High ACE'd Adult Advisory Group?

Hello Crissy, I would like to join this discussion.  I am a clinician and administrator who has been through a host of trauma focused trainings and am responsible to train our Behavioral Health Division in the Sanctuary Model.  I have a high ACE score (depending on screening tool) and am always feeling like I need more support in figuring out how to manage it all while being an effective agent of change, health and healing. 

Please share whatever insights are available on how to connect with this group.

There's one thing to talk about high ACEs etc and another in actually actioning something positive.  

Well done, Cissy.  Naturally you can count me in!

I would be in support of this and add that it would be equally helpful to track resilience factors, health issues, quality of life, relationships etc. associated with our ACE's to help us and others determine what helps and hinders our ability to have a good quality of life despite ACE scores.

In the research I've conducted with high risk expectant mothers and in school-based health centers I've noticed that there is no correlation between ACE and GAF scores-meaning that one kid might get completely knocked down by a single ACE event, while a women with all 10 is actually doing considerably well in life.

Short answer-Yes!

Hi all - 

Christine, I think what you've suggested is a great idea! I'd love to participate in the group. I work with young children, from birth to 5 years old, in Head Start (3,4,5) and Early Head Start (infants and toddlers, birth to 3) settings. I have a high ACE score myself, and am passionate about protecting young children. I'm very impressed with everyone who is contributing to ACEs Connection/ACEs Too High, etc. I live in Siskiyou County, CA, which is the Northernmost county, bordering Oregon. It is one of the largest sized (geographically),  most sparsely populated, and poorest counties in CA, and the population centers are quite spread out. We have a very committed, dedicated Early Childhood Provider community, but so fat the only people in it that I've met that know what ACEs stands for - are people who heard about it from me. My long-term goal is to bring a lot more awareness about childhood trauma, trauma in general, and other such things to the county... 

     When Vermont passed their HB 762, requiring All Vermont health care providers to screen All patients [regardless of age] for ACEs, one of our ACEsConnection members there was working on rewording some of the questions. 

     I saw an 18 question ACEs form on the World Health Organization's (WHO) site, broken down into further clarifying sub-questions in each of the eighteen categories. The WHO ACE International Questionaire does not have 18 questions, as I recall, but I seem to recall "Less ambiguous wording"...

     Where the US CDC/Kaiser ACE questionaire asks if a "household member" was incarcerated, it doesn't specify whether it is an adolescent or adult member of the household. When I was an "emancipated minor", still in High School, and working to pay for my own apartment - no longer part of my "family-of-origin's" household, I experienced "homelessness", prior to getting my own apartment.....and "incarceration", prior to , and after graduation. 

     I may not be able to participate in the initial ACEs Conference call[s], but I'm very much interested in both supporting and participating in this endeavor.

Cissy -- Yes, the group Childhood Disrupted will be on ACEsConnection. We're in the process of adding information and inviting people now. I'll announce in the weekly roundup. 

I'm continually amazed at all the wonderful people who are doing such incredible work in spreading the word about ACEs, and how they support each other!

Cheers, Jane

And I would really like a private group.  I guess I don't care if what I have to contribute gets out in some way somehow later, personally, but I would like a private discussion because I want to really discuss why some traditional therapies did not work and were actually harmful for me and be able to feel freely open to discuss why......

I may seem "out" but I'm not really "out".   I think many of us can offer so much more when we can truly feel safe (or relatively so) to speak our truths.....

And I like to add witnessing violence against any family member, and homelessness in the parents or in the teen.  (and I can now confidently say after looking at Dr. Burke Harris questions that yes I do indeed have 10 ACEs plus several other of the additional -- that really wasn't necessary but I like to affirm me sometimes). 

Thank you so much for organizing this, Cissy.

There might be the opportunity to have some of these conversations on a new group that's forming -- it's called Childhood Disrupted, and its impetus is Donna Jackson Nakazawa's book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal. She and her assistant have offered to help moderate it. It's a place for discussing the effects of childhood adversity and what people are doing to heal. 

Of course, it won't be a private group. I'm a big advocate of people being as open as possible about ACEs, because that's the way that we can accelerate resources to prevent them. But I'm also cognizant that it takes time for people to be comfortable with discussing their ACEs in a public forum.

So, there might be room for both types of groups: public and private. 

Joan -- To answer your question, some studies, such as the Philadelphia Urban ACE Study added questions. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has added seven questions to the survey she uses to screen her patients. The Children's Clinic in Portland, OR, has also added questions (bullying, community violence, discrimination, foster care). 

Looks like some great initial enthusiasm. We can start with a conference call. 

Anyone want to add to the agenda? 

I think we could do a round table style meeting and everyone spend a few minutes saying what they'd personally want in a general way, recorded for minutes, and then hit the specific agenda items. 

Anyone like to do minutes?

Anyone got a good free con call service they like?

Cissy

I think it is a good idea and will participate.

I think it's a great idea.

I have students who may well be interested in participating in a group like you are describing!

When I used the wording/language on the first World Health Organization ACE International Questionaire, to calculate my score, it's about 5 points higher, than when I use the wording on the US CDC/Kaiser ACE questionaire....

It bears a faint resemblance to one administered at my primary [health] care provider, 14-15 years ago, but I was just asked the questions by a [dual] Resident physician (Internal Med/Psychiatry) reading them to me from a computer screen the resident was typing/entering the data at...possibly developed by Stanley Rosenberg, M.D.-a [trauma-informed] doc at Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center. My primary care clinic had recently been bought out by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic.

I concur, as well!

I like it too. 

I think it is a good idea.