Safety is seen as the most important principle for the program because without making the participating children and their families feel comfortable, there will be an even bigger challenge with gaining their trust to help them with building resilience, as well as it could be hard for them to open up to others who are active in the program. Providing a safe area that is not stress inducing or anxiety causing will allow for a child to feel comfortable with being themselves and discussing any challenges they may be struggling with while their family member is deployed.⁴ Gaining the trust and comfort will be key to providing the best services possible to the families and their children.

As mentioned, trust is also a very important aspect of this program because without it, not much can good will come out of the program for those families we are aiming to help. Having staff members who are open and transparent with the participants about what they are doing, as well as just being friendly and welcoming human beings, is going to be key to ensuring that the children are receiving the care and support they may need. If there is trust then there can be openness with others, thus this is where peer support comes into play. Being transparent with the participants, and them being transparent themselves, will allow for an open environment for discussion. People can be more open to talking with a person they know has, or is, experiencing the same situation they are, making it easier to relate and discuss. Overall, staff will be trained with providing the best form of trauma-informed practices because in the end, all of these principles interplay with one another are vital to resilience in anyone.