Each Child. Every Community.

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adverse Community Environments (Pair of ACEs) have lifelong consequences for health and well-being.

The North Carolina Partnership for Children (NCPC) is committed to reducing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) for young children and increasing protective factors for children, families, and communities. In our efforts to do so, NCPC is serving as backbone agency of the NC Healthy and Resilient Communities Initiative, bringing together more than 40 community collaboratives to build resiliency across the state.

The Initiative aims to:

1. Reduce multiple forms of childhood adversity, including negative social and environmental drivers of health.
2. Increase protective factors and positive childhood experiences (PCEs) for children, families, and communities.
3. Promote Systems change, through community infrastructure and cross-sector collaborations, for preventing, responding to, exposure to toxic stress and trauma.

Mebane Boyd, NCPC’s Resilient Communities Officer, has been leading this work, convening collaboratives across the state to learn from, identify next steps and provide support to enhance this important work.

In her first year in this role, she has worked to meet the needs that resilience focused coalitions have lifted up as their biggest needs and challenges.  For example, a Landscape Analysis that includes a Theory of Change Model to align work across communities, a graphic depicting the 4 Realms of ACEs, as well as data and language useful for grant applications was published in July 2021.

A monthly “Peer Connection” gathering has been facilitated, bringing individuals from across the state working in this field to discuss topics of interest and to share what’s working and what’s challenging.  Ideas and resources are freely shared by its members, and communities are building relationships to support one another in this work.

Several trainings around strategic and action planning have been hosted, and the initiative collaborated with Area L AHEC to offer over 400 NC Certificates in Trauma and Resilience. A data working group has explored ideas of how to measure success, both short term and long term, in this somewhat new field of multi-sector collaborative community work including how to quantify and measure structural racism.

Learn what Mebane has to say about resilience…

Reflecting on Resilience

Mebane Boyd, Resilient Communities Officer

There is much to celebrate. More than half of NC counties now have some form of an active multi-sector coalition to address ACEs at various levels – from the individual and family level to the organizational and community levels. While each community has different priorities and structures to do this work, what they have in common is an effort to bring together various systems and groups to create trauma-informed and responsive individuals, organizations, and communities. Safe spaces are being created to hold necessary yet difficult conversations about age-old problems, silos are coming down, and alliances are being strengthened. Awareness is being raised about the impact of trauma on the lives of citizens, organizations, and service providers and changes in the way providers of services see themselves and those whom they serve is changing.  Many are working to address historic trauma and climate equity. These changes may feel slow, but progress is being made and it’s important to recognize and celebrate this progress.

At a recent Peer Connections gathering, one attendee said about their human-services agency, “Our whole atmosphere has changed around here… we are team building, we have more respect towards each other, and people want to do their jobs better and serve people better.”

Another participant said they are beginning to “look at one another as assets.”

One community’s Sheriff’s Department has recently added two “comfort canines” – one for the deputies themselves who experience and witness trauma every day, and one for the public.  Every patrol vehicle in this county is now equipped with stuffed animals.

Progress is being made, yet this work is in its infancy, just beginning to build and repair communities so that each and every child and family has an opportunity to thrive.

If you are interested in continuing this progress, you can learn more here or reach out to the ACEs coalition in your community.