{"id":599917,"date":"2018-07-04T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=599917"},"modified":"2018-07-05T11:49:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T17:49:25","slug":"las-cruces-group-to-use-data-to-fight-childhood-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/07\/las-cruces-group-to-use-data-to-fight-childhood-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Cruces group to use data to fight childhood trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_599924\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-599924\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878-771x579.jpg\" alt=\"Kasandra Gandara\" width=\"771\" height=\"579\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878-771x579.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878-336x252.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/KasandraGandara-1170x878-800x600.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Sylvia Ulloa \/ New Mexico In Depth<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Las Cruces City Councilor Kasandra Gandara is bringing together behavioral health, education, community organizing, child wellbeing and health groups in an effort to gather data on Adverse Childhood Experiences and use that information to combat childhood trauma.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Las Cruces City Councilor Kasandra Gandara has one big request for her partners in a new effort to tackle childhood trauma in Las Cruces and Do\u00f1a Ana County: Ask every person they serve or interact with how many Adverse Childhood Experiences they\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n<p>Gandara and a group of behavioral health providers, educators, community activists and health professionals hope to use that data to create a systemic approach to reducing childhood trauma, with the aim of combating child abuse in the community and improving children\u2019s health, education and lives.<\/p>\n<p>Gandara was inspired for the project by the book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.safetyandsuccess.org\/anna-age-eight-book\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anna, Age Eight: The Data-Driven Prevention of Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which was based on the work of Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello at the New Mexico Children Youth and Families Department\u2019s Protective Service Division.<\/p>\n<p>It chronicles the life and death of a child at her mother\u2019s hands, while making the case that the smart use of data and community involvement can prevent childhood trauma.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/07\/03\/las-cruces-group-to-use-data-on-aces-to-fight-childhood-trauma\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico In Depth<\/a>. Sign up for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&amp;id=9294743d38\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Gandara, who ended a 28 year social-work career as a CYFD county office manager, wants to use the solutions outlined in the book as a framework for Las Cruces to move awareness of ACEs beyond child advocates and emergency responders and into the general public so that they can help their community and families heal. The ultimate goal for the working group is to bring together a fractured child welfare system and change their practices to better serve kids.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/violenceprevention\/acestudy\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CDC-Kaiser ACE Study<\/a>\u00a0done in the late 1990s found a direct link between the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, a person had and the subsequent quality of their health and life. People with multiple ACEs were at higher risk for substance abuse, poor health and early death, depression and suicide, unplanned pregnancies and poor work performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s telling to me about the (1990s) ACEs study is that it\u2019s all of us. People that have education, middle class, not just our impoverished communities,\u201d Gandara said. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re wasting time and we should do something about this now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/02\/13\/study-nearly-20-of-nm-kids-have-multiple-adverse-childhood-experiences\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent report<\/a>\u00a0showed that nearly one in five New Mexico children have had multiple adverse childhood experiences. ACEs include things like having a parent in prison or who are substance abusers, having a parent with mental illness, being the victim of rape or child abuse, or witnessing domestic violence.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, Gandara brought together a cross section of leaders to form the nucleus of a community effort that uses data to create a systemic approach to reducing the prevalence of ACEs in Do\u00f1a Ana County. It follows an initial convening in late April of more than 30 community leaders to lay out priorities for a childhood trauma coalition. That group settled on a focus on behavioral health, which was hurt in the county and much of New Mexico after a shakeup of mental health and substance abuse treatment providers across the state for Medicaid fraud that was ultimately dismissed by the Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<h3><b>Group seeks data-informed change<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>Gandara says while there \u00a0is some data from CYFD about conditions in their communities, more granular data at the local level would be helpful.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t understand why we still have 2,800, almost 3,000 reports (to CYFD of abuse and neglect cases in the county),\u201d she said. \u201cWe used to have almost 200 children in care. We have, probably, one of the counties that has the most deaths of children due to child abuse and neglect. We shouldn\u2019t have it. We just shouldn\u2019t have it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Part of the effort would be to gather information on children\u2019s, parents\u2019 and even grandparents\u2019 exposure to ACEs with a questionnaire widely used in the child welfare field, then using that information to change how services are delivered or how schools or agencies interact with children. As an example, school nurses who collect health histories of all children in the Las Cruces Public Schools could add the ACEs survey, and it could determine hot spots of childhood trauma at the district.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Brian Kavanaugh, CEO of Families and Youth Inc., has signed on to be one of the backbone organizations of the effort. Other participants included LCPS, local legislators and politicians, the local office of the state Department of Health, the Paso Del Norte Foundation and faith-based community organizer NM CAF\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>Kavanaugh said he thinks there are three levels to the problems of childhood trauma in the community: Awareness, understanding and what to do about it. As a mental health professional he said he still hears a lot from people that adversity is good for kids, that it makes them stronger. He is still fighting that misperception.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are incidents that happen \u2014 abuse, neglect, that type of stuff \u2014 and I think there is a broader awareness that it exists in our community, but then an understanding of why does it exist and how does it impact people, I think that is fairly absent. And then the third one, what to do about it &#8212; which is, like, almost nonexistent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat to do about it\u201d is the driving force for the group.<\/p>\n<p>Johana Bencomo, director of community organizing at NM CAF\u00e9, said she started her career as a social worker dealing with kids in the Hatch schools with behavioral issues and suicidal thoughts, and felt frustration that she was dealing with the symptoms and not the underlying causes \u2014 the single mom working two jobs, a deported parent and \u201clevels and levels of trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s say you gather all this data, and then what?\u201d she asked. \u201cHow are we gonna actually go about trying to dismantle some of these things that keep happening? That\u2019s what brings me to the table, when we start talking about how do we actually start impacting the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kavanaugh said he also wants to see tangible results, and finds promise in the hub. \u201cWe&#8217;re at a point where we have the framework set up, and now we need to put some action items to it and start following through,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And I know we\u2019re committed to doing that. With or without funding \u2014 although funding would be nice \u2014 there\u2019s steps we can start taking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The aim is to combat child abuse in the community and improve children\u2019s health, education and lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":599924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[234,3667,145],"class_list":["post-599917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-children","tag-kasandra-gandara","tag-las-cruces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}