From Surviving to Thriving: Embracing Resilience Beyond ACEs

Course overview

The Adverse Childhood Experiences survey (ACEs) has been with us for 25 years, has become a standard part of the intake process for many behavioral health clinicians, and at least 10 States have mandated its use for Medicaid. Despite wide acceptance and obvious clinical utility, this workshop suggests that the ACEs Survey especially used as a stand-alone document has several major drawbacks, and one serious flaw for clinical assessment. We will describe how the survey has been adapted to reflect psychosocial development and celebrate the resilience that helped them to survive long enough to get to us! We present an adaptation of the ACE Survey which resolves these issues and provide reproducible handouts for clinical use.