© 2025 254 North Front Street, Suite 300, Wilmington, NC 28401 | 910.343.1640
News Classical 91.3 Wilmington 92.7 Wilmington 96.7 Southport
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

A NHC Task Force formed to address adverse childhood experiences

New Hanover County SYNC core team members from left to right: (J’vaneté Skiba - NHC Resiliency Task Force, Keisha Robinson - Communities in Schools of the Cape Fear, Shequana Pulliam - Open Gate Domestic Violence Shelter and Services); not pictured: Rebecca Martin of the Carousel Center and kNot Today
Rachel Keith
/
WHQR
New Hanover County SYNC core team members from left to right: (J’vaneté Skiba - NHC Resiliency Task Force, Keisha Robinson - Communities in Schools of the Cape Fear, Shequana Pulliam - Open Gate Domestic Violence Shelter and Services); not pictured: Rebecca Martin of the Carousel Center and kNot Today

New Hanover County is part of a tri-county grant, Strengthening Systems for NC Children (SYNC), funded by the North Carolina Division of Public Health’s Injury and Violence Prevention Branch and UNC Injury Prevention Research Center. Franklin and Surry counties in the state also participated in this effort to support communities with high adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) by identifying how to strengthen systems and structures to prevent them.

ACEs are categorized as childhood abuse (physical, emotional, sexual), neglect (physical, emotional), and other household challenges (like parents/caregivers having the following: mental illness or substance abuse issues, being treated violently, having been or are incarcerated, or gone through a divorce). A seminal study on the impact of ACEs, published in 1998 and reconfirmed by subsequent studies done by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), shows that if left unchecked or not addressed throughout the person’s life, have real implications for their health like being at higher risk for certain cancers, depression, stroke, Type II diabetes, a shorter life expectancy. And these outcomes cost billions to combat.

However, over and over again, health and social science experts have said that having one or more ACEs does not mean one is destined for adverse outcomes, and that with the right social and economic support systems, people can overcome them.

The SYNC grant's basic premise was to convene a group of around 20 professionals or community members who work to raise awareness and/or prevent ACEs. In New Hanover County, they came from local government, Novant NHRMC, LINC, Department of Social Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Wilmington Police Department, UNCW, other area non-profits, and the private sector.

The NHC SYNC group started convening in August 2024. A team of four core members led it: Rebecca Martin (contractor for Carousel Center, director of the North Carolina chapter of kNot Today), J’vaneté Skiba (NHC Resiliency Task Force Director), Shequana Pulliam (Open Gate Domestic Violence Shelter and Services prevention specialist), Keisha Robinson (Communities in Schools of the Cape Fear, community programs manager).

The group's main goal was to develop a causal loop diagram map to show how ACEs impact the community. This map, which relies on ‘systems thinking,’ identified many variables that positively or negatively affect those experiences. While completing this map, the group identified three main focus areas within the map — maternal health, schools, and community violence (turning the focus to community well-being).

While researchers at UNC Chapel-Hill are still compiling the grant report from the three counties — the core team is still working on finalizing the causal loop map. They’re also focusing on how they can turn the information gleaned from the process into concrete policies and/or tools to stem the impact of ACEs in the community.

They also want the community to know ACEs prevention work is not over and hope it will continue through the New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force.

How ACEs show up in New Hanover County 

Robinson of CIS said most of the 20 SYNC group members know how ACEs show up, but “not everyone knows what they can do about it. So we get a lot of those big symptoms. We're seeing a lot of behavior issues in the schools. We're seeing teacher burnout, those types of things, but they are simply symptoms of the issue, which is the ACEs, the trauma in our community.”

The CDC reports that 60% of Americans from a sample of 25 states have at least one ACE, so Skiba of the Resiliency Task Force argues this isn’t an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ issue.

“There is not one person who is in an organization, living or working in a community that operates outside of the effects of adverse childhood experiences or trauma, and we see this because we all have concerns about safety in our schools and our public institutions. We all have concerns about equity and inclusion. We all have concerns about workforce development and how people show up to work, or if they don't show up to work, and all of those things can be traced back to someone's experience of trauma or an adverse childhood experience,” she said.

While equity and inclusion efforts have come under scrutiny, leading to governments and businesses disbanding DEI — Skiba’s point is that most people want to live in a world where everyone can succeed and grow. The inflection point now in the public sphere is whether systemic racism or racism and discrimination is continuing. Some argue this still shows up in our community; others say that this is a relic of the past.

What the SYNC group discussed — and many in the government and non-profit communities say — is that efforts to solve significant, intractable problems like violence are siloed, something that doesn’t help make inroads to preventing ACEs.

I think part of what keeps folks from collaborating effectively is lack of systems thinking. And [that] requires folks to look at root causes, and oftentimes we are trained to look very specifically at the issue that our organization is trying to solve, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but what we find we operate in vacuums and focus on intervention,” Skiba said.

Pushback on ACEs prevention work?

Skiba also mentioned systems thinking would mean going beyond just looking at the individual’s behavior.

For example, Skiba said that scheduling a conference to find out what is going on when a child is having trouble at school may be an issue of parents or guardians being unable to take off work. When someone is combative on the phone or in person with a service provider, there’s often a larger context at play.

“That requires a socio-ecological framework that a lot of people don't necessarily understand, and that goes from the individual to the immediate environment to society as a whole, and those societal issues seem big, and we can help one family, if it's treatment or giving supplies, meeting those like basic human needs, but if I'm continuing to just respond to [those] and not change the ecosystem or the social context within which that person lives, then I'm always going to have a steady supply of just meeting those basic needs and not getting to the root systems,” she said.

