Webinar: “Reframing Childhood Adversity: Promoting Upstream Approaches”

In this video, Dr. Julie Sweetland, senior advisor at the FrameWorks Institute, takes you on a guided tour of her timely and powerful new strategic brief, “Reframing Childhood Adversity: Promoting Upstream Approaches.”

Understanding the need for fresh, powerful framing strategies, Prevent Child Abuse America and the newly merged Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and Council on Accreditation asked the FrameWorks Institute to update framing recommendations that have served our field well since 2004. While Americans agree that child abuse and neglect is unacceptable and are more likely than ever to consider child development an important policy issue, it can be difficult to build the public understanding and political will needed to effectively prevent, identify, and address childhood adversity. As communicators, we still encounter persistent dilemmas in deciding what to say, how to say it, and what to leave unsaid.

This highly accessible, actionable guide takes recent science and current communications contexts into account, speaks more directly to racial and social justice, and aligns with efforts to reimagine child welfare systems into child well-being systems. The brief also offers guidance for communicating about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and strategies for helping the public to see how prevention works.