Join us for our first Youth Updates of 2024 as we chat to our guest, Jon Needham (Director of Safeguarding and Mental Health for a large multi-academy trust and casual fan of Korean drama series) about Adverse Childhood Experiences and what we might need to know about them.
For the full conversation, check out the podcast. Please note that this Youth Updates covers some heavy, and potentially triggering, topics.
Beth: Today we are thinking about ACEs, I’ve heard people talk about ACEs in relation to youth-work but what does it mean, and what are they?
Jon: So, ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and it’s based on academic research that looked at the impact of childhood trauma, not only on the child/teenager now but it also examined if there was any impact on later life.
In general, we take into account 10 ACEs; five are things that can be done to you and how you react, and five are things that happen externally and how you react. So, the first five are verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect. Then the next five are mental illness (their own or living with someone dealing with it), domestic abuse, problematic alcohol/drug use, parental incarceration and parental separation (death/divorce).
Those ten ACEs can have a continual impact on somebody’s life and psychologists say you can deal with one traumatic incident in your life where you can adapt to it and yes it affects you, but you can overcome it. They say the problem comes when you have four or more ACEs. The evidence shows us that these will affect reasoning and relationships for young people, but also will have a knock-on effect in later life, even in things such as medical health (diabetes, heart diseases, depression etc).
It’s all to do with how your brain responds and neurodevelopment. Your amygdala is like a meerkat – it’s on alert and expects trouble and when it perceives a threat, your body floods with adrenaline and you go into a fight, flight or freeze reaction. For example, let’s say a young person who witness domestic abuses at home is on their phone during a talk and gets shouted at – their meerkat/amygdala is triggered and they’re then ready to fight.
Then there’s the hippocampus which is like an elephant and it remembers how you reacted last time you were in a situation and you go on auto-drive. For example, a young person hit someone the last time they were shouted at and it sorted the situation out.
This is where young people get stuck between these two things. What really needs to happen is the prefrontal cortex (owl) part of the brain needs to be engaged which, thinks through things rationally. The owl gets you to change behaviours, but your prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until 25 for a woman and 30 for a man.
So in short, this is why ACEs affect you – because your amygdala (meerkat) is always on alert and in the stress zone and this affects you long-term.
Hannah: This starts to raise why it’s important for us to know about as youth-workers, so why is it important that we recognise ACEs?
Jon: So, the danger is that it all sounds a bit academic and clinical, but what you’ve got to think about (in youth group provision) is what it’s like for them in real life. If you think of some real-life statistics, you’ll see how ACEs affect things: 1 in 3 will have experienced cyber-bullying, 1 in 5 will have been exposed to domestic abuse, 1 in 10 will have experienced neglect, 1 in 14 will have been physically abused and 1 in 20 will have been sexually abused. What’s really worrying is that research shows us that 1 in 10 will have experienced four or more ACEs.
If this is the real life that young people are living through and if this is their lived experience, then we need to think about this when we are planning sessions or delivering services and adapt accordingly. For example, do loud youth club environments where people are running around trigger those experiencing domestic abuse’s fight or flight?
Beth: It all sounds quite serious… is it a ‘no hope’ situation? Is there any hope in this?
Jon: This is where it’s really exciting as the academic and secular research came up with three conclusions.
Firstly, there’s no quick solution, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul relationally. Secondly, faith makes a difference (remember this is from secular academics) – forgiveness and being forgiven is the key. Faith makes a difference to ACEs. Thirdly, having a role model has an impact. As a youth-worker we aren’t just turning up once a week, but we are people that young people can look up to. We are people young people to aspire to be like (even if they won’t admit it!).
Hannah: I love that there is hope in this as well. We’ve touched on what this looks like in a youth context, but how can our understanding of ACEs help us in youth-work provision specifically?
Jon: I think there are four things we can do.
The first thing is that you need to know and understand your youth group. You need to start asking questions and thinking about those ACEs and what the impact may be. We also need to understand the experiences that may trigger someone and also to think about group dynamics and how we put young people into groups (eg. Not putting young people who are going to trigger off one another in a group together).
The second thing is thinking about how we approach situations ourselves. Domineering, shouting, isolating or belittling (even if it’s done as a joke) may trigger a response from young people that they can’t control. It’s down to us to control our behaviour.
Thirdly, what we need to do is to get young people to engage their owl (prefrontal cortex). For example, saying things like ‘If that had happened to me, I would feel…’ and offering an alternative solution and helping someone to emotionally regulate. Ask them about ‘is that the best way to respond…what might happen if you do that?’
Finally, this doesn’t just affect young people so take time to understand how ACEs may be influencing co-workers/volunteers and help them emotionally regulate; especially when bearing in mind that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop until 25-30 years old and may affect how volunteers respond to situations too.
For the full and expanded conversation, check out the podcast.
Word Of The Month
It’s Giving… = The vibe something is giving off.
Eg. When someone comes in wearing a green jumper someone might say ‘It’s giving Shrek’ as it reminds them of Shrek.