Adverse Childhood Experiences -ACEs

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events that affect children while growing up, such as suffering child maltreatment or living in a household affected by domestic violence, substance misuse or mental illness.

How do ACEs impact on children?

The experiences we have early in our lives and particularly in our early childhoods have a huge impact on how we grow and develop, our physical and mental health, and our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are “highly stressful, and potentially traumatic, events or situations that occur during childhood and/or adolescence. They can be a single event, or prolonged threats to, and breaches of, the young person’s safety, security, trust or bodily integrity.” (Young Minds, 2018).

Examples of ACEs:

Physical abuse
Sexual Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Living with someone who abused drugs
Living with someone who abused alcohol
Exposure to domestic violence
Living with someone who has gone to prison
Living with someone with serious mental illness
Losing a parent through divorce, death or abandonment

What support is there available?

Adverse childhood experiences make children more vulnerable, but they do not inevitably lead to poorer outcomes; they affect each young person differently. Some children may be traumatised in a way that affects their development, learning, health and behaviour. Others, through protective factors such as a safe and secure environment and their own resilience, may not be.

Please contact the school Safeguarding Team or Family Support Worker to explore what additional support is available.