Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence Project Director, Jenny Cooper, had the opportunity to talk about everything from ACEs to Resiliency at North Carolina's Child Fatality Prevention Summit. The Summit was the first of its kind in the state and brought together Community Child Prevention Team and Child Fatality Taskforce Teams from throughout the state.
While the morning plenary session spoke of ACEs and the high rates of ACEs in North Carolina, Jenny's presentation took the opportunity to really break down the statistics in North Carolina. North Carolina has more than 1.1 million kids who have experiences ACEs. The state has higher scores for extreme economic hardship, divorce, neighborhood violence, and living with someone with a substance use disorder or mental illness.
But knowing about ACEs is not enough. It is the actions that follow that are critical. Jenny discussed how to go about building resiliency among kids who have already experienced ACEs through increased engagement in schools and ensuring that youth are connected to medical homes. Even better than building resiliency once kids have experienced ACEs is preventing ACEs in the first place. A great way to go about doing that is through policies that prevent trauma. A myriad of states are doing just that: implementing laws which seek to prevent ACEs and reach various child serving sectors.
At the end of the day, it is not enough to just be trauma informed, we also want to reach resiliency. By seeing that people are resilient and have within them the skills that they need to heal, we can go about creating more compassionate and thriving communities.
Jenny will also be speaking as part of this year's Disability Rights Conference and as an option for NC NASW's Continuing Education Program.
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