Essentials for Childhood - Steps to Create Safe, Stable, and Nurturing Relationships
Safe, stable, and nurturing relationships (SSNRs) are essential to prevent child maltreatment and to assure children reach their full potential. Essentials for Childhood proposes strategies communities can consider to promote the types of relationships and environments that help children grow up to be healthy and productive citizens so that they, in turn, can build stronger and safer families and communities for their children.
Essentials for Childhood is intended for anyone committed to the positive development of children and families, and specifically to the prevention of all forms of child abuse and neglect. While child maltreatment is a significant public health problem, it is also a preventable one. The steps suggested in Essentials for Childhood — along with your commitment to preventing child maltreatment—can help create neighborhoods, communities, and a world in which every child can thrive.
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Who We Are:
Strengthening Families is a research-based, cost-effective strategy to increase family strengths, enhance child development and reduce child abuse and neglect. It focuses on building five Protective Factors that also promote healthy outcomes.
Those five protective factors are parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support in times of need and social and emotional competence of children.
What Strengthening Families Does:
• Benefits ALL families.
• Builds on family strengths, buffers risk, and promotes better outcomes.
• Builds on and can be integrated into existing programs, strategies, systems and community opportunities.
• Can be implemented through small but significant changes in everyday actions.
• Is grounded in research, practice and implementation knowledge.
Guidepost- principles and ideas that can direct us in raising resilient children:
- Being empathetic
- Communicating effectively and listening actively
- Changing “negative scripts”
- Loving our children in ways that make them feel special and appreciated.
- Accepting our children for who they are & helping them to set realistic expectations and goals.
- Helping our children experience success by identifying & reinforcing their “islands of competence”
- Helping children recognize that mistakes are experiences from which to learn.
- Developing responsibility, compassion, & a social conscience by providing children with opportunities to contribute.
- Teaching our children to solve problem and make decisions
- Disciplining in a way that promotes self-discipline & self-worth
From “Raising Resilient Children” by Robert Brooks, PH.D. & Sam Goldstein, PH.D
What is The ACE Study?
The ACE Study is ongoing collaborative research between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA, and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, CA.
The Co-principal Investigators of The Study are Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, with the CDC; and Vincent J. Felitti, MD, with Kaiser Permanente.
Over 17,000 Kaiser patients participating in routine health screening volunteered to participate in The Study. Data resulting from their participation continues to be analyzed; it reveals staggering proof of the health, social, and economic risks that result from childhood trauma.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides access to the peer-reviewed publications resulting from The ACE Study.The initial phase of the ACE Study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997, and more than 17,000 participants had a standardized physical examination. No further participants will be enrolled, but we are tracking the medical status of the baseline participants.
Each study participant completed a confidential survey that contained questions about childhood maltreatment and family dysfunction, as well as items detailing their current health status and behaviors. This information was combined with the results of their physical examination to form the baseline data for the study