Nearly 50% of American children have had an adverse experience before the age of 18. And, on average, people who experienced six or more traumatic situations in their childhood live about 20 years less than those with no trauma.
Scientists have been studying Adverse Childhood Experiences for years, and the research shows that children who live in toxic environments grow into adults who struggle with substance use disorder, mental illness, suicidal tendencies, and other health issues. As an ACE score increases, so does the risk of serious health, social, and emotional issues.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. One stable and caring relationship can mitigate the impacts of trauma. So, Rappahannock Area Community Services Board offers free training to help the public learn more about the effects of ACEs and the ways to build resilience in the community.
Participants will learn how ACEs affect brain development and how that, in turn, affects behavior and health.
Understanding ACEs will show the importance of being a positive influence and teach ways to help people overcome troubling experiences.
Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences and Building Resilient Communities
Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future development, lifelong health and opportunity. Learning more about Adverse Childhood Experiences, referred to as ACEs, is important to not only prevent this toxic stress from occurring within our community but also to better support individuals who experienced trauma in childhood.
The ACE Interface training is available in sessions ranging from a 20-minute overview to 4-hour comprehensive training. The training is free and offered quarterly. Upon request, the training can also be brought to your organization.
Community Resilience Initiative Course 1: Trauma-Informed
We offer trauma-informed certification trainings, developed by the Community Resilience Initiative.
These courses help parents, educators, medical professionals, mental health clinicians, and other community members learn about toxic stress and how to overcome it.
Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into action.
The training includes three groups of topics: the NEAR sciences, a cluster of emerging scientific findings in the fields of Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACE Study, and Resilience; Brain States, the critical transition from Knowledge to Insight; and ROLES, CRI’s signature training on Recognize, Observe, Label, Elect and Solve, core strategies that take us below the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The key objective is to provide information about identifying and responding to trauma with evidence-based resilience strategies when working with an audience whose trauma history may not be known.
Course 1 is a prerequisite for Course 2: Trauma-Supportive.
Community Resilience Initiative Course 2: Trauma-Supportive
This Trauma-Supportive Course from the Community Resilience Initiative supports participants to increase their knowledge and skills for working with those who may have been adversely affected by trauma and toxic stress, whether or not the trauma is known. These resilience-based practices have universal application and focus on prevention strategies. (Please note that completion of the Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences and Building Resilient Communities training is a pre-requisite to take this course.)