The Science Behind Adverse Childhood Experiences

Never has it been so important that we truly consider what impact the last six months and what’s happening now, may have on our young people.

Schools and education providers across the country (and in fact the world) will play a pivotal role in supporting young people, through what for many will be significant traumatic experiences.

By understanding the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), we are able to consider how the traumatic life experiences of the young people we are supporting might be influencing their current difficulties and ways of coping.  We must respond in a trauma-sensitive way. Resilience assets can be thought of as the antidote to ACEs and people with more resilience resources tend to cope better even if in the face of significant adversity.

The virtual seminars I hosted recently for schools were really well received and it was heartening that our education providers are taking the importance of trauma-informed practice so seriously.

There are some great resources out there for education providers to tap into. Included in this are a series of e-learning modules, available via the MindEd website. I authored the ‘Science Behind Adverse Childhood Experiences’ course which you can find below as well as the link to the entire ACEs module.

• MindEd Adverse Childhood Experiences Module
• Science Behind Adverse Childhood Experiences

The modules provide a good foundation of the theory behind trauma-informed practice as well as information that will help education providers implement it into practice.

If you have any questions about ACEs, trauma informed practice and what we can do to help children to build resilience, please get in touch.