For almost 20 years, I have been conducting research fieldwork with children and young people in disadvantaged communities in Scotland. In that time, I have come across numerous heartbreaking examples of early-life adversity that have taken their toll on the youngsters whom I have worked with.
During one memorable interview, “Matt” told me that his mother had died of a heroin overdose when he was an infant, and then he had lost his two grans before he reached his 12th birthday.
In another, “Barry” recalled regularly visiting his older brother in prison as a young teenager, and disclosed that his mum had been imprisoned twice for theft and once for attempted murder while he was growing up.
I also remember “Kenny” revealing that his father had died when he was 9 and how he had later become his mum’s carer when she developed severe mental health problems.
“Marie” described how she grew up never really knowing her dad and said that her mum suffered from mental ill-health; Marie became the “parent” to her younger siblings.
Finally, “Josh” revealed to me how his father had regularly battered him, and that his father and several uncles were deeply involved in drug dealing and other criminal activity.
Aside from these specific instances of adversity, the young people who have told me about their experiences of growing up in homes dominated by alcohol and drug abuse are too numerous to mention. In my early work, when describing these experiences, I often used to make reference to multiple issues of “marginality”. But now we have a commonly recognised term that can be used to describe them: adverse childhood experiences (commonly known as ACEs). ACEs are stressful or traumatic experiences that can have a huge impact on children and young people throughout their lives.
The 10 widely recognised ACEs, as identified in a US study conducted in California in the 1990s, encompass abuse (physical, sexual, verbal); neglect (physical, emotional); growing up with adults who have alcohol or drug problems; growing up with adults who have mental health problems; domestic violence; adults who have spent time in prison; and parents who have separated. The Scottish government has also highlighted that other types of childhood adversity can have similar long-term effects, including bereavement, bullying, poverty and community adversities such as living in a deprived area and neighbourhood violence.
The majority of the young people I have worked with have experienced these ACEs in abundance. For Matt, Barry, Kenny, Marie and Josh, these experiences, and the feelings of trauma they developed as a result, led to substance dependency, offending behaviour and their immersion in the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, this reflects wider research evidence, which indicates that those who experience four or more ACEs are more likely to go to prison, commit violence and have health-harming behaviours.
However, the consequences of experiencing ACEs should never be viewed as inevitable, and so much can be done to offer hope and build resilience in children, young people and the adults they grow into. And teachers are in a great position to help support young people, to recognise the signs and mitigate some of the potential consequences of ACEs.
Evidence suggests that exposure to ACEs can have a profound impact on young people’s capacity to think, interact with others and engage in learning. This is often because of the trauma they may be suffering, which sometimes makes them hypervigilant to perceived risk and danger. In turn, this can manifest in irritability, aggression, anger and even violence. Teachers need to be aware of these issues and sensitive towards them.
One of my research participants, “Danny”, was 14 when I interviewed him. He had suffered a range of disadvantages and expressed his frustration at being blamed for things he felt he hadn’t done in the school classroom. He admitted that he always felt angry, and on one occasion had thrown his chair in frustration in the classroom and subsequently got suspended.
“Nicole”, also aged 14, described to me how she was suspended for fighting a pupil in the changing rooms one day. As teachers, we need to recognise that young people who live with feelings of fear and helplessness about their home lives may inevitably be unable to focus or learn in the same way as other children, and this will potentially have a negative impact on their behaviour.
In 2017, a report from NHS Health Scotland (bit.ly/AttainGap) highlighted the way in which toxic stress from ACEs can undermine the ability to form positive relationships and regulate emotions, and said teachers should be alert to displays of anger and other emotional responses as signs that something is wrong at home. Unfortunately, excluding and punishing these young people is the least effective form of intervention. Often, they will return home to the further threat of abuse, neglect and violence.
In its 2018-19 Programme for Government, the Scottish government highlighted that preventing and mitigating ACEs is a “moral imperative”. It has made a commitment to invest in school nurses and counsellors, to support health and wellbeing interventions and to develop an “adversity and trauma-informed workforce”, which includes the implementation of trauma training for teachers and supporting schools to embed trauma-informed and nurture approaches in response to ACEs.
A 2018 report by the charity Iriss found that the Welsh system was even further ahead in this regard (bit.ly/IrissReport). The devolved government there announced some time ago that training to help children who face early childhood trauma is to be offered to all schools: teachers are now being taught how to directly support pupils who have experienced family breakdown, bereavement, or physical, sexual or substance abuse.
In Scotland, results from a recent online survey by children’s charity Barnardo’s indicate that a majority of school staff think more can be done to spot the early signs of trauma. Many respondents reported a belief that schools have a responsibility to understand the effects of trauma and childhood adversity on young people’s mental health. Barnardo’s is now calling for all schools to take a trauma-informed approach to children, thus effectively adopting the Welsh model in Scotland.
However, we need to be clear about what this approach might actually look like. Laura Falconer, assistant director at Barnardo’s, has argued that it involves “teaching children from a young age about emotional awareness, how to self-regulate and the skills to support resilience” as a means of preventing future mental ill-health.
Curriculum development and inspection body Education Scotland emphasises the importance of building positive relationships to tackle “the negative impact of early adversity”. It stresses the need for schools to develop “safe, secure, flexible and caring environments” and to place an emphasis on “social and emotional learning and the building of resilience”. Assessment and planning should have a focus on “what has happened to an individual rather than what is wrong with an individual”, and there should be a range of whole-school approaches that “enhance the wellbeing of all children and young people” alongside “targeted support that is proportionate and meets the needs of children and young people”.
The national Getting it Right for Every Child (Girfec) policy places children and young people’s wellbeing at the centre of all planning and assessment. It recommends that every child and young person should be exposed to a school ethos that enables them to feel safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included. Teachers should ensure that the curriculum is adapted to reflect the needs of pupils socially and emotionally.
Teachers are also advised to help families understand attachment, child development and a nurturing approach, and to help pupils apply key social and emotional skills in a range of contexts, including unfamiliar settings. Importantly, schools should place an emphasis on the “language of emotion” and help young people to express how they feel and to ask for support when they need it.
Against this backdrop, I believe that we also need to ensure that we do not lose sight of the emotional impact that working with young people with trauma can have on teachers themselves. It is important for senior leadership teams to consider ways to support their staff and encourage them to recognise that experiencing symptoms of stress and compassion fatigue is not a sign of weakness.
Jessica Lander, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, recently drew attention to the presence of “secondary traumatic stress”: caregivers such as teachers can begin to experience feelings of unexplained irritability, anger, hopelessness and symptoms of stress. She highlights that trauma-informed schools should not only focus on creating an emotionally caring culture for pupils, but also for staff. For example, establishing peer support groups can enable teachers to create a regular space to check in with each other about how they are doing emotionally.
Finally, as a researcher, I also recognise the importance of ensuring that the approaches put in place to support the most vulnerable young people and those who support them are evidence-based. As we continue to grapple with the mental health epidemic that engulfs our society and to respond to the calls for schools to become “trauma-informed”, we need to recognise that very little is yet known about how best to apply this.
In the years to come, we need new research that explores teachers’ understanding of ACEs, their views on trauma-informed approaches and the potential impact that trauma-informed training can have on their professional values and everyday practice. Importantly, we also need to identify what works best in terms of supporting the many teachers out there who devote so much of their emotional energy to supporting the most vulnerable.
Ross Deuchar is a professor of criminology and criminal justice and a former assistant dean of education at the University of the West of Scotland. He tweets @rossdeuchar
This article originally appeared in the 28 June 2019 issue under the headline “ACE’s high: tackling childhood trauma”
Already a subscriber? Log in
