0:00:00.5 Sally Laskey: Welcome to Resource on the go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Sally Laskey, NSVRC's evaluation coordinator. And on this episode, we continue our discussion with Dr. Julie Sweetland from the FrameWorks Institute to explore specific recommendations on how to frame childhood adversity as a preventable and solvable problem.

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0:00:43.7 Laura Palumbo: Alright, welcome back to the podcast, Julie. This is Laura Palumbo, NSVRC's Communications Director, and we are excited to continue our conversation about framing childhood adversity. If you missed our last episode, you might wanna go back and listen to that first.

0:01:00.5 SL: I agree, Laura. This is Sally Laskey with the NSVRC, and I'd highly recommend folks go back and listen to part one. It's been wonderful to be able to focus on solutions to the common framing dilemmas in discussing childhood adversity that we discussed in our last podcast. Julie, in reframing childhood adversity, promoting upstream approaches, you talk about the need to position child adversity as a public issue. Can you walk us through what that would look like? 

0:01:41.6 Dr. Julie Sweetland: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much for having me back. So it's easy for people to think of children and family's issues as private concerns, and while more Americans than ever agree that healthy child development is a shared public concern, and there is a role for policy we do look for... We're looking for that role of policy and we're looking for big preventative systems, then we really need to nudge the public on that and help them remember that this is something that affects us all. So in framing childhood adversity, we've moved away... A lot of folks working in violence prevention and child abuse and neglect and those sorts of things, have moved away from the emotional story zooming in on the horrific experience of abuse, and I think that that's an important move.

0:02:30.8 DS: Keep making that move, but we have room, I think, to grow and making the story one where we all have a stake and a role in outcomes that matter. Making this a story about us, not about them, the people experiencing the problem. So just being very consistent and disciplined and asking ourselves, "Am I talking about this in a way that is emphasizing shared fates?" We wanna remind people that we all benefit from child well-being, we want to also show the consequences of child adversity are also shared. Not just affecting that child, but affecting other things we care about, great education outcomes, healthy workforce, thriving communities. And we want to connect, I think, to our collective responsibility to children there that is present and available in our thinking, we want to tap into that, or remind people that we have it. We're all in this together. It's on us, we have a duty to make sure that children are doing well and remind people that our actions are part of what maximizes or undermines children's potential, so it's not just that instance of adversity and the people who are involved in that specific incident, but what we all do. And so we can do that by using language like, every child is filled with tremendous promise, and we have a shared obligation to foster their potential. That's kind of that our responsibility and our shared responsibility as a way of talking about the issue.

0:04:09.4 LP: That's great. And I would just reflect from NSVRC's research as well on recommendations for framing sexual violence that that collective responsibility and that role we can all play was such an important part of it and an important part of overcoming some of the disconnection that people feel to the issue and to the urgency of a social issue that can seem so large. So it was great to see those really tangible examples talking about the role that we each have to play and really uplifting the potential of all children. I think that that's a lot of language that will be really relevant to focus in sexual violence prevention as well. One thing that I wanted to talk to you about was the topic of health equity and racial justice, which we understand are so critical to our work to prevent violence. What recommendations do you have for talking about those societal and community level risk factors for child diversity? 

0:05:26.6 DS: I think we want to really integrate and embed a focus on racial and gender justice into all of our communications on childhood adversity. I think that's particularly true when it comes to topics closer to the issue of sexual violence. And in general, I think that the re-frame I would recommend for a field on this issue is A, talk about it. Don't be afraid to talk about it, but B, talk a little less about who it's happening to, less about the outcomes or the heightened negative outcomes that we see in particular communities and more about the how. Show how the external conditions that we have created as a society are channeling more stress and fewer resources into certain communities or towards certain groups. So that is part of that telling the story of us versus them, but it's... I mean, sorry, it's us, not them, but it's also a move of showing what affects what, really highlighting the big picture social conditions that increase the risk of adversity, explaining how they work, and then connecting that process to the problem it causes. And what that means for us working on children's issues and sexual violence in particular, is perhaps moving away a little bit out of our traditional topics that we're comfortable talking about and into some of the topics that are adjacent to the issue and actually really helping to cause the issue, but not on our list of go-to things.

