Child Abuse Council of Santa Clara County PSA on Healthy Relationships

     Please use this PSA to serve the mission discussed below.  You can expect Spanish and Vietnamese language versions within a couple of months.    

     We all know we don't want children experiencing violence or abuse or neglect or other forms of Adverse Childhood Experiences, because the more of them a child experiences, the higher the risk that they will experience negative developmental, emotional, behavioral, social, and medical consequences, consequences that can be life-long.  But what do want instead?  

     The Child Abuse Council of Santa Clara County, in its first media campaign,   wanted to send the community a simple, positive, constructive, and evidence supported message that would serve its mission of child abuse prevention.

     The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the most extensive longitudinal study of its kind, followed a cohort of individuals over the course of their lives for the purpose of trying to identify the key factors leading to a long, happy, healthy life. One of the studies longest serving researchers, George Valliant, MD, bottom lined the study’s most significant fundamental finding when he said:  "When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships."  Not only do they serve to protect children from ACE's, they also serve to buffer children from the impact  of the stressors and traumas of life over which parents and family may not have control, like poverty. 

     So, for it’s media campaign,  the Child Abuse Council.of Santa Clara County, with the help of a team of students from California State University East Bay, created a Public Service Announcement to gently remind the community that if children are surrounded by healthy relationships of every sort, from parenting and partnering and family and friend and neighbor and teaching and coaching and helping, relationships which, very simply, are emotionally safe, physically safe, respectful, caring, and never violent or abusive, not only will they be far less likely to experience child-abuse or neglect, they will be far more likely to grow up to be happier, healthier, kinder, stronger in body and spirit, and more constructively productive than they would have otherwise been. It’s a message which serves not only the goal of child abuse prevention and healthy childhood development, but also the long term goals of intimate partner, family, and community violence prevention.

     So, please, use it, share and distribute it, and visit www.cacscc.org for more information on healthy relationships.