Seward is a thriving and warm community, full of people who care and want to nurture one another. Even so, the fact remains that we don’t all start with the same opportunities and that early childhood trauma can have a lasting impact on people’s lives. This is the concept that has broken into the field of child development over the last few years. The new way of talking about this concept of unequal starts is known as ACES. According to the national Prevention Institute “Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) is the term given to describe all types of abuse, neglect, and other traumatic experiences that occur to individuals under the age of 18. The landmark Kaiser ACE study examined the relationships between these experiences during childhood and reduced health and well-being later in life.” There are eleven different categories of ACEs, including physical and emotional abuse, and variations on these themes, including incarcerated family members, witnessing domestic violence and various forms of neglect.
In Seward, we contend with many of the same challenges as anywhere in the United States: hunger, family tensions of varying sorts, and transportation. But there are other, uniquely Alaskan issues that we also contend with. For instance, the rates of alcoholism are higher in the 49th state, as is domestic violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And there’s the fact that many families living in Alaska have fewer family supports close at hand. I’ve heard it said that in Alaska, friends become like family because our families of origin are far away. Prior to moving to Seward, I’ve always lived in larger towns and cities, with family connections within driving distance. In Alaska, that’s no longer the case for me or my husband. We’ve come to rely on our friends in Alaska in a way that we have never relied on friends in previous locations. But for children, who have yet to develop strong relationships outside of their immediate families, their options are few, when their immediate families suffer setbacks or undergo the normal strains of life. One example would be seasonal job loss or cutbacks, resulting in less income. Such income loss, in the Seward area, often results in less food availability, particularly as healthy foods become seasonally more costly.
Andrew Scrivo is a Seward local and the coordinator of Seward’s Sources of Strength Program, a peer mentorship suicide prevention program that operates within the middle and high schools. He and his wife previously lived in small villages in southwest Alaska. Scrivo mentioned hunger and lack of medical access as other challenges unique to Alaska. Even in Seward, where we are fortunate to be on the road system, Alaskans experience hunger due to the high cost of food paired with the seasonal availability of work. Scrivo mentioned that “Alaska’s child welfare systems are overloaded,” which has resulted in diminished access to medical services for Seward youth.
[For more on this story by Kelley Lane, go to http://sewardcitynews.com/2018...y-small-town-alaska/]
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