The California Essentials for Childhood Initiative uses a public health and collective impact approach to align and enhance collaborative efforts to promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for children, youth and families through systems, policy and social norms change.

A group of practitioners, healers, policy advocates and all other people committed to making California a place that is healthy and safe for everyone.

We share ideas, information and stories about mitigating the effects of adverse childhood experiences in the K-12 environment. 

Discussion and sharing of resources in working with clients involved in the criminal justice system and how screening for and treating ACEs will lead to successful re-entry of prisoners into the community and reduced recidivism for former offenders.

Discussion of Transition and Reentry issues of out of home (treatment, detention, sheltered, etc.) youth back to their families and communities. Frequently these youth have fallen behind in their schooling, have reduced motivation, and lack skills to navigate requirements to successfully re-enter school programs or even to move ahead with their dreams.

How do we honor both lived & learned expertise to break down barriers between parents & professionals? How do PACE-impacted families best access healing, hope & health? How might parent education, training, & support services if co-created with families & in community?

Resources, posts, discussions, chats about national efforts to build a trauma-informed, resilience-building nation.

This group seeks to: 1) Understand what we do, what we do well, and call upon each other to collaborate. 2) Create a healing space for folks to work together across sectors. 3) Create a structured way to lift up each other’s work, align resources, and prevent fragmentation. 4) Use technology to communicate differently and stop traumatizing already traumatized systems.