Fight for a child’s right to safety—because an eight-year-old can’t.

Do you remember when weekly news stories of our children being traumatized, tortured and killed became the new normal?

If our children had a voice and vote, which they don’t, I believe they would all ask for the right to grow up in safe homes with healthy parents, and be able to learn in high-functioning schools.

Our never-ending cycle of child tragedies begs the bigger question, which we pose in our book Anna, Age Eight: who are the real monsters here? Is it the parents who inflict these horrors on their children, or the members of society that continue allowing this to happen?

Benign neglect became our national, state and city policy on children. Most school boards are in a state of denial that a quarter of their students go home to a world of adverse childhood experiences, but they still hope the math homework gets done on time. Over the last two decades, while we played with our fancy new technologies on the net, we failed to notice that childhood became a high risk occupation.

That may be about to change. It depends on you.

I believe we are at a moment where a social moonshot, in the form of a national network of citywide ACEs prevention programs, could become a reality. There are leaders at every level of government taking notice of the financial and emotional costs of ACEs and earnestly asking, “What should we do?”

I have had conversations with state and city leadership where we discuss budgets and I ask, “Which should be a priority, funding our parks or the safety of our children?”

When I was told by a mayor that a city was not designed to prevent ACEs I countered with, “Then I guess it’s time to rethink how cities work.”

The good news is that universities are collaborating with non-profit agencies to bring ACEs prevention a whole new level. In Owensboro, Kentucky, and Las Cruces, New Mexico, collaborative, data-driven and technology-infused ACEs prevention programs have launched. These models, sponsored by the non-profit Safety+Success Communities in partnership with Eastern New Mexico University-Program of Social Work, are demonstrating how to engage the public and private sector in making every child a priority. Not only is awareness of ACEs increasing, but program participants are also working to build trauma-informed behavioral health care centers in every school to serve students and their family members. Work also includes ensuring that all families have stable shelter, food, medical care and access to early childhood learning programs and youth mentors. Creating resourced communities is becoming an integral part of cross-sector ACEs prevention.

We are poised to end the epidemic of childhood trauma by disrupting a system that has told our children to suffer in silence. Quite frankly, we can no longer tolerate a societal norm that blindly accepts the suffering and even death of children on a weekly basis. The status quo is neither sustainable nor ethical.

Today, there are only a few hundred programs in the nation that identify themselves as offering “ACEs prevention.” This is a promising beginning to the development of not only a national movement on ACEs prevention, but also a commitment to the basic rights of children to be safe, healthy and educated to succeed.

Our work is urgently needed, and the following guidelines for ACEs prevention work will produce much-needed results:

1. Use data to assess the magnitude of family trauma and related challenges
2. Assess parents and youth to measure their access to 10 vital services shown to strengthen families (Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment  provides the Resilient Community Experience Survey to do this)
3. Use research to identify evidence-based policies and programs shown to strengthen families
4. Use the data-driven framework of continuous quality improvement to guide all local work, ensuring a result-focused process of assessing, planning, acting and evaluating
5. Build a relationship with local child welfare leadership to work in alignment
6. Dialogue with city and county government leadership to ensure the funding of ACEs prevention
7. Work with experts in behavioral health care to help school boards create school policy on ACEs prevention, screening, assessment and treatment
8. Use technology to strengthen strategic communication and messaging on ACEs, including sharing your program’s vision, goals and activities
9. Train local agency leadership in improving the quality of their family services shown to strengthen families and reduce ACEs
10. Evaluate all activities and share progress toward measurable and meaningful goals

The public is hungry for leadership on ending our costly national nightmare of trauma. We have the blueprint to end ACEs. We have the power to elevate childhood so that every young person grows up in a safe, healthy and resilient family.

Fight for a child’s right to safety–because an eight-year-old can’t.

You may download free-of-charge a copy of Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment here: www.AnnaAgeEight.org.  

You may learn more about the Resilience Leaders ACEs Prevention Project here: www.ResilienceLeaders.org