Gail's comments: please read this well written overview of Resilient Yolo efforts by Resilient Yolo co-chair Tracy Fauver!
I want you to imagine the last time you were cut off on the freeway by a vehicle driving erratically. For most, this is a frustrating experience. We are immediately angry at the other driver and may even act out by way of honking our horn or giving the other driver an unkind look (… OK, maybe an unkind gesture!). We then may mumble something along the lines of, “What is wrong with that person?”
Now, imagine you were cut off by that same driver but saw that they had a passenger in the car who was visibly sick or unresponsive. I am guessing that you would automatically feel empathy for that driver. Rather than feeling anger, we would likely wonder what happened and if the passenger was OK.
Now, what if I told you the driver in the first scenario was actually on the way to see a loved one in the hospital who had just been in a devastating accident. Had we known that, we likely wouldn’t have given that driver an unkind look or honked our horn, yet by immediately assuming the driver had been careless or made a mistake, we missed an opportunity to be kind.
So — what does this have to do with Yolo County CASA?
About five years ago, local agencies including Yolo County CASA, managers from Yolo County’s Child Welfare Services, mental health personnel from CommuniCare and officers from the Yolo County Office of Public Health were brought together by the Yolo County Office of Probation, Juvenile Division to form a collaborative. The point of this collaborative was to get a grant to define and enact positive ways of dealing with youthful offenders; the Positive Youth Justice Initiative funded by the Sierra Health Foundation.
Unfortunately, the county did not get the grant, but the passion and desire to bring trauma-informed practices to children and families who really needed them in Yolo County had already been set into motion. We called our collaborative “Resilient Yolo” and pressed on.
We went on to receive help from Jane Stevens, who is well known around the world for her work in trauma-informed practices and ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). She is also the founder of ACEsTooHigh.com, a website where you can learn about the effects of ACEs and what you can do about them and ACEsConnection.com, a social networking site dedicated to preventing ACEs, healing trauma and building resilience. We are lucky that she lives right here in Yolo County and so enthusiastically helped us with our efforts.
We went on to form a partnership with the Yolo County Office of Education and hosted two “Resilient Yolo” summits in 2016 and 2017. The third one is scheduled for Oct. 30, 2018.
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