If there ever was a call for transformative action, now would be that. Utterly shaken by the conditions of a worldwide pandemic and unavoidable cries to recognize system corruptions and deep racial injustices, our communities are faced with mounting barriers to access resilience and well-being. We, as providers for individuals, children, and families, are well positioned to make meaningful contributions to the redesign of systems of care and the needs of our most marginalized individuals need to be centered in our decision-making.

As a resource vehicle for the child-serving field in California, the Catalyst is an active advocate for those who serve, to ensure collaborative and equitable spaces for peer support, capacity building, and practice advancements. The Catalyst will be embarking on a yearlong systems change and engagement initiative, in close collaboration with the National Council for Behavioral Health, working to raise the capacity of providers and the agencies that structure their supports to Advance Trauma-Informed Communities. The Catalyst is a proud partner and grant recipient of the ACEs Aware Initiative, a partnership between the Office of the California Surgeon General and the Department of Health Care Services to lead the way in which Medi-Cal providers provide care to identify adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and significantly improve health and well-being in the state.

In the month of August 2020, the Catalyst invites community-based providers and allied professionals to engage in generative dialogue about what this journey means and how to actualize this change – for a community to build a movement around a child, family, or individual once an ACE is identified – defining how we as a collective choose resilience as our pathway to healing.

From these listening sessions, Catalyst staff will ask providers about their lived experiences as those at the frontlines, to share successes, challenges, and opportunities in cross-sector collaborations to address and prevent ACEs. The data from these sessions will create a platform for ideation and co-creation of a curriculum that will be launched statewide in November 2020 to train Medi-Cal providers (primary care, acute care, and behavioral health care) to plan and eventually implement a cross-sector strategy that is evidence-driven. Concurrently the Catalyst will invite allied fields to join in conversations through network-of-care convenings, around what transformative justice will look like in their regions as we move through these unique new stages of “being” in the world.

Click here to sign up for a Listening Session now. You can visit the Catalyst Center’s website or sign up for our newsletter (below) to stay apprised of related trainings and events.

We are honored to be in partnership with you all as we work to collectively rise up as a trauma-informed state.

For more information or questions about the Catalyst Center’s work in the ACEs Aware Initiative, please contact info@catalyst-center.org.