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Hello,

For those of you who have been involved in implementing ACEs science or trauma-informed practices in your organizations and institutions, what kind of resistance have you received from others? What arguments do people make against implementing ACEs science/trauma-informed practices? What concerns do they express?

I’ve read that some people view it as just one more initiative to have to deal with. As a member of the choir, so to speak, I’m convinced that this movement is foundational to both many individuals’ and society’s well being. I’m aware, though, that not everyone may be sold on it. In the interest of strengthening the movement itself and in deepening my own critical thinking toward something I feel so strongly in favor of, I want to understand what the naysayers are saying. I’d like to hear about the “nay” positions as well as what you’ve done to counter them or to bring around those opposed to your proposed changes.

I’m not currently a practitioner of ACEs science or trauma-informed practices in any way, just a layperson with lived ACEs experience looking to understand and to possibly move professionally or as a volunteer into work that combats ACEs.

Thank you for any insights you can share.

 —Laura

Last edited by Laura Pinhey
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I agree that some people see this as 'just one more thing we have to do'. For those raised in the power-over paradigm, shifting to being non punitive and power-with seems like a recipe for chaos (until they try it and find greater connection and cooperation). We've been teaching trauma-informed care for over 7 years now, and I still find myself wanting to impose consequences for behavior - it's a knee jerk reaction. Staying curious and open is a practice and the thing about practice is... you have to keep practicing! However, what trauma-informed practice gives you, as a parent or a professional, is the ability to connect with people in the way that honors all our humanity. And as a mother, I can say that it also allows you to parent the way your heart wants you to. 

In education related contexts I hear lots of blame shifting:  "Well it' s the parents' fault".

I try to find positive ways to remind educators that blame or 'fault' is irrelevant. at this point.

Our unique Mission in public education is so different than charters and private schools.  Our mission is to accept, teach and learn with ALL who come thru our doors. 

No matter who's at "fault",  the children are coming thru our doors in the morning.  They are all part of our core Mission.  We need training, we need strategies, resources, and support (on-going).  Then we need to all work together if we are to have safe schools for all.  All our other skills and training are secondary and at points useless, if we don't build safe, trauma-infomed schools First.

 

https://lucidwitness.com/2016/...nt-in-the-classroom/

 

Last edited by Daun Kauffman

I, too, have had NAMI and parent-run organizations balk at the science, stating it's another way to shift blame to parents.  They often cite people who have many ACEs who are successful.  I refocus on resilience and protective factors, and, if there's openness, talk about epigenetics. 

Thanks Laura for your Ask the Community! Engaged for the last several years with the trauma-informed / resilience-building movement in San Diego, what has been most successful is coming from the lens of the unified sciences of ACEs. When conversations/presentations/training/workshops intentionally educate, inform, and engage others with the impact of trauma on the brain neurologically, on the body biologically, toxic stress, epigenetics, and resilience building are all inclusive - what has consistently been the reaction is one of hope and wanting more information and knowledge. The sectors I've been blessed to learn from and teach with are the inner city youth and families and reentry families. To see their audible, visible reactions of coming out behind shame and blame as they come into hope and healing is transformative.

Very aware of the objective of "not holding people accountable", when I've shared how unified sciences of ACEs helps understand behavior and what lies behind it - SO we can have a well-informed Restorative Circle, Restorative Justice, etc. Having this understanding deepens the outcomes of accountability.

We need 8 billion people to have this depth of understanding. Profoundly honored to learn from and share with our ACEs Connection members, our global learning community is igniting a healing movement across sectors and across regions. This is such a hopeful time!

We are creating not just safe spaces - but brave spaces - where individuals, families, neighborhoods, organizations, and systems are having deep conversations on race, disparities, social determinants of health, systems change.

I pray in my lifetime I see a healing tsunami... I know in my heart I'm part of the solution, along with thousands of others. Thank you again Laura for posting your question.

We have recently created a 'becoming trauma aware' intro level elearn course for our child and family social services staff and have tackled some of these head on right at the start of the course.  We get the learner to sort into true or false some of the comments we have heard.  I have copied and pasted it here for you:

For some of you, this will not be the first time you have heard the term 'trauma' in relation to working with families and whānau.  It is increasingly appearing in the social service and education settings.  People react differently to new concepts or phrases that become more popular, so we'd like to clarify a few myths.  Click and slide the following ten cards into the correct category - true or false. 

Including a focus on trauma...

FALSE

  • is a deficit approach focusing on the negative
  • ignores strengths and resilience
  • is just a fad that will go out of fashion
  • is culturally insensitive
  • means any behaviour is acceptable

TRUE

  • ensures we recognise when standard actions won't work
  • enhances other well established ways of relating
  • enables tamariki & whānau to learn better outcomes are possible
  • strengthens our obligation to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi
  • means benefiting from recent neuroscience knowledge

(because this is a New Zealand course, it is culturally located.  Whānau = A Māori form of family generally much wider than nuclear, tamariki = Māori for children, Te Tiriti o Waitangi = a treaty signed between most Māori chiefs and the colonising British Crown that has had many violations resulting in historical trauma for Māori, and is recieving significant efforts at redress in the past few decades)

Hi Laura:

This is such an important conversation and something I too have been thinking about a ton. 

I think the information about ACEs is powerful and empowering, for kids and parents. I know it has actually helped me move away from blame (of my own parents and my struggles with symptoms) to understanding a much wider social context. It has helped me in my parenting as well to prioritize self-care (so I'm alive longer despite a high ACE score) but also helped me prioritize ways of parenting, that are in essence, the opposite of ACEs. That's been life-changing, for me and has helped me find a lot more compassion for myself and my family. For me, sharing about ACEs parent to parent, person to person, is most helpful and the focus of my life work. It's helped me be far more broad in my understanding of humans, as well. 

I used to be an activist focused mostly on ending sexual violence and violence against women, which is still important to me, but I appreciate understand childhood adversity with a much wider understanding getting how much neglect and dysfunction as well as abuse can and do impact people. So my life has been changed by learning about ACEs, personally and professionally. 

However, I've also got concerns. My fears are that the info. , say an ACE score, turns into another way to screen, identify, label and target some people so when and how info. is collected, gathered and used, relating to ACEs matters.

Who is collecting ACE scores and for what reason?

Is info. being shared with and worked with by people most impacted by ACEs or targeted at communities in another way that's not empowering or respectful or that fails to address power imbalances in systems, starting with the family system, but also in schools, neighborhoods, criminal justice, etc.?

 Are those of us with the most ACEs leading conversations and most represented in conversations about what people with a lot of ACEs need? I still don't see that happening as regularly and systematically as I'd like. There's still too much token representation if any representation at all.

If trauma-informed approaches are not informed by trauma survivors, it will be another mostly words movement that doesn't touch, connect and work with people in ways that make change. That's why all people at all levels within a sector have to be engaged, those that provide services and those who are the ones who receive them (sometimes by force, as in the mental health and criminal justice and family protective services). That's not going to happen if only mid and high level professionals within these different organizations talk to each other. If cross sector is only mid and high level professionals talking to other mid and high level professionals, that's not going to make much difference.

We need all a sector to be represented and beyond token representation so that it matters and so that changes can be systematized. 

The shift of question from "What is wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?" still implies us and them . It is still a question mostly by a professional targeted at someone with ACEs. What's the leading question someone with ACEs most asks? Do we understand that "What is wrong with you?: or "What happened to you?" can be asked by someone with ACEs towards professionals as well?

Do we assume conversations are had between equals who both have power? Too often, the conversation about ACEs lacks this. The what's wrong with you to what happened to you shift is still a leading question by and at someone with ACEs, right? The first question focuses on a person's symptoms and blames. But thought the second question also is still too narrow in focusing on personal context of what happened, usually in one generation of family rather than historically, socially and for generations.

This is about all of us. Always. where and when that doesn't seem central is where and when I get nervous.

Because it's what is wrong with us and what happened to us? Because it's what do we need most now that is being missed?  

We are all impacted by ACEs, the presence or absence of them. Every single one of us. I think that's what the unified sciences stuff is all about though I admit that I don't have all that neurobiology-epigenetics-epidemiology language down. I do know our health is tied to our lack of ACEs just as our health risks are tied to the presence of them.

