[rain falling]
[thunder crashes]
- Abuse, neglect.
- What is wrong with me? [thunder claps loudly]
- I mean, why does the brain change?
- Significant cognitive and emotional disability.
- Your mother didn't show up
and your father didn't show up.
- The trauma that they're enduring
just seems to be more severe and more long-lasting.
[police sirens]
- Never said, "I'm sorry."
[woman suppressing crying] - And I am still working through things
that happened to me when I was 10.
- There's ghosts in the nursery.
- I literally didn't know what to do.
- People say, "Well, you won't have enough time."
- If we could go back in time maybe...
- That's all we have.
[woman chokes back tears] - I don't think giving up
is really an option.
- There's not enough apologies
that one could give to say, "I'm sorry."
Sorry... [echoing "Sorry, sorry, sorry"]
- Funding for Not Enough Apologies: Trauma Stories
was provided by
Focus Fund for Journalism
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
[door opens]
[hand cuffs clink together]
- All rise.
[murmuring in background]
- Judge Everett Mitchell: So much pain, so much pain, so much brokenness. [sighs]
- Narrator: Dane County Juvenile Court judge Everett Mitchell
says when he first took the bench in 2016,
his days would often end in tears;
his own tears.
- Mitchell: As I started listening to these children,
and reading their stories, and letting them talk to me,
I started realizing, like,
there's been nobody in their lives.
And every adult that's been in their life
has caused them more and more pain.
- Narrator: Mitchell presides over cases of children
who've been removed from their homes
for dangerous circumstances
including abuse and neglect,
and cases where children are charged
with the juvenile equivalent of crimes.
- Mitchell: At the onset, very traumatized children
who experience all sorts of trauma
from removal of home,
abuse, neglect.
It's not always clear
that they're able to get the resources and the help they need
to process all that pain.
So, it starts with emotional outbursts
and those emotional outbursts
turn into disorderly conducts.
- Narrator: Mitchell says he sees a steady progression
of the same juveniles
catching adult criminal charges.
He calls it 'the child welfare-to-adult prison pipeline.'
- Mitchell: Alright, you're gonna take the handcuffs off.
- Narrator: On this day, the courtroom door
opens to a case in point.
Bailiffs bring in a boy held in the juvenile detention center
who looks much younger than his 16 years.
The judge orders the boy's handcuffs removed.
It's an effort, he says, to try to change what it's like
to be a child in the system.
- Mitchell: We know these children are traumatized.
We knew that they were in pain.
It made no sense to indiscriminately bring them
into the courtroom in handcuffs.
- Youth: Yes, sir.
- Mitchell: Doing alright? - Yeah.
- Mitchell: Better today? - Yeah.
- Narrator: Long before he appeared in this courtroom,
the boy lived a life
of relentless adverse childhood experiences.
In the child welfare system since the age of five,
first as a victim of 23 reports of physical abuse,
neglect, sexual abuse,
living in institutions since he was nine.
Group homes, foster homes,
treatment centers,
juvenile prison.
More than 30 placements.
"I don't have anybody," he told a social worker.
A court transcript reads, "At the age of 10-years-old,
"he could not understand
why his mother would not want to see him."
It says, while living in a foster home,
the boy's mother told him she was coming to visit.
Testimony showed
he walked around for two days with his backpack,
looking out and watching
for his mother to come and visit with him.
But she never showed up.
- Mitchell: And he wasn't given treatment.
- Narrator: And now, he's before a judge
with his own public defender sitting next to him in court.
- Benjamin Gonring: I don't think that anybody
entered the world
predisposed to sell drugs or steal cars necessarily
in the nature versus nurture debate.
How did that 12-year-old--
who may not even be able to touch the ground with his feet--
How did they end up in that chair?
- Narrator: As children become teenagers,
criminal charges can amass, as in this case.
State Representative Evan Goyke
plainly connects trauma to incarceration.
State statistics show 98% of incarcerated youth
have experienced trauma.