0:07:11.8 DS: Things like... I don't know, housing, for instance. So if we can really show how decades of housing discrimination, including history but also current unfair lending practices, mean that black families are less likely to live near good jobs and more likely to experience pressure from low wages, long commutes. That shows really a condition that can lead to chronic stress, which could make abuse and neglect more likely, really helps people understand why there may be different norms around parental supervision and family caregiving that can set up risk situations. And we can tell a story like that for lots of different groups, I don't mean to single one out, but instead of showing statistics, naked numbers, as I say, and trotting out a statistic that's particular to one group in an effort to get people to care. It's fine to say, "Hey, this is a justice issue and we need to care about the experience of this group," but don't do that just by saying they're experiencing it more because that leaves the door open to assuming it's something about that group and their values and their characteristics rather than what we have set up as a society collectively.

0:08:30.7 SL: So this is connected in a lot of ways to what you just shared, and I'm wondering what ideas you have to help us focus both... We're doing a lot of both/and, I think, in our approaches. How can we focus both on the resilience of children and the need to develop and support factors in our communities and in our society that are protective against abuse.

0:09:08.0 DS: Oh, that's such a good question and really important. So part of telling a resilience story is keeping possibility in the picture. So if we over-emphasize or overstate the causal relationship between early adversity and later outcomes, then we run the risk of leading people towards fatalism, and then they stop engaging with the issue because damage done is damage is done in their mind. So we want to point people in a more helpful direction, still maintaining scientific accuracy and emphasizing that these serious outcomes are possible, but also consistently advance a sense that if we put in the right supports, people have the capacity to thrive despite adverse life experiences, and when our researchers talked with adults who identified themselves as having experienced a great deal of adversity or toxic stress in their own childhoods, that need to emphasize the possibility of resilience was particularly important in reaching that audience.

0:10:17.5 DS: So people would either... If we didn't do that as we were testing messages, people would reject the idea, people don't like to think of themselves as defeated, and so they'd say, "Well, of course, I went through this experience, but I turned out okay, or I'm making progress." And they felt that it sapped them of their agency, that it really erased the things they had done to restore or rebuild well-being. So really keeping that possibility in the picture through our language, but also specifically saying with the right supports, resilience is a possible, feasible outcome within reach. And some of the language we can say instead of saying, ACEs are traumatic and have lifelong consequences from chronic illness to mental illness, we can say they're common and in the absence of support, they can cause long-lasting harm. So emphasizing is they're prevalent, but saying that's really it's if we don't step in and respond, then that's when they cause harm, because we know that the buffering effect of responsive relationships really will interrupt that potential toxic stress response, which sets off the chain of lifelong health and mental health consequences.

0:11:34.9 LP: So thank you for going over that, Julie. I must say, as you were answering Sally's question, it made me remember how as I was reading this report, one of the things I really enjoyed about it was that there were these nuggets that your team messaged in very, very memorable ways. For instance, when you were earlier talking about getting under the skin to shape... Getting under the skin to talk about how external condition shape health and development outcomes, and just now when you were talking about keeping possibility in the picture, I was like, "Oh, those are more of those great one liners that are all throughout the report," that I feel like are gonna be such great applicable pieces for people to carry over into their work. So in addition to talking about child development and the capacity for resilience and the getting under the skin topic, what are some other messages that can help us illuminate the underlying social issues that increase risk for childhood adversity? 

0:12:36.2 DS: Good question. So if we set ourselves the goal or task of really being consistent about advancing the idea that it's social conditions and contexts that shape family life and childhood experiences, then that's the first move. But it can help to have a metaphor that helps people visualize that, that can really emphasize the external pressures on families rather than what used to be called family dysfunction in the ACEs study. I'll just put a plug out plug here for re-framing rephrasing that to family household challenges rather than family dysfunction, but to go back to the metaphor, we found the metaphor of an overloaded vehicle was really helpful in getting people to think about not just stress, but how stress can lead to a breakdown in care for children, and also the role the society can play in reducing stresses on families.

0:13:38.1 DS: So in a nutshell, this metaphor is something just like a vehicle can only hold up so much weight before it stops moving forward, challenging life circumstances can overburden families making it hard for them to provide the best kinds of care and support that they would like to. And to prevent a breakdown in care, we can keep the heaviest loads from weighing our families down. I wouldn't talk about an individual family in this way, it's to get people to think about the general concept, but that metaphor we have found really helps people... It helps them think and talk about the connections again, between the bigger picture and child adversity, and it helped them think about how factors such as employment, transportation, healthcare, shape children's environments. But it also really critically boosted people's sense that these problems can be prevented, so the number... I'd say one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge when it comes to child adversity and particularly sexual violence, is that people believe it can't be prevented, and that's what we talked about in the last episode.

