The Center for Youth Wellness

Yesterday, a coalition of California child trauma advocates gathered in San Diego to advance a platform that seeks create policy change in the state and capitalize on a shifting climate around criminal-justice reform.

A new report from the Center for Youth Wellness outlines policy ideas and recommendations for creating momentum around addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) across California. A primary-care pediatric clinic in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) has taken a leading role in exploring the way early adversity can negatively impact the developing brains and bodies of children, both at its clinic and as a state-wide advocate.

A three-day summit on Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, strengthens California’s efforts to orient policy and practice around preventing and responding to child trauma. By Parker Blackman “We know that it makes sense to keep kids in school for $9,000 a year versus individuals in prison for $62,000 a year.”

San Francisco’s Bayview district is best known for its gun violence, drugs, pollution and poverty, and not much else. But a community health clinic’s radical approach to healing children may change all that by turning the impoverished neighborhood into an epicenter for trauma-informed care.