SAN ANTONIO — Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Antonio has launched a new program to help youth overcome "adverse childhood experiences" or "ACES."
The initiative is meant to support at-risk children and teens whose family members are involved in the justice system, or who have experienced traumatic experiences. They hope to offer positive mentors and training to help youth break the cycle of abuse and incarceration.
"There’s a lot of research to show if a child has enough adverse childhood experiences in their life, it ultimately affects their ability to be healthy and the longevity of their life," BBBS San Antonio Vice President of External Relations Christina Martinez said. "Chances that another person in that family will become incarcerated is very high."
Madison Swift knows the challenges that come with trauma. Until age six, she never felt like an adult was truly there for her. Then, her own BBBS "big," Kathy, entered her life.
"My childhood was really really rough," Swift said. "I kind of went in and out of foster care growing up. My mom, my birth mom was abusive, my birth dad; there was a lot of issues there, a lot of abuse, a lot of neglect, a lot of homelessness, a lot of bad situations. My big sister continued to stay with me. She didn’t give up. There were moments when my birth mom was just, didn’t want her to be part of my life, and we just didn’t quit."
Kathy continued as a stable presence in her life, eventually adopting her and showing her all the promise life could hold.
"She just kept fighting for me, and then when I was eight-years-old, I went into the foster care system, permanently. I went through 100 foster families and 25 schools and I moved around a lot, and everywhere I went Kathy followed me, kept showing up, teaching me and reminding me that just because bad things happened to me, doesn’t mean I’m a bad person," Swift said.
BBBS San Antonio is working with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Prevention, using a grant to cover the costs of "matches" for more mentorships, in hopes of helping more children and teens "overcome ACES."
"We’re looking for families with a sibling in the juvenile justice system. We’re looking to enroll children six to sixteen years old," Martinez said. "We’re also always looking for volunteers. We never have enough men volunteers, so that’s always our call to action — how do we get more men to be volunteers?"
Martinez hopes the program, which will include more training to help "bigs" handle the situations they may encounter, will offer help that hasn't been there before.
"There’s not always a lot of funding put into prevention," Martinez said.
"Sometimes it's put into intervention, and for our families, sometimes that’s too late. We want to really wrap our arms around a part of the community we believe could use prevention services, and to be a resource to families, and want to destigmatize that parents needing help is bad; we all need help raising our families."
To volunteer as a "big" or enroll a loved one in BBBS, click here.
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