- Evan Goyke: The vast majority of juveniles
that are in custody tonight
had some kind of child welfare intervention
when they were younger,
likely where that trauma was experienced.
- Narrator: For his part, Mitchell sends children
to the state juvenile correctional facilities sparingly.
In fact, the judge ordered the boy before him here
removed from Lincoln Hills.
When the teenager wrote to him complaining about
repeatedly being jumped and beaten up at the prison.
- Mitchell: Because he was just getting beat up too bad.
I brought him here the first time.
And nobody showed up from his family to take custody of him.
- Goyke: There are a lot of juveniles
that have been incarcerated
at sub-standard facilities
and we see the evidence through the high recidivism rate.
We see that that program doesn't work
by the fact that they continue to engage
in criminal and risky behavior.
If the facility was working, that number would be lower.
[police sirens] - Narrator: And yet, what to do
in the face of continued criminal and risky behavior
like the alleged behavior of the 16-year-old
before Judge Mitchell?
This police pursuit video shows a chase and crash
on a Madison highway in February of 2018.
According to prosecutors,
the teen before Judge Mitchell
was the driver of the stolen car involved.
As a result, prosecutors in court that day
told the judge they deemed the juvenile
a danger to public safety.
- Prosecutor: I think that the safety of the community
should be of paramount consideration here
and that at this point,
we have enough of a track record just in the recent months
that every time we have released him,
we have had new victims.
We've had new crimes.
[police chatter on radio] - Narrator: There is conflict
between acknowledging a person's traumatized background
and holding them accountable for their actions,
especially when those actions can be crimes.
Mental health police officer Andrew Muir
confronts deep trauma in the communities he serves.
- We see horrible things.
We see horrible abuse.
We see horrible neglect.
We encounter some kids
with really profound traumas
at such an early age
that it impacts brain development,
let alone their relationship
with almost anyone.
The catch 22, if you will, for law enforcement
and being trauma-informed is that
there's only a certain extent to which
we can compensate for that,
based on, sort of, our very nature and what we exist for.
- Narrator: That being to protect and serve public safety.
- Officer: An on-call therapist and see if we can...
- Narrator: Prosecutors in juvenile court lamented
that every time the boy before Judge Mitchell was released,
he committed new crimes.
One new crime landed the 16-year-old in court again.
- Judge: Actually, this child...
- Narrator: This time in adult court on felony charges.
- Judge: Count one is a serious charge:
attempted first-degree intentional homicide,
use of dangerous weapon.
If convicted with the enhancer,
defendant faces 65 years in prison.
- Narrator: Judge Mitchell says this case
that started as a child in need of protection and services
leaves him broken.
- Mitchell: This is to me like the worst CHIPS case ever.
You know, because he's alone.
And not only is he alone now;
now he's alone facing adult consequences
for some of the choices that he got involved in
with some of his friends.
He falls into this unique place where
I don't think all of his needs have been taken care of
and I know all of his treatment needs
have not been addressed
and there's not enough apologies that one could give
to say, "I'm sorry for...
"your mother didn't show up
"or how your father didn't show up,
"or how families didn't show up
or the times in which you were abused in these places."
- Narrator: Even as he presides from the bench,
Mitchell relates to the children of trauma who come before him.
- Mitchell: Part of my patience for these children
is, you know, that was me.
Every last one of them.
I grew up you know, you know,
protecting my sister from an abuser for 12 years.
I grew up being abused myself sexually
and I know what it's like to be locked inside of yourself
and so gone and so confused
and so angry.
And so, I tell the kids all the time,
"I'm not your judge.
"I'm not here to judge you.
"I'm here to show you that I'm your reflection.
"Whatever you see in me, you can be the exact same thing
"because some of you are smarter than I was.
"You're a survivor.
You have power that you
just have not even began to tap into.
"So, if you think I'm special
then remember that I'm just your reflection."
- Gonring: If we could go back in time maybe
and kind of start when these kids were younger
and use that model of:
not, "What's wrong with you?" but, "What's happened to you?"