0:14:48.6 DS: But this metaphor helped people say, "Oh well, before it breaks down, we need to do something. We shouldn't be loading all that unemployment and stress and neighborhood violence and unsafe housing, we can do something there, and then that vehicle can keep on moving." And so it was really helpful for that. So it does both/and, it helps us think bigger and more structurally, but also with more efficacy, more a sense of where we can step in and make a difference.

0:15:20.7 SL: I really appreciate the metaphor, that helps me a lot. Another thing that we talk a lot about with folks, and something that we know is a way to do this work at the big picture level is to focus on policy level strategies for creating change. Can you talk about how sharing information about promising policies can help shift people's thinking to understand, like you said, that solutions do exist and/are possible.

0:16:02.0 DS: Yes, well, if you are leaving out solutions of your messaging, you are leaving possible support on the table, that's the one takeaway is to some extent, from a messaging point of view, it doesn't matter so much what solutions you... I mean, obviously people should be advancing evidence-based effective solutions, but just saying there are things we can do really shifts the tone of the conversation. So you want to make sure your solutions... You just wanna signal that solutions exist in multiple ways through your tone, through your word choice, but also the examples of specific things you'd hope that that group would take up and act on. That all can work together to create a sense that change is both necessary, which we're pretty good at talking about as advocates, but also possible, which is sometimes falls on the way side. So the goal is to balance efficacy and urgency, so the sense that something can be done with this is a real problem, we need to act to address it now.

0:17:10.3 DS: When we do that, I think some best practices are to tell a solution story rather than offer a laundry list of all the things you think could make a difference. If you list that comprehensive set of promising policies or programs, it might help you feel better and more comprehensive, like you've solved the problem, or you've at least articulated how to solve the problem, but it doesn't do much to help people grasp exactly how those solutions would make a difference, and that's usually the block to adopting the solution. So it's more effective to explain a single solution well in a given communication, than it is to offer a comprehensive list of everything you hope we could accomplish.

0:17:55.8 DS: So in general, you're just remembering that the challenge here is not to convince people that the problem exists. People know, particularly when it comes to sexual violence and it's a wide spread problem. It's more to convince them that we can do something about it, and so making it clear that change is within reach by highlighting those collective policy level solutions that actually helps you redefine the problem in some ways, so it's not just bad. It's bad and it doesn't have to be, which makes that more helpful and that's gonna move people towards that sense that we have a shared obligation to set up better structures, better systems and more equitable social conditions.

0:18:42.5 SL: I know that Laura has a question that she wants to ask you, but I just wanna thank you right in this very moment for naming something that we don't always name when we're talking about messaging, but I think you provided a great example. I am one of those comprehensive list makers. When I want a message about something and give a tip sheet out to someone, I wanna try to have something in there so that everyone will find something they can connect with. And I think what you just described as a different way to have a compelling story line and something that's accessible to people is to shift the focus from what's gonna make me feel better in doing this work and knowing that I'm trying really hard, and shift it in really understanding from the research about what we know about how people respond to information. So thank you for that gift that you just gave me. That's gonna stick with me.

0:19:50.2 LP: That's great. And I also wanted to add, Julie, that this idea of promising examples, stories, really bringing prevention to life was such a strong theme in our research on framing as well, and the other piece of it that we found was that it doesn't necessarily need to be all that comprehensive. It can be an example specific to one local school, to one workplace, to one community, but what people need is that story that can help them connect the dots that actually change as possible, that what is to them seems insurmountable or seems very abstract to have this tangible example of actionable steps in that direction.

0:20:42.5 LP: And so I think that that is something that can be very challenging for practitioners in our fields, it can feel very difficult. It can feel very difficult to encapsulate our work in maybe one initiative or one strategy and folks do wanna be so comprehensive, but there is this great value to when we take those specific stories and really through that, give people that sense of belief that change can happen. A tangible example, and then that creates the possibility for us to maybe open the door for more, whereas I think we oftentimes want to bring out so much comprehensive information out of the gate. Yeah, it really... It applies very well to preventing sexual harassment, assault and abuse.

