(l to r) Anna Sutton, Yolo County Maternal Child Adolescent Health; Nadine Burke Harris, Center for Youth Wellness; Gail Kennedy, ACEs Connection Network
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Jeremy Loudenback from the Chronicle of Social Change posted a story about last week's California Policy Convening on Childhood Adversity that the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) hosted in San Diego. Here's the beginning:
Last week, a coalition of California child trauma advocates gathered in San Diego to advance a platform that seeks create policy change in the state and capitalize on a shifting climate around criminal-justice reform.
The meeting was convened by the San Francisco-based Center for Youth Wellness (CYW), a pediatric clinic that has emerged as an organizing force in the effort to make systems better address early childhood adversity. The Center’s work is grounded in the findings of the landmark 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study that connected early experiences of trauma during childhood and subsequent health issues later in life.
The San Diego gathering comes on the heels of the first summit on ACEs, held last year in San Francisco. After that meeting, an ACEs Policy Working Group met throughout the year with the goal of developing a common policy agenda that will help support the push for an increased focus on child trauma across many different child-serving sectors including health, juvenile justice, child welfare, early childhood and education, as well as within business, nonprofit and philanthropic communities.
[To continue reading, go to:https://www.pacesconnection.com/...es-eye-policy-impact]
In the morning and afternoon, the 80 participants broke into discussion groups to develop specific next steps that could be taken to start to integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in the areas of education, healthcare, child welfare, juvenile justice and early childhood.
CYW staff will compile the suggestions and we'll post them here in the California group.
The plenary sessions and Lenore Anderson's keynote address were videotaped. A photographer took many photos. Several people were pulled aside to do short video interviews. When all these are published, we'll let you know.
After last year's California ACEs Summit, the policy working group organized by CYW (and so ably managed by Cecilia Chen) worked for several months to develop an "Action Plan to Address Childhood Adversity in California". It's attached to this blog post.
The photo at the top is from that terrific day, as are these below. To see the captions, hold your mouse over the photos.
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