Why become a Trauma-Informed County?

The effects of long lasting trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on children and adults has been documented in research for over 20 years. Since 2016, the Bakersfield Californian has highlighted the drastic impact of Toxic Stress on many of our Kern County citizens and communities that has substantially shortened people’s lives through diabetes, cancer, asthma, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide. Many of these conditions and experiences are linked to early childhood trauma that can occur across generations and seriously impact and impair families and communities, not just in Kern but across our nation.

Besides training professional staff, our coalition believes it is important to bring all our diverse communities together from around Kern in a county wide, system wide training and collaboration that can make a greater, long-term impact on the lives of individuals, families and our many communities.

Goals for the training:

During four training days in 2018, a cohort of 100 selected trainees have come to: • share a common language and science of trauma and its impacts • get to know their many counterparts across Kern County, and • learn to apply training in understanding case management and care coordination that will create greater long- term outcomes as they proceed to serve others.

Over time, becoming a Trauma-Informed Kern County will lead to improvements in our approaches to people, leading to changes in policies, procedures and even physical structures that will be more welcoming and effective as we jointly work to improve health, education, employment opportunities and community well-being in Kern County.

As one simple example, we will change from asking: “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”.