Dr. Vincent Felitti is shown with Dr. Mimi Graham, who spearheaded the event (center) Dr. Celeste Phillips, Florida's Attorney General, and Kelly Romanoff, Director of the Barancik Foundation, which underwrote expenses for the Think Tank and printing of the booklet, Creating a Trauma Informed State - A Showcase of Florida's Cutting Edge Trauma Initiatives, for each attendee. (Booklet is available for download below.)
Many of the more than 560 high-level state leaders who attended Monday’s Trauma Informed Florida Think Tank – 350 in person and 266 joining via webcast – are already asking event organizers when the next event such as this will be held.
“We had a great mix of state agency folks and local community folks, as well as great diversity from systems,” said Mimi Graham, PhD, the director of the Florida State University Center for Prevention and Policy.
Graham, who, with others from FSU, spearheaded the event, said many attendees made great effort to come, as Naples, the site of the Think Tank, is at the bottom tip of Florida.
“The Sheriff from Pensacola drove 10 hours down and back each way. We had a committed group. Workgroups were super focused and enthusiastic,” she added.
Vincent Felitti, M.D., the co-investigator and co-author of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study of 1998, was the keynote speaker for the event, which also included the attendees who joined his audience via webcast.
Among those joining online was Sharon Miller, a Florida Guardian ad Litem (GAL), who had not heard Filetti speak before. She said of the experience, “This was mind boggling! So insightful and just so consice in amalgamating the adverse childhood experiences into charts in a way that made perfect sense. And the interviews!! So powerful.”
Miller, who works at the Kearney Center, which provides temporary emergency shelter and housing-focused services in Tallahassee, said she is “aware of how adults (with high ACE scores) have suffered growing up, but now I realize that having multiple ACE experiences just exponentially multiplies the trauma that they are trying to escape. They are just children in adult bodies desperately dealing with these memories.”
As a GAL for a family of four children coming from "unspeakable abuse and abandonment," Miller said she has a new appreciation for “how bravely” people with whom she volunteers are handling their lives.
Graham said she and others leading the event were thrilled with Dr. Filetti’s presentation and the standing ovation he received, as well as with the lively question and answer session following, and the day’s closing talk by Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, one of the hosts for the event.
“Our courts see the effects of trauma every day, most importantly in cases involving children and families, from dependency to delinquency to dissolution of marriage to domestic violence. Our ability to view the children and families with a trauma informed lens, especially for the youngest and most vulnerable children, can help change the trajectory of that child and families’ lives,” Justice Pariente has said.
Concurrent with the Think Tank, the FSU Center for Prevention released a book, Creating a Trauma Informed State - A Showcase of Florida's Cutting Edge Trauma Initiatives, which features 50 innovations from many of the attendees at the event. Initiatives featured programs such as trauma informed courts and schools, partnerships between sheriffs and doctors teaming up to address trauma, classes in yoga in women’s jails, ACEs screenings in pediatric clinics, resiliency efforts for college students, and pet therapies to help traumatized kids.
Thanks to the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, each of the attendees received a copy of the booklet. (Available below.)
“Everyone loved the booklet. Attendees who had submitted descriptions of their programs were so excited to see their program showcased. We had all those whose programs were featured to stand up and take a bow,” said Graham.
“The book is designed to help other communities see the benefits occurring when cross-sector teams come together to prevent trauma, heal trauma, and build resilience. We believe that many of Florida’s most costly, intractable social problems, including our opioid and substance abuse crisis, our growing public health costs, tragic school failures, and the multigenerational cycle of families into our criminal justice and child welfare systems, can be decreased by addressing early trauma,” Graham said.
“Our vision is that through Dr. Felitti’s inspiration, our Think Tank and showcase of Florida’s trauma initiatives will continue our statewide momentum to replicate and expand trauma work to achieve collective impact," Graham added.
Thanks to the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation for generously sponsoring this Think Tank and underwriting the printing of this Showcase of Florida’s Cutting- Edge Trauma Initiatives; and to the Florida State University College of Medicine, Center for Child Stress & Health in Immokalee, FSU Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy, the Governor’s Office of Adoption & Child Protection, Florida’s Children & Youth Cabinet, and the Naples Children & Education Foundation.
Showcase of Florida’s Cutting Edge Trauma Initiatives: www.floridatrauma.org
For further information, contact: Mimi Graham, FSU Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy (mgraham@fsu.edu) or office (850-922-1302).
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