Andrew Krueger: Results

Initial outreach efforts to ask for suggestions for groups and organizations that would benefit from our presentation on ACEs and their impact on children was focused solely on members of the school-age channel of Joining Forces for Children.
 
Initial email sent out only to the school-age channel (also part of broader newsletter):

WORKGROUP UPDATE: We need your help, and it will only take 5 minutes!
The ACEs 101 Awareness Workgroup is focused on increasing awareness of and education on ACEs and resilience in school systems. This effort is aimed at reaching educational groups who have influence in school systems like school boards, school administrators, and PTOs. We know the schools, teachers, coaches, educators, and mental health providers in our channel have led the charge on addressing trauma in school settings, and our workgroup goal is to support these efforts by making sure that school boards, administrators, and parent groups are up to speed!
To accomplish this, the ACEs 101 Awareness Workgroup put together a brief presentation/training that will not only serve as an educational experience for school boards and PTOs, but also as a call to action to promote trauma informed care in schools.
ACTION ITEM:
In order for the outreach effort to be successful, we need your help identifying school-connected groups who could benefit from an ACEs 101 presentation. We are asking channel members to fill out the Google form below with school-connected groups that have not been connected to awareness efforts in the past. The workgroup will use this information to focus our efforts and provide at least 3 presentations this semester, with the plan for more throughout the second semester. 
 
GoogleForm: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wlnTmhTzNQcfO8EcdCXjFEgRFD97j3Teu2VRjp1ajQo/viewform?ts=632b6a57&edit_requested=true
We appreciate your consideration and help in better educating our local school community on this important topic so all students & staff are supported in schools as they work to promote trauma informed approaches! If you are interested in presenting to your local school board, PTO or administration group, please join us at the next channel meeting!
 
 
However, we did not receive any suggestions from this initial effort. This prompted us to 1) shorten the email and 2) send it out to all members of the Joining Forces for Children coalition which is comprised of approximately 700 people.
 
Email sent out to entire JFFC coalition:
We need less than 5 minutes of your time! The School Age Channel‘s “ACES 101” workgroup is focused on introducing ACEs concepts w/ influential school based groups who have not yet received training on ACEs- think PTOs, School Boards, athletic coaches, parent volunteers, and other school affiliated groups. We need the whole Joining Forces for Children coalition’s help identifying these groups! 

• OUR ASK: We’re asking you to think about your personal and professional networks & fill out a brief Google Form with any influential school-based groups that may benefit from a brief ACEs 101 presentation at their next meeting.

Thanks for your help. Please let us know if you have any questions!
 
 
From this outreach effort, we have initially received 8 responses so far. I am currently working with the responders (who are serving as a personal connection to the proposed schools and organizations) to connect with these potential groups to try to arrange presentations.

Unfortunately, we were unable to meet our goal of giving 3 presentations by the end of the first academic semester despite the substantial interest we received and productive communication with different groups. In hindsight, perhaps actually giving 3 presentations was a bit ambitious, and I think I may have underestimated the amount of communication and logistical work that is required to arrange these presentations. Nonetheless, I have been in contact with several different groups and organizations that we anticipate will culminate in a presentation during this spring, with a few presentations already scheduled.

In addition to continuing correspondence with groups that have been responsive and voiced interest, I am also turning to reaching back out to groups that we have not heard back from as of yet. We determined at our December meeting that now (beginning of 2023) would be the best time to reach back out to groups that we had not heard from, and I began this communication effort today (1/6/23). I have reached out to two boards of education. In addition, I have also reached out to four individuals who initially responded to our Google Survey with a possible group that would benefit from the presentation but who we have not been able to communicate with since they filled out the survey. Hopefully, through revisiting and reaching back out to these groups and individuals at the start of the new year, we will have increased responsiveness and interest.

This was a busy week with two important updates. 
 
First, I spoke with Tim Taylor via phone on 2/6/23. Tim is a retired school teacher who reached out and was interested in bringing ACE awareness and trauma-informed care education to the work he is doing with parents in the Oak Hills School District. He and his partners have a book bus and also host intermittent parent engagement evenings. He felt that these would be great places to begin to have conversations around ACEs and was looking for help in how to best this. This was a slightly different request from the type of outreach we had been doing, which allowed us to get creative. Since the work he and his partners are doing is a little more organic and not quite as structured, we felt that a one-time presentation would be less impactful and ultimately reach less people. Instead, we felt that providing him tools to do this work would be much more beneficial. We have invited Tim to attend and observe one of our upcoming presentations, with the plan to subsequently share our resources/presentation and “train” Tim and his partners on ACEs and trauma-informed care. Our hope is that by sharing the presentation and education on ACEs and trauma informed care, Tim and his team will feel comfortable with the subject and empowered to explore this area with parents, kids, school districts, etc through their work in the way that they think would be most powerful. This highlights the importance of flexibility and adaptability in advocacy work, as we adjusted our approach to fulfill the need of Tim and his work with the same overarching goals/mission.
 
Second, I was asked to share the work we have been doing on the monthly Joining Forces for Children School-age Channel meeting today (2/8/23). This was a great opportunity with a large audience to share the origin of our project, our early successes and failures, how we have adapted our approach and work, and where we envision the project going. My presentation also included a direct call to action, as I encouraged the attendees to think about their connections within the Cincinnati community and how we can utilize these connections to continue our work in schools across the county. Immediately after my presentation, I was connected with someone from 1N5 (https://1n5.org) who wants to include a brief overview of our work in their newsletter, in the hopes that this will create even more opportunities to give presentations.This is just another way we have attempted to identify possible community connections through our work, underscoring the necessity of varied methods of recruitment/outreach.

I attended the monthly Healthcare channel meeting this morning which provided two updates.
 
First, one of the meeting attendees asked me before the meeting if she could use my ACEs Screening Guidelines presentation that I gave to this group in December. She explained that one of the hospital divisions at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center were having discussions around ACEs and screening, and she felt my presentation was a great overview and way to start the conversation, and so she asked if she could use the presentation. This was neat to see how all of the work I had done not only kick-started the discussions of this group regarding screening as we are looking how it is done both nationally and at CCHMC, but it was now also going to be used to help other specific hospital divisions as well.
 
Second, in our continued discussions regarding establishing guidelines on screening for ACEs at CCHMC (I gave initial overview talk at the December meeting, and then this has been discussed at the January, February, and now March meetings), we talked about how to convey the information and recommendations that we are preparing. One idea we had was a workflow diagram. This reminded me of the CCHMC resident pocket handbook that contains the highest yield information, algorithms, etc on pediatric medicine that each resident gets yearly. The handbook is constantly utilized by residents and serves as the go to source of easily accessible and institution specific information. This prompted me to ask if we would consider adding such a workflow diagram as well as other important advocacy items (other screenings, questions to ask, resources, etc) to the pocket handbook. This idea was met with a lot of enthusiasm and we have already started thinking about how to incorporate a few pages of high-yield advocacy information into the manual. We are planning to email the current chief residents to ask what the process is for incorporating stuff into the handbook, and based on this response, we will work in the coming weeks on helping to develop a small advocacy section. Our hope is that by including a workflow diagram on ACE screening and other important advocacy-related information into the resident handbook, we can empower residents to feel comfortable enough to utilize these important skills and incorporate them into their clinical practices now, so that they can continue to carry this with them moving forward as well! I am very hopeful that this will work out as I think it would be a great resource and could be really impactful.