VINCENNES, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV)– Kelsey Carr didn’t mince words on the impact of childhood trauma.
“Adverse childhood experiences is one of the biggest public health concerns in the nation, if not the world,” she said.
Carr and Bill Loffer have been working over the last several months to provide adverse childhood trauma, or ACE, training to hundreds of people around Knox County.
The duo both attended a four-day training event in Indianapolis, provided by the Indiana Youth Services Association, earlier in 2022 that gave them the expertise to teach others.
Carr, the Director of Prevention Services for Children and Family Services in Knox County, was worried the training wouldn’t pick up around the area, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.
“I thought we would come back to Knox County and people would be like, ‘Oh yeah, a good idea, that’s really nice,’ and not want to participate in the training, but the feedback that we’ve gotten from Knox County has been amazing,” she said.
So what is ACE training, according to Carr?
“We talk about the trauma that has happened in childhood and how that can affect you going into adulthood,” she said. “It gives us a different lens when we work with people who come from a trauma, we can respond to them in a way that that is more trauma-informed, more caring, and set ourselves up to be a self-healing community.”
Loffer works as the Director of the Students Having an Alternative Positive Experience, or SHAPE, program in the county. He said he has seen a need for a program like this in the area.
“There is a need for all kinds of services in Knox County due to generational poverty, generational domestic abuse, generational drug abuse, generational alcohol abuse, all of those things,” he said.
When they started offering training, Carr said the goal was to train 100 people by the end of the year.
Before the end of August, they hit their goal.
“Our original goal, we wanted to train 100 people by the end of this year, we’re surpassing that and we’re going to double that,” she said.
Carr said the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
“The most common feedback that we get is people realize things about themselves. They say, ‘wow that makes so much sense why I do that,'” she said.
Now, they are hoping to provide the service outside of Knox County.
Carr and Loffer presented to the board of the System of Care, a program through Good Samaritan Hospital that works to connect healthcare resources to people throughout Knox, Martin, Daviess and Pike counties.
Program Coordinator, Ashley Charleston, said the service has made an impact on her coworkers.
“I think a lot of the people who sit on our board had heard about ACEs, and know what ACEs are, but maybe didn’t have real-life examples of what how they could integrate that into their work, into their home life, into their community in general, I would say that’s the biggest takeaway,” she said.
Charleston added the program meets a pivotal need in the area.
I am currently coordinating a grant where I’ve been collecting data. I wrote a community needs assessment. It definitely shows a need for our youth and for the communities in general. We just need to become trauma informed,” she said.
Charleston worked with the duo to set up meetings in Martin and Pike counties later in the year.
Carr said organizations or any individual interested should reach out to her or Loffer. They offer a two-hour, one-hour, or twenty-minute class.
“If you’re a human that knows another human, this is a good training for you. It gives you some insight on yourself, and other people around you.”