Some critics of this perspective question whether there is enough time and resources to think this way. Some also fear that ACEs can be used as excuses and/or reasons to remove individual accountability.

Skiba responded the awareness of ACEs within systems expands personal agency.

“We forget that trauma and stress are true inhibitors of our growth and our ability to learn to develop pro-social behaviors when we are constantly activated; when someone is in survival mode, then that is a part of their brain that is going to call the shots in their interactions throughout life,” she said. “When we tone that survival mode down by offering more self-agency because we have a language of resilience, we have an understanding of ACEs; we [then] lead with human-centered policies and procedures.”

Another point about understanding an individual who is in crisis. The people delivering the service – the counselor, the teacher, the social worker, the police officer, the nurse, the doctor – might not have the skills necessary to understand trauma, but that’s the goal of the county’s resiliency task force, according to Skiba, how to help first responders have patience, and to take care of their needs so they can care for others.

But Pulliam added that not knowing a person’s environment can lead to dismissing or ignoring them, which is painful.

“Many times, if people don't feel that they have experienced any of that stuff [ACEs], or they're not aware of it, they remove themselves from the issue, and it becomes their problem, not mine. And that lack of understanding takes away from how the overall, overarching impact of trauma can really impact our community,” she said.

The choice: ‘Band-Aid’ work or root work?

Societal problems often seem to some of the NHC SYNC members to be treated with bandaid work.

“Often, we are forced into that because who we're serving is in an immediate crisis. You have to deal with the crisis before I can deal with what happened 10 years ago that led to the crisis, but first, I have to get you fed. So give a man a fish, or teach a man to fish, do both give him the fish and then teach him when he's not hungry anymore, so that’s what we’re trying to do,” Robinson said.

Skiba brought it back to the community needing to focus on the long game: “While I am putting the band-aid on, who has my back to help me figure this out, like a long-term solution while I'm applying pressure and stopping the bleeding?”

Supporting root work through funding prevention 

Root work is not just about changing perspective but also finding money to address underlying issues, which can prevent symptomatic problems down the line. Sometimes, it is challenging to prove that prevention has been successful.

Rebecca Martin is a director of the non-profit Knot Today. She also worked for the Carousel Center, and she's dealt with this issue.

“Intervention services have always received the most funding, so prevention can often be difficult to prove. So you have a difficult time with developing metrics, for example, training, say, 1,000 adults in how to prevent child sexual abuse that does not necessarily correlate to 1,000 children saved. It’s hard to make that correlation. So, it becomes more tricky when you're talking about prevention and being able to prove the return on investment for funders, when you're talking about trying to go more upstream with those solutions,” she said.

Martin also said that prevention helps to overcome stigma, which is a real issue when it comes to abuse, drugs, and neglect. When services are available, people sometimes won’t access them because of shame and embarrassment, in particular with child sexual abuse.

“There is so much silence, shame, and stigma surrounding this type of abuse that, unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals who experience this particular ACE as children, they often don't get access to those healing resources,” she said. “They don't get access to those resilience-enhancing resources that can help them to move from survivor to thriver. They do not ever speak it into existence. Data continues to pour in over generations that this is often one of those experiences a human being will ultimately take to their grave. And so it makes it a particularly devastating and perpetual ACE that transitions from generation to generation.”

Martin said national statistics show that one in 10 children experience sexual abuse. For online sexual abuse, it’s higher — every two in 10.

While funding and awareness are what this group is working on – one idea that gained traction with the group is a coordinated dashboard of services. The core SYNC team is finalizing their action items later this year.

“So it would allow our local non-profits and governments to easily and quickly see what is available, who is offering what do they meet that criteria? Instead of offering a family: ‘Hey, here's a list of folks you should reach out to them.’ That list might be outdated. They may the phone number might not be accurate,” she said.

New Hanover County does have a community resource site, but those in SYNC said it needs to be more robust, one that’s data-driven and publicly available.

Martin added that when someone is in a crisis state, there is a small window of time to connect them to a service. If they make that call and get put on hold, that might be the only time they make that attempt.

The political landscape

Politics can get in the way of making change — not just in government but on the boards of philanthropic organizations — but it’s an essential part of how initiatives get funded by federal, state, and local governments and non-profit foundations.

Martin said that a lot of these issues should be apolitical; take child abuse, for example.

This is not a conservative versus liberal issue. This is a public safety and public health issue. And I can't tell you how many adults come through our training who at the end say, ‘Why aren't our kids being taught that?’ Excellent question. Now that you know, please help us advocate for that. Every adult trained is a potential juror,” she said.

Martin said the policy decision for North Carolina (part of 12 states in the country) not to adopt Allison’s Law, which requires that all students kindergarten through 12th grade know the signs of child sexual abuse, is an issue for her and her work in combatting ACEs. However, the state legislature passed a law that educates 6-12 students about how grooming can happen in schools to prevent the sexual abuse of children, as evidenced by the local cases of Michael Kelley, Peter Frank, and Nicholas Oates.

The group knows some of the changes they’d like to make, but again, it will take time, money, and collaboration between several organizations in New Hanover County.

Editor’s Note: Rachel Keith was part of SYNC’s 20-person working group. She gave input based on her knowledge of reporting on non-profits and local governments in New Hanover County.

Reporting

Rachel is a graduate of UNCW's Master of Public Administration program, specializing in Urban and Regional Policy and Planning. She also received a Master of Education and two Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and French Language & Literature from NC State University. She served as WHQR's News Fellow from 2017-2019. Contact her by email: rkeith@whqr.org or on Twitter @RachelKWHQR