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ACES: A LIVED EXPERIENCE
-From a Client’s Perspective-
Rebekah Couch
Personal Qualifications – Just a Few
Single Parent Home
(Infancy)
Sexual Assault (Toddler)
Mental Health
(Pre-Teen)
Addiction/ Self-Harm
(Teen)
Teen Mom
(Single Parent Home)
Physical Abuse (Toddler)
Mental Abuse
(Pre-Teen)
Addiction/Self-Harm
(Teen)
https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/
Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs
Identify Barriers (For Successful Case Plan Outcomes)
➢ Failure to Relate Stereotyping Lack of Understanding
➢ Trust / Honesty
➢Cultural Barriers (Economic or Ethnic)
➢Literacy / Income /
Transportation
➢Social Support
➢Healthy Parenting
Styles
➢Invisibility Complex
➢Housing
Identify Barriers (For Clients)
Are you paying attention?➢Self- Care: (bathing, teeth, clean clothes, hair)
➢Food: Consistently needs food referrals
➢Body Language: (eye contact, open posture vs. closed posture, wringing hands)
➢Safety: Scratches, bruises, “partner” hovering, “partner” yelling on phone, desperation for hotel voucher/housing
➢Deflection: resistance or physical excuse for not filling out forms, lost paperwork, disorganized
➢Consistent Contact: RTS/NATA mail, disconnected or changed phone number
Systematic Barriers
➢ Medicaid limitations / Delayed benefits / Lack of providers / Wait lists / Department Approvals / Inter-agency Communication Failure
➢ Lack of family focused rehab facilities (Families First Act)
➢Lack of services / support after stabilization or reunification
Lack of empathy or “relate-ability” from professionals, stereotypes and lack of personal experience with the client’s “recovery” process:
Professionals who have not healed from personal adversity will be ineffective working with traumatized clients!
Anyone working directly with high risk or traumatized persons should complete a 12 step process, attend several sex traffic victim group meetings, spend a couple days using only public transportation, present yourself professionally or publicly without bathing for 2-3 days, have an eight year old fill out a mock Cal Works application and get a feel for how difficult it is to do paperwork (or navigate online) with an elementary school education, fill out a form in another language and guess at the questions(literacy), sit through a four hour class or presentation with flu-like symptoms, visit a VA hospital and understand how PTSD presents, go through an entire month using only $339 for expenses and $196 for food. FIND A WAY TO RELATE TO YOUR CLIENT! (Over-achievers should do all of the above at the same time!)
