Hi everyone,
I am helping support some work in a neighboring community around establishing a residential housing facility for men, women, and youth impacted by ACEs/Complex Trauma. Is anyone familiar with any models that exist presently (anywhere) which we could look to for ideas? Appreciate any insights you can share! Thanks!
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Melissa L. McPheeters - The Troy, New York Housing Authority has a PE/ACE program, which may be highlighted/elaborated about on their website. The SUNY-Albany [abutting the west side of Troy] campus may have related research/programming...
You might think of starting a chapter of ACA in the facility -- Adult Children of Alcoholics (and other dysfunctional families). ACA is a 12 step program which is focused on the "messages" of growing up in dysfunction and how they inculcate a lot of false information, bad habits and later misery in our lives. People pleasing, self hatred, emotional constriction, shaky relationships.
I think you may have a built in issue... things will come up in co-housing because sharing space with others may be very triggering to people who were hurt in their families of origin. The group dynamics will likely raise a lot of these old issues. Having an evening meeting where people can process these things might be a big help.
Thank you Robert and Laura! These are great ideas and considerations; I will be passing them along... 
Hi Melissa, We have a team in Utah working to create CARES Meadow right now. Our parent driven team has an idea that will work for children from ages 4-18. We are consulting with a gentleman (with 38 years of experience) who has developed a model of therapy for children who suffer from Developmental Trauma Disorders or FASD. He has a proven model we will follow. Our idea is a therapeutic community with trained and skilled therapy parents in each house. We are planning an idea to have four interns in each home to help the therapy parents. Two of the interns will stay up all night watching the doorways of the children. There will be seven bedrooms for the children. The doors will be half dutch doors (to leave the upper portion open) and the bed rooms will be in a semi-circle facing into the open room the interns are sitting in. The interns will be sitting at a table facing the bedrooms at all times. The only items in each bedroom will be a covered mattress, pillow, and blanket per child. All other personal items will be kept in a different room with lockers for each child. If a child wakes during the night with problems, then one intern will take the child to the bathroom or call the therapists and security team to come help, while the other intern watches the rest of the rooms. The other interns would be woken to come help in crisis moments. The community will be developed to have two 24/7 therapists living in or close to the community, a security team, and surrogate grandparents (living in their own cottages in the community) who have raised disordered children will also help out in the community. We plan to build a special ed school with individual cubicles modeled from a school in Utah that has been trained to work with children from hard places. This school has been successful for ten years with the parents and children they serve. Please let me know if you have any more questions. We are doing this as a research pilot project and hope to develop it across the nation. We are starting the campaign for monies now. Everything is in place and ready to start. jennydew1@yahoo.com
I forgot to tell you that we have a man out here in Utah also working toward a tiny house community for the adults with complex trauma disorders. You will want to check out the Loaves and Fishes program in Austin, Texas. Our guy is wanting to follow their idea.
Jenny Dew posted:I forgot to tell you that we have a man out here in Utah also working toward a tiny house community for the adults with complex trauma disorders. You will want to check out the Loaves and Fishes program in Austin, Texas. Our guy is wanting to follow their idea.
Jenny, thank you for this! We will be reaching out to you. This is a side project of mine right now, on top of work and school - I've got your email and so appreciate what you've taken the time to share!
