By Yeggi Watts, CVC Youth & Family Support Specialist

 

Community and Resilience. We hear these two terms in everyday conversations, but what does it mean when you combine them: “community resilience?”

Community is the heart and foundation of The Villages at Cabrillo, and Resilience is our desired outcome. Many of us at The Villages have had one or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES), which can put our community at a higher risk for negative health and socio-economic outcomes.

In late January, The Children’s Clinic Family Health (TCC) led a workshop at The Villages on Community Resiliency that highlighted some eye-opening statistics and unpacked the relationship between ACES and community.

Did you know that approximately 67% of people have had at least one adverse childhood experience, and 20% have had three or more adverse childhood experiences?

Here’s the big one:

The more ACES a person has, the more likely it is that they will have negative health and/or socio-economic outcomes in their life.

The experience of homelessness always includes some level of trauma, especially for kids. As a Youth & Family Support Specialist at The Villages, I work with families with children of all ages.

Many of the children I work with have already had three or more adverse childhood experiences. Those experiences can cause delays in cognitive development, social emotional regulation, and difficulty with behaviors and academic achievement.

The TCC workshop introduced strategies such as community involvement, systematic thinking, adaptability, transformability, sustainability, and courage.

As a community, it is critical that we recognize a child’s needs as a result of ACES and take a comprehensive approach to intervene as quickly as possible and promote resiliency.

Thank you to our long-time partner, The Children’s Clinic Family Health, for bringing this important message to our community at The Villages!