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How courageous are you?

 

In our next edition of Anna, Age Eight, we might change Chapter Ten’s title Experience being courageous preferred, but not essential. A more accurate title is Courage required.

In The Republic, Plato describes civic courage as a sort of perseverance. We agree. We don’t underestimate the bravery and fortitude it will take to prevent the epidemic of childhood trauma and ensure that a fatality like eight-year-old Anna never happens again.

I offer a slightly modified excerpt from our final chapter ten.

We believe that if a measly quarter of the readers of this book responded to our calls to action we would soon see two major disruptions to business as usual.

First, we would start seeing email invites to rallies in front of city halls, county offices, and state houses, websites that demand real action, YouTube videos sharing stories around the emotional costs of trauma, new coalitions meeting weekly, and a linking of like-minded activists asking for local government, foundations, and nonprofits to fund and commit to data-driven, comprehensive, systemic, long-term adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) prevention work.

This data-driven and cross-sector ACEs prevention work would focus on strengthening vital family services and parent support programs, including behavioral health care, so that no child has to live in households where adults misuse substances, are threatening or violent, have untreated mental health challenges or are abusive and neglectful.

Second, the work inside agencies would make some dramatic course corrections. Cutting through the bureaucratic dysfunction, activities would align with the mission (for a change). Helping kids is something we can all agree on, but ending ACEs is the way to do that. This would translate into the implementation of evidence-based strategies, within all family-serving government agencies, to produce measurable and meaningful results. Reforms would be guaranteed by in-your-face unrelenting activism at city meetings, town halls and online.

Most importantly to you, our reader, local systems would kick into gear to protect your children, your sister’s children, and your neighbor’s children. Equally important, the kids and families who live on the other less-resourced side of town would benefit from the same safeguards as your kids.

Within a few years, dots representing new ACEs prevention projects would light up a map on your tablet, a proud documentation of the national ACEs Prevention Network working in coordination with a robust mental health care network and revitalized child welfare system.

Only one thing prevents this from happening: Us. We, the writers and readers of this book, are only one ingredient vital to a recipe for comprehensive, local, data-driven ACEs prevention. We require people from all walks of life who are activists outside the system, or those working within it, to step up and do what’s right.

 

About a community conversation on Child Welfare 2.0: The authors of Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment, Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD and Dominic Cappello, discuss their book focused on how we must and can fix child welfare—a monumental challenge that requires the engagement of all of us. Thursday, June 28, 2018 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM, Santa Fe Community Foundation Fees: FREE. Please register. Contact:  amclaughlin@santafecf.org or 505-988-9715. Download a free chapter here: www.AnnaAgeEight.org

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