0:21:58.9 DS: If I could just say, think about the story telling you guys are up against. On any day of the week, we could watch hours and hours of crime dramas that offer precisely one solution to sexual abuse, and that's enforcement. And I'm not saying what you take that away, but if we need the public to understand a much wider range of what can be done, so keep your list. I'm glad that folks like you and folks who are listening to just have the comprehensive list, but the list is for you. It's your plan for what you need to message, it's not the message itself, and so helping that much more robust repertoire of things you all know can be done to get ahead of this problem and reduce this problem, but make that come alive in the same... So that people can remember it, and because they already have a story that they know and it's a very simple story. You need to give them lots of other simple stories that show prevention and more compassionate, involved responses.

0:23:04.5 LP: That's a great example, Julie. And one thing that I think it's a great way for us to also bring into the conversation that we not only have to think about the frames that our audience is operationalizing and the frames that we are trying to cue, but also just the surrounding environment. And so much of the information and so much of the background information that people are operating with is from the media, is from news, so we do talk a lot about that with news frames and also thinking about how we can bring these strategies directly into work with media. So I really appreciate that example. One question that I'm very curious about, is if there was anything that really surprised you doing this research, and if there's anything that you're really excited about.

0:24:00.6 DS: Yeah, so I don't know that there were any hidden surprises in this one because it was a review of and a pulling together of topics that we've been researching for quite a long time. So what has been surprising given that we have worked with partners like you and the Alliance for Strong Families and communities and Prevent Child Abuse America who sponsored this particular set of resources we have out right now, working with them for... You all for 10-15 years, what surprised me was the level of interest in a fresh take on this, so this has been one of our most downloaded reports in I don't know how long. I did a webinar and the host had to up their capacity for people to join two or three times, and we had to have an overflow room in Facebook Live, so I know that the field of folks working on child welfare in some form or another is huge, so it could just be a function of that, but again, I really am getting a sense that people working in this issue know there's... We've perhaps hit a plateau in what we can accomplish right now with explaining what promotes and what undermines healthy child development.

0:25:17.4 DS: We need to keep doing that and a little bit more, and I feel like the set of framing ideas that we brought forth that were really about leaning into prevention and how to expand out and connect to some of the other big policy conversations we're having as a nation now, whether that is racial justice or really economic mobility and family support through some of the policies that are coming out of Washington right now. Post-pandemic, how are we gonna rebuild in ways that feel good to all of us, we need to be part of those conversations. And so the level of enthusiasm, I think, for checking these things out and for joining what someone on one of those calls called a language movement, I think that have been pleasantly surprising it and just really rewarding.

0:26:14.8 LP: That's wonderful to hear, and I will add my feedback as well, that the report was just really, so interesting to read, but also really empowering. It really felt like there were so many clear examples of ways that we could... That ways that we could really help make the case for fulfilling the potential of every child. And I think one thing that has been interesting is... Has been that I have found that there's many findings in the report that not only relate to NSVRC's research on the framing of sexual violence, but that also pertain to so many other public health issues, and I've been sharing with folks who aren't necessarily working at ACEs, aren't necessarily working on projects specific to children, but I think that there's so much valuable information in the report and there's such a significant role that ACEs play across efforts to prevent violence, that it is really great information for folks.

0:27:25.8 DS: Thank you so much. I will take that back to the team that helped work with this and did the research, and also just make a little plug that I hope you can invite some of my colleagues back when you've got time, because we are doing a really robust set of research specific to child sexual abuse, preventing that is in partnership with the research that's happening at John Hopkins. Dr. Letourneau is part of a big branch under NIH and some other folks, and so we are the framing partner there, and so I hope that we'll be able to, as we have results coming out of that, share that with your listeners and your network.

0:28:05.3 SL: Absolutely, we're excited to do that. We wanna thank you so much for joining us and please bring our thanks back to your full team at FrameWorks Institute. We're gonna include the links to the full report in our show notes, and we really look forward to continuing to make these connections as we try out these new frameworks and sharing of the lessons across different fields. So thank you so much for being part of the podcast, and we look forward to talking with you and your team again soon.

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0:28:53.1 SL: Thank you for listening to this episode of Resource on the go. For more information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website at www.nsvrc.org. To learn more about the reframing childhood adversity promoting upstream approaches report, check out our show notes at www.nsvrc.org/podcast or visit frameworksinstitute.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.