Health Starts at Home

Tina: 
These handouts are great.

Nice work! THANK you for sharing. Is it o.k. to share them as resources in Parenting with ACEs? In fact, the comment you made would make a great post for Parenting with ACEs. Hint. Hint  

Cissy 

Put Advancing Parenting's parenting tips bumper stickers in your budget for next year.

Cheers!

Thanks for all the encouragement!  David, your messaging idea is fantastic!  However, at this time I don't have the funds to purchase.  Our project is grant funded and we spent most of the material money on the patient handouts.  

In terms of anticipatory guidance or patient materials, every person screened receives a "Strong Families" booklet that explains the Protective Factors.  It has been graciously provided by a local organization called TEAM for WV Children who oversees our Strengthening Families initiative in WV.  You can learn more at https://teamwv.org/strengtheni...thening-families-wv/  Unfortunately, I don't have an electronic copy of the booklet.  Every pregnant patient or parent of a child under 12 receives the ACES handout, which is attached.  We re-designed part of Spokane Washington's ACE handout to fit WV families.  Youth over 13 who are screened receive a half page handout called Overcoming Adversity, which is attached.  We designed this resource in house. 

For patients who screen with 4 or more ACEs, they receive the resilience survey and additional materials that I have downloaded from the Baucomb Alaska ACEs Coalition, National Institute of Mental Health What is Stress handout, materials on positive parenting from the CDC and Bright futures, additional materials from CSSP's parent translations of protective factors,  copies of articles, basically whatever I think they need at the time, depending on what is going on in their lives.  We are thinking about using the AAP Resilience project parent posters in our bathrooms and exam rooms to reinforce the messaging as well as have been donated materials purchased from https://gsc.mitchellgraphics.com/ for overall messaging.  

I pretty much read every article, listen to various podcasts, and have ordered several books on the subjects of resilience, post traumatic growth, and brain science so that I can coach and guide patients as well.  

My ultimate goal is to get pregnant patients and small children's families engaged in home visiting so that they can receive on-going support, child development information and resilience building support.  For the families with older children, it is a little bit harder to connect them with longer term support resources.  

My "preferred" goal is to offer parent to parent peer support groups to accompany and supplement therapy our practice offers.  However, we are still getting the screening and referral process smoothed out so this kind of support can be explored later on.   If you are thinking of peer to peer parent support groups, Circle of Parents is a great resource.  

I'm also trying to come up with a social media plan and propose a section of our health center's website to ACEs information and resources.  Knowing how much is enough information will need patient input.  Personally, I like the design of stresshealth.org though and reference it on our parent handout.  

Big dreams but I am one lone individual serving 3, soon to be 5, sites of our health center.  However, we have awesome collaborations in our state and I can partner with folks like Project Launch, neighborhood associations and legal services in the school.  ACEs is a "hot" topic in WV right now so I have plenty of people implementing other strategies to collaborate with.  It is a huge blessing.  

I've probably went overboard in answering your comments but would be glad to talk further on the phone or provide additional explanation here.  Have a great day friends! 

Tina-

Great work! Can you share what resources you have for these families in your area? I am excited to begin forming a web of resources in our area. The Wisdom Cottage @In Due Season Pregnancy Wellness Center has been screening our clients for ACES since April 2016. It has been a slow process in putting together the best resources for our families.

Tina, Thank you for bringing us along on your learning journey!  It warms my heart to read that folks here on ACEs Connection informed your work in some small way.  Please continue to share updates and lessons learned.  Together we are accelerating the ACEsScience movement!  Great work!  Karen

Tina -

You are doing life changing and lifesaving work. I heard the report today on the new book Dopesick, and thought of friends in WVA and VA and the losses and trials the opioid crisis has brought. Hearing about bright spots and great work such as this is inspiring. I want to be sure others see and hear about the work you are doing. Thank you for posting this! 

C. 

Tina:
I love your enthusiasm and am so glad this site supports you regularly! Can I ask which resources you share about ACEs and resilience with families? I want to make sure they are also housed in Parenting with ACEs (if it's o.k. to share them). And if you're using the downloads we share and have any feedback or suggestions we'd love to hear that as well.

I'm cross-posting to Parenting with ACEs. 

Thank you!
Cissy

Have the health centers place our parenting tips bumper stickers on counters and tables so parents can help themselves.  See the attachments.  This isn't really about improving the parenting of the parents who bring their children to the clinic, but rather improving the overall quality of parenting in the community.  Parenting tips on cars will be read thousands of times, by thousands of people of all ages, for years to come.   

Visit our website, advancingparenting.org.  Our focus is not treatment and healing from aces, but rather the primary prevention of adverse childhood experiences.