Addressing childhood trauma, Center for Learning & Resilience

Butte County health representatives say they have long realized the need for coordinated mental health services for family and children dealing with trauma.

Say they have long realized the need for coordinated mental health services for family and children dealing with trauma.

The camp fire drove that point home... and now... the coronavirus crisis.

Julia yarbough recently spoke with the executive director of the new*center for learning and resilienc* - a resource to help meet community needs.

First of all, thank you for joining us, and tell me about this program.

So the center for learning and resilience is really modeled to be wrap- around support for families and their children.

It was a multi-year process in determining what families and children needed.

And we're in a different type of trauma right, we're looking mroe at toxic stress, what i'm talking about toxic stress i mean when children and their families and our communities are under stress over a long period of time.

And the importance to really address the mental health needs of young children.

Talk to me a little bit about how aces has come into play with all of this; in the last two years we've heard a lot more about aces and impact and the severity long term impacts for children...why is that important in the work the center will be doing?

When we're talking aces we're talking about adverse childhood experiences; these are things that children experience when young that can potentially impact the rest of the lives and how they navigate.

I think what's important is that when we're thinking about children and families that we know there is always a possiblity for resilience, and there are two things that we can do to help children do that.

Those are things like addressing mental health needs, the next is to identify what is creating an ace so, we're heading into a time when people are going to feel the financial stress like they have never felt before.

It's important for us to identify how we can help famililes connect so they can become more mobile economically and that we can shore up their basic needs during this time.

How severe of a situation are we looking at in butte county?

Butte county is kind of the highest reported ace score in the state.

I don't think we can ever undervalue the need to bring social supports together for families.

And when i talk about social supports, i'm talking about early childcare centers, our mental health support and our behavioural health parnters, i'm talking about supports in context with case management and the ability to help navigate our systems. what are you most excited about with this new program?

What's most exciting is that there is so much research and better understanding of how to serve children and their families and how to work collectively that the potential is just incredible.

We hope that all of the work and input and training and teamwork pays off for our children and families in butte county, amanda thanks for joining us the center for learning and resilience will be hosting a series of workshops online.

The first; a facebook live event, takes place today at 10am, with a marriage and family therapist.

For more information on the center*an* upcoming events, visit action news now.com, click on news, the newslinks.###