Public Awareness & Education
All children deserve safe, stable, and nurturing environments to thrive. But Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can disrupt healthy brain development, leading to potential lifelong negative health outcomes.
The first step in driving change is always education. Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina convenes conversations around ACEs, Toxic Stress and the role we all play in building connections that matter for healthy brain development.
We do this in a few ways:
- Screening documentaries highlighting ACEs and building resilience. We bring local leaders and community members together to help mobilize communities to take action.
- Building Community Prevention Action Plans. We offer support to interested community members who want to join a group to help build Community Prevention Action Plans (CPAPs). The CPAPs are based on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework and are built by community members across all sectors.
- Planting Pinwheels for Prevention during Child Abuse Prevention Month. The pinwheel represents the great childhoods all children deserve. They change the way we think about prevention, by focusing on effective strategies and policies that prioritize prevention right from the start to make sure child abuse and neglect never occur.
- Public Awareness Outreach and Technical Assistance. We pave the way with our public awareness toolkits on messaging, how to talk about prevention, Kids First license plates, Recognizing and Responding to Suspicions of Child Maltreatment, tips for working with the media, tips for working with elected officials, and more.
- Faith Community Engagement Work
Learn What You Can Do
Make a connection that matters and advocate for children’s healthy development! Check out our Public Awareness Tools to learn how you can use your voice to improve outcomes for North Carolina’s children and families! Visit the toolkit.