ACEs screening in elementary schools

My big question would be: "For the sake of what?"

As a physician I was taught never to order a test unless I knew what I would do differently with the results.  I tend to side with Nadine Burke Harris (you can watch her TED talk, read her book) that ACE screening doesn't belong in schools. We don't need to know what is happening...we do need to know how to respond to every child. Knowing their ACE scores doesn't change our behavior.  We still need to build classroom communities. We still need to put routines in place, teach self regulation, mistakes are opportunities to learn and teach ourselves and our students how to respect each other in all our uniquenesses.

We have been implementing trauma informed practices in schools for 10 years and I think it can be done really well without any knowledge of a child's ACE score.  (And it is a better practice for learning communities including for kids with ACE scores of zero).

Hi Jodie,

You make some good points, and we'd totally agree that every school should be trauma sensitive, and part of the work we do here is to encourage that. Our aim in seeking to collect ACEs information at school-entry level is to be in a better position to resource and provide targeted support to families outside the school context (by local area, type of need, etc., and utilising nurse-home visiting approaches, for example). Unfortunately, the resources aren't available to establish trauma-sensitive communities (though, this should be a goal), and schools can only do so much when it comes to school-based support for children and their families. So, targeting of family and community services according to need is the approach we envisage. A number of Australian states already do this through collecting information at school entry level using family-stressors/broad adversity indicators. We think that the ACE indicators provide more reliable and researched information than these indicators, when it comes to service provision and support. Moreover, ACEs indicators can provide a very powerful argument for funding for services (by local area, need, etc), given their strong capacity to predict future outcomes. Of course, skill and sensitivity needs to be exercised in how the information is collected and responded to.

So that's our general thinking around this at the moment, and again, we'd agree with you about trauma-sensitive schools. Our focus is collecting ACEs information at school-entry level for family support outside schools in the broader community, where we know what can be done differently to improve outcomes.

Makes sense. I think in an ideal world the medical community would lead this.... but of course we don't live in an ideal world.

Hi Jodie,

Thanks for responding. Turns out that the scoping we're doing here in the Australian Capital Territory originates with the medical community. I dont think so in other states here though.

cheers

I can say from the perspective of having been a Speech Language Pathologist of all ages in the school it is important to know the story of children and their families.  I would say that understanding the origin of their behavior is important.  I think that the staff also have to understand that their responses are based on their own experience with adversity and the stress in some school classrooms is re-traumatizing.  

While I agree that an ACE score might not be helpful, knowing that a family is going through divorce or lost a loved one or had a family member be incarcerated is so important.  Not only are children acting out some are withdrawing.  I know as a child with ACES I wanted my teachers to be aware and there awareness allowed them to connect and guide me to appropriate resources throughout my school experience.  

I believe this is about understanding the human condition and being careful not to have too many assumptions about how children need to be treated.  Some behavioral plans can be more harmful than helpful and we need to understand how to discern the situation.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond.