1. Building Resilience In Those We Care For
Susan Jones SJUSD Behavior Specialist ACES Connection Education Manager Yolo Resilience Network Sacramento County ACES
Jessica Larsen
YCOE Program Specialist
Homeless and Foster Youth Services
Yolo Resilience Network

2. All this starts with the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study — the ACE Study. This groundbreaking study was done by Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC. Jane Stevens, the author of the ACES study saw the importance in getting this word out. She created the “Mother ship” ACES TOO HIGH website. Over time County based groups have joined the movement to include schools, communities, medical profession, business.
The study measured ten types of childhood trauma. Abuse and neglect. And five household dysfunctions -- witnessing a mother being abused. Living with a household member who's an alcoholic or addicted to some other drug. A family member in jail or diagnosed with a mental illness. Losing a parent to separation or divorce.
Of course, there are other types of trauma -- bullying, witnessing violence outside the home, racism, involvement with the foster care system – and there are organizations that are including these other types of childhood adversity in ACE surveys.

3. The ACE Study produced four surprising results.
One -- childhood trauma is extraordinarily common. Nearly two-thirds of the participants had at least one ACE.

4. Two -- There’s an unmistakable link between adverse experiences in childhood and adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence.
Three – The more types of childhood adversity, the more dire the consequences.
For example, compared with people with zero ACEs, those with four ACEs are more likely to become depressed, twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to attempt suicide, and

5. …. seven times more likely to be alcoholic
….seven times more likely to be alcoholic. The risk of perpetrating domestic violence increases, for men AND for women.
Without intervention, people with an ACE score of 6 or higher have a greater risk for a shorter lifespan – 20 years shorter.

6. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have done their own ACE surveys, and are finding similar results.

7. Staying in red alert status puts a lot of wear and tear on the body
Staying in red alert status puts a lot of wear and tear on the body. So even if people haven’t smoked or become obese, their risk of heart disease and diabetes increases, as do autoimmune diseases. This is the third part of the “theory of everything” – what happens to our bodies when we live with toxic stress for years.

8. So, why do ACEs cause so much damage
So, why do ACEs cause so much damage? This is the second part of the “theory of everything” – what happens to your brain when you have ACEs.
Long-term toxic stress – the kind that comes from living with a physically and verbally abusive alcoholic parent, for example – damages a kid’s brain. Toxic stress floods the brain with stress hormones. When a kid’s in fight, flight or freeze mode, their thinking brain is offline and doesn’t develop as it should.
Kids experiencing trauma act out. They can’t focus. They can’t sit still. Or they withdraw. Fight, flight or freeze – that’s a normal and expected response to trauma. So they can have difficulty focusing and learning. Their schools often respond by suspending or expelling them, which further traumatizes them.
When they get older, they cope by drinking, overeating, doing drugs, smoking, as well as over-achieving or engaging in thrill sports. To them, these are solutions. They’re not problems. Nicotine reduces anxiety. Food soothes. Some drugs, such as meth, are anti-depressants. So telling someone how bad smoking is for them isn’t likely to make much of an impression if it relieves anxiety.

9. We’re entering an age that might be the modern equivalent of the Renaissance, I call it Un-wraveling…
Its a new understanding about ourselves.
Today we will do a quick overview of the ACES History, then what are we doing to build resilience, predominently in school settings.

10. Toxic stress can turn genes on and off
Toxic stress can turn genes on and off. And these changes can be transferred from parent to child. The area of research that looks into how our interaction with the people around us can change our genes is called epigenetics. That’s the fourth part of the “theory of everything”.

11. But with all this bad news about how trauma hurts us, there’s good news. Our brains are plastic. Our bodies want to heal.
We know a lot about how to increase individual resilience. To reduce stress hormones in our bodies and brains, we can meditate, exercise, get enough sleep and eat well, have safe relationships, live in a safe place, ask for help when we need it and, if necessary, get help from a counselor or therapist. Simple advice. But it works.
We can build resilient families -- We know that educating parents about their own ACEs helps them understand their lives and motivates them to learn to become healthy parents to prevent passing their ACEs on to their kids. Programs such as Strengthening Families and for home visiting programs do this.
The frontier of resilience research lies in creating communities and systems that prevent childhood adversity and stop traumatizing already traumatized people.

12. You can find stories about this frontier of resilience research on ACEsTooHigh.com. Stories about how schools and police departments and courtrooms and physicians and cities, towns and states are preventing childhood adversity and how they’ve stopped traumatizing already traumatized people.
AcesTooHigh.com

13. When principal Jim Sporleder learned about the ACE Study and the effects of toxic stress on kids’ brains, he said he’d been doing everything wrong when it came to disciplining kids. In one year, he changed the school so that when a kid threw a chair or yelled at a teacher, the staff didn’t suspend or expel the kid, which just further traumatizes the kid. They understood that the kid was behaving like that because he or she was experiencing trauma. So, they asked: “What happened to you? How can we help you?”
After one year, suspensions dropped 85%, expulsions dropped 40%. After three years, suspensions dropped 90%, and they stopped expelling kids.
The kids’ grades, test scores and graduation rates went up. The kids, whose average ACE score is 5.5, say the school is their family.
What happened at Lincoln inspired filmmaker James Redford to make a documentary called Paper Tigers, which follows six students for a year at Lincoln High School, and shows how the school’s trauma-informed, resilience-building practices changed their lives.

14. After Dave Lockridge learned about the ACE Study, he said he realized in his efforts to help his most troubled parishioners, he’d been doing everything wrong. Lockridge closed his church, got a psychology degree, and designed a course with a workbook that combines ACEs, the effects of toxic stress and Bible studies.
He took his course to people living in rescue missions –the last stop before the grave, a place of hopelessness. He helped them realize that although many horribly bad things had happened to them, they weren’t bad. And that the ways they’d coped – alcohol, other drugs, violence – had kept them alive. Those who realized that they weren’t bad suddenly had hope that they could change. And they did.
Dave’s course is now being used by rescue missions in several states.

15. In Safe Babies Courts that help children and their parents, 99% of the kids suffer no further abuse.

16. Pediatricians in Portland, Oregon, are asking about the ACEs history from parents who bring their four-month-old babies in for a well-baby checkup. When parents learn they have a high ACE score, they usually say, “This explains my life.” Or “Why didn’t someone tell me this earlier?” And they want to know what they can do to prevent their children from having a high ACE score.

17. ACEsConnection is a social network for people who are developing trauma-informed and resilience-building practices to share information. Think Facebook with a few more bells and whistles. It is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Endowment.
We tell stories, encourage others to tell their stories, we do our best to shorten the time it takes useful information to find its way from one person who has it to another person who needs it, and we’re using this distributed networking technology to eradicate the isolation caused by geography.
Today, nearly 7,500 people [FEB15/2016…CHECK FOR UPDATED NUMBERS] are part of ACEsConnection. They come from healthcare, education, criminal justice, law enforcement, civic, business and faith-based communities. We send information to them about the latest developments in ACEs and how people and communities are implementing the research. And there’s a lot happening.
ACEsConnection.com

18. What can WE do? Encourage social connectedness – developing community.
Provide concrete support in times of need.
Demonstrate social and emotional competence.
Support the use of restorative practices in managing conflict.
Implement systems to support the whole.

19. Building Resiliency
Self Care Language Coping How to De-escalate Yoga/Meditation New ‘I’ Statements PBIS and Restorative Practice Behavior Basics/ABC Data
NOT only for students, but for the staff…we must begin with us.
Use example of how we support those additional adults we work with, we cannot walk into their enviroment and state what it is they need to do to change. We need to teach them the tools first, then support them, as with learning anything new, it takes practice!
Largest lesson is to teach the behavioral manifestations of trauma through the lens of physiological, psychological and neurological blocks and how WE can either add to the trauma OR change what we are doing and lessen the behaviors and increase learning opportunities.
Resilience trailer here or talk about the movie at Sundance!, next slide is Q and A, cutting edge information, FIRST FOLLOWER video here?

20. Restorative Practices
The fundamental hypothesis of Restorative Practices is: Human beings are happier, more cooperative, and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather to them or for them.

21. RP with student voice, language to use when speaking
Social discipline window from RP
and Social Discipline Window (Our responses drive the attachment or detachment to learning) Our responses are empathetic or sympathetic and they can tell the difference. We are saying to them “I care” or “I don’t care”.
RP with student voice, language to use when speaking
State people, resources, school sites needs Focus on interactions can fail based on our communication

22. RTI and Behavior Supports
Source: Jeff Sprague
PBIS, 2009
Intensive academic support
Intensive social skills teaching
Individual behavior management plans
Parent training and collaboration
Multi-agency collaboration (wrap-around) services
Alternatives to suspension and expulsion
Community and service learning
Targeted/
Intensive
(High-risk students)
Individual Interventions
(3-5%)
Increased academic support and practice
Increased social skills teaching
Self-management training and support
School based adult mentors
Check in, Check out
Parent training and collaboration
Alternatives to out-of-school suspension
Community and service learning
Selected
(At-risk Students)
Classroom & Small
Group Strategies
(10-20% of students)
PBIS
Effective Academic Supports
School wide social skills teaching
Teaching school behavior expectations
Effective classroom management
Active supervision and monitoring in common areas
Positive reinforcement systems
Firm, fair, and corrective response to problem behavior
Community and service learning
Universal
(All Students)
School-wide, Culturally Responsive
Systems of Support
(75-85% of students)
Jeffrey Sprague, Ph.D.
Jeffrey Sprague, Ph.D.

23. Yoga and
Meditation

24. Outcomes in Schools
PBIS Teams, Meditation Team, Practice Gratitude, and Restorative Practice
Creates…
Suspension reduction
Increase in literacy and attendance
Safety and Community in students and staff

25. Think about a teacher when you were a child in school

26. Feelings, create Thoughts, which creates our Behavior Behavior
Impacted Systems of meaning: Assumption of Danger
Physiological and Behavioral Response: Safety Seeking/Need Fulfillment
Interference from Developmental Challenges: Reliance on Alternative Adaptations
Feelings,
create
Thoughts,
which creates our
Behavior
Developmental Deficits: difficulty understanding what they feel and how to cope with it
Difficulty expressing what they feel
Difficulty understanding the link between behavior, feelings, and experience
Difficulty maintaining comfortable arousal
Negative self-concept
Feel like they can’t impact their world
Believe they are not capable or competent
Blame themselves for not succeeding
Difficulty reading social cues
Overly rigid or too diffuse boundaries
Lack of trust or over-dependent on others
Difficulty sustaining attention and concentration
Difficulty planning, problem-solving, organizing information, and delaying response to stimuli.
All are experiences each of us has had at one time, just not all at once.
Behavior 101….
Functions of Behavior (what our societies children are experiencing now which is out of control, gaining control, only comfortable with negative attention, will push until they receive what is comfortable to them such as with pushing a teacher to the point of detachment) with ABC data with filled out example, behavior from school connected to student sleeping in his car the night before….
ABC data to look at what WE are doing that may be the Antecedent or Consequence

27. Goals
Taking a look at our experiences, the lack of societal acceptance and what is difficult to discuss, or easier to ignore and look the other way?
How does our behavior teach those around us valued awareness or does our behavior speak denial of acknowledging what is happening in the moment?
Are we empathic or are we teaching apathy?

28. When asked to share “What have you learned the last few weeks
When asked to share “What have you learned the last few weeks?” “I learned being Trauma Informed makes us feel like we aren’t doing something wrong and makes me feel comfortable enough to speak.”

29. “I learned when things happen at home come out at school, when there’s times I cant deal with it, when the Teacher asks me ‘What’s happening? Or What happened?’, it means to me the Teacher cares about what is happening to me. When the Teacher tells me to go to the office, Vice Principal, Counselor, call home, Buddy Room, that means the Teacher doesn’t really care about what’s happening to me.”

30. “I learned that our health, students health that’s not taken care of makes us be out of class, then come back in, then we are behind and then our health is still not taken care of and our academics are not taken care of either.”

31. “I learned I have had anxiety for a long time
“I learned I have had anxiety for a long time. Now I understand it is trauma. It meant to me a lot of absences, less money for schools. The school system can be more peaceful being Trauma Informed instead of sending me to the counselor, where they don’t know what to do with anxiety or trauma, that’s not their job, but it is where we are sent.”

32. “I learned that the teachers I have who have always asked me “What happened?” when I am having a hard time really helps, I trust them and I know they care about me.”

33. “I learned that Teachers, adults, they can calm us, or not
“I learned that Teachers, adults, they can calm us, or not. They have a choice.”

34. Paper Tigers

35. Many states, regions, counties, and cities that are becoming trauma-informed have started groups on ACEsConnection to share best practices, tell their stories, and organize their efforts to integrate resilience-building practices. We’re aiming for most of the 30,000 cities and towns in the United States, as well as groups in nations around the world.

36. Blame. Shame. Punishment.
Traditionally, in our culture, we use blame, shame and punishment to try to change behaviors — unhealthy behavior, criminal behavior, “non-conforming” behavior. But, we have LOTS of evidence that that approach doesn’t work very well: overcrowded prisons, rampant chronic disease, struggling schools.
Disproportionate in placement into special education services based on behavior and over identification of African American students in suspension/expulsion

37. Understanding….
Nurturing….
Healing….
Connection through systems creating positive and supportive relationships
With this knowledge of the “theory of everything”, we can change blame, shame and punishment to understanding (what happened to you?), nurturing (how can I help you?), healing (helping people heal themselves).

38. Instill safety,
learning will follow.
Thank you