Asking "What's wrong with you?"  or "What happened to you?" is still all about us/them?

Conversations about ACEs often seem to be being focused at people with high ACEs and often by those without high ACEs (or at least by people who don't acknowledge being personally impacted even when we know how often that is the case). I'm not sure how helpful that is. 

This is a really important question you have asked Laura. Thank you! Sorry for the LOOONNNNGGGG response. It's helped me figure out when I focus on speaking for and about  my own experiences most, and coming from that place even when speaking with professionals or in my writing. You have helped me realized I don't actually trust the systems that have let so many people down for so long and not just because I have trust issues but because of the real ways power has been misused in the past.

We don't reckon enough with how often the systems, even ones well-intention and meaning to help people, have done just the opposite. That has to be part of the conversation as well and is why we can't isolate ACEs from childhood from ACEs in community because the way they intersect has everything to do with how ACEs science will be used and by whom.

I'm so grateful for this thousands of people large community having these important conversations and in a setting where all opinions and perspectives get to be shared. Cissy

Hello,

I agree that it can be helpful to understand the different perspectives. You might find this paper useful.

Kind Regards

Lesley

Full Length Article
Screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): Cautions and suggestions
David Finkelhor
Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 125 McConnell Hall, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, United States

ABSTRACT

This article argues that it is still premature to start widespread screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in health care settings until we have answers to several important questions: 1) what are the effective interventions and responses we need to have in place to offer to those with positive ACE screening, 2) what are the potential negative outcomes and costs to screening that need to be buffered in any effective screening regime, and 3) what exactly should we be screening for? The article makes suggestions for needed research activities.

While I understand the perspective that blaming is a part of this conversation, as is the implied "us" and "them," Adverse Childhood Experiences occurred.  They did happen.  The abuse, neglect, isolation, etc. was felt deeply by someone.  Does identifying that an individual took these actions mean you are blaming them?  It acknowledges the responsibility of those involved, and certainly they should be held accountable. 

When a person is raped, it is valid to acknowledge they have been violated and hurt, emotionally and physically, by another person or persons. And when such an event happens to a child or young person, we know that can be especially damaging.  To suggest that something is wrong with the individual because they "blame" the assailant would be absurd.  While research does and should continue into the ACE paradigm, acknowledging these traumatic events/situations/environments/ can empower those who live through them.  

Lesley Banner posted:

Hello,

I agree that it can be helpful to understand the different perspectives. You might find this paper useful.

Kind Regards

Lesley

Full Length Article
Screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): Cautions and suggestions
David Finkelhor
Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 125 McConnell Hall, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, United States

ABSTRACT

This article argues that it is still premature to start widespread screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in health care settings until we have answers to several important questions: 1) what are the effective interventions and responses we need to have in place to offer to those with positive ACE screening, 2) what are the potential negative outcomes and costs to screening that need to be buffered in any effective screening regime, and 3) what exactly should we be screening for? The article makes suggestions for needed research activities.

Thank you!

 

I am blown away by the sheer number of responses to this question, not to mention the depth and thoughtfulness of them. I can understand where some of the objections you describe are coming from -- I "get" why some folks would react in these ways when first encountering these new ideas. In fact, I see in some of these arguments (blaming, lack of accountability, and so on) the very thought processes that have slowed my acknowledgement and acceptance of my own ACEs and in turn impeded my recovery from them; while I've come a long way, I continue to battle those knee-jerk reactions in myself all the time. I don't think that's uncommon, as it's deeply ingrained and socialized into us on a familial and societal level. To some extent, it's also what keeps me honest about what I'm responsible for in my own life, ACEs or no.  By the same token, it keeps so many of us quiet, passive, and blaming and shaming ourselves. On the other hand, no movement or effort worth making gets anywhere without some "devil's advocacy"-style questioning along the way, not to mention taking seriously into consideration the points of those who oppose or question our ideas. 

Thank you to all who have responded to my query. You've enhanced my understanding of some of the challenges of battling ACEs at an institutional level, given me much to think about, and renewed my hope that real change is possible. What a great community.

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