Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Assessment is a ten-question assessment that was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente.
The ten areas of the ACE assessment look at abuse (emotional, physical and sexual), neglect (physical and emotional) and family dysfunction (family mental illness, physical abuse of mother, divorce, incarcerated parent and substance abuse in family).
Care should be exercised using the ACEs assessment in classroom or other environments for several reasons. You may need permission from a child’s parent/guardian to administer it and there can be other legal constraints that should be adhered to. Additionally, if you are not prepared for or able to address the results of the assessment it’s probably not a good idea to uncover them.
Additional Resources
- “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk
- “What Happened to You” by Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey
- “The Boy Who Was Raised by Dogs” by Bruce Perry
- “Ghosts from the Nursery” by Robin Karr-Morse