
Adverse Childhood Experiences #ACEs: why all the fuss?
Really honoured to share this superb publication now selling on Amazon here.
We’re a bit passionate about our chapter on Institutional ACEs and Restrictive Interventions. We hope you will be too.
The #ACEs conversation is growing, and with that our reflection and review of ourselves as a society and how we can work in a better way to support each other and include everyone.
Working with Dr Wendy Thorley, Ruth Whiteside and Al Coates from CELANDT for the Great North #ACE Conference in April was a phenomenal experience. We learned so much and there were over 500 people on the day all working to make the conversation bigger and better.
We shared a workshop with Professor Andy McDonnell from Studio3, which was an honour in itself, as he was able to travel North and join us. We presented Institutional ACEs which was not included as part of the original WHO questionnaire. It really does need to be in the conversation we believe, as we all reflect and consider our part in the whole view around how we are all connecting, communicating and understanding one another.
Andy shared his experiences, starting years ago with a very different view, which transformed into a more reflective and humanised approach to supporting people in distress, rather than seeing their behaviour as a challenge. His humility and humanness about this reflective journey is powerfully engaging (his new book sharing more about this will be coming out soon). Andy used the word ‘stress’ repeatedly to make the point that we all come under stress, and at what point are we losing sight of the fact that people in distress, or with high levels of stress, are becoming separated from us and termed ‘challenging’ as if ‘different’ to us?
The onus is on us to understand and learn to understand more. About the people we support and ourselves in the process. That’s why we believe we need to #flipthenarrative and look at the whole view. If we are going to talk ACEs then we need to talk about all of it and what we bring to that conversation too.