If that would have been the mantra of when these,
my clients, now who are 12 and 13, were 4 and 5,
I don't think we'd be where we are right now.
[dogs barking]
[wind blows sharply]
- Reyna Saldaņa: I was supposed to be in prison.
And I'm not.
My mom struggled a lot in her life
with a lot of drug abuse.
I think I started kind of falling apart a little bit,
trying to find some connection.
- Narrator: Reyna Saldaņa
says she tells her personal story
so people can understand
what happens because of trauma.
- Saldaņa: I was sexually abused when I was younger,
before I was adopted and then, again, after I was adopted.
- Tim Grove: The prevalence
of the occurrence
of kids who experience
overwhelming unsupported stress
is far greater than all of us would want to appreciate.
- Lynn Sheets: A child who's been traumatized may have
that kind of fight, flight, or freeze response.
So, the fight are aggressive external behaviors.
So, they may be impulsive in class, they may act out,
they may approach others and be physical,
and it may be outbursts.
That's kind of externalizing.
Some of those kids can have the flight,
where they withdraw.
- Saldaņa: Shut down was always the biggest thing.
I shut down and... a lot
and I--
This wall that I built
was an aggressive one.
I would go into a room that was empty
and I'd pretty much demolish things.
I'd have people that would block the door, they'd corner me,
or they'd try and get me to not leave,
and then, I would have an outburst.
And they would be like, "You're hurting people.
You're destroying things."
- Narrator: Today, Reyna finds healing
in riding and caring for horses.
As a child, she describes feeling confused and alone.
- Saldaņa: Yeah.
'Cause I would try to do something good,
or like...
And then, it would just all come crashing down,
as soon as I had, like, one outburst.
[heels click on floor]
- Narrator: Dr. Lynn Sheets is Director
of Child Abuse Programs
at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
She says in addition to fight or flight,
which Reyna exhibited,
there's another typical response to trauma.
- Lynn Sheets: Then you have this freeze
that might be hard to recognize because sometimes
it's somebody who's dissociating.
Basically, they're no longer with you,
as far as they may be looking at you,
but not really responding.
- Narrator: Alisha Fox says she remembers that feeling.
- Alisha Fox: When I was 14, it was bad.
I'd get flashbacks, nightmares.
I would space out.
I'd sit in class and four hours later,
I'd still be in the same seat.
Like, "Oh, I was supposed to go to lunch.
Like, I guess that didn't happen."
- Narrator: Experts in trauma say these kinds of behaviors
often result from
what are called "adverse childhood experiences"
or ACEs for short.
They are specific childhood traumas
now recognized as resulting in
toxic stress that damages the brain.
- Grove: There are physical impacts.
There are neurophysiological impacts.
There are social and emotional impacts that are produced.
Tim Grove is chief clinical officer at SaintA,
a child welfare agency in Milwaukee.
He says physical and psychological impacts are worse
the more ACEs a person has experienced.
Ten such adverse experiences
are measured to result in a score
ranging from low to high.
Surveys find that 58% of Wisconsin adults
report growing up experiencing at least one ACE.
14% have four or more.
Alisha Fox reports an ACE score
of nine.
- Fox: So, when I was four to fourteen,
I got sexually-abused and raped by my father for 10 years.
And then, after that, I was diagnosed with severe PTSD,
and in and out of mental hospitals,
and suicidal at times.
- Narrator: Alisha says she recounts her painful past
without tears
because today she is strong,
a survivor. - Fox: C'mon.
- Grove: We see kids who have PTSD outcomes
or trauma outcomes
that are similar to what Vets experience
after three tours of duty.
- Narrator: The impacts of even extreme neglect
can be seen on brain scans.
- Sheets: What we have here is a normal child here on the left,
and a child here on the right
who has experienced extreme neglect.
And so, what you can see here is the obvious:
that head is much smaller.
The reason why is that--
it's just the brain itself is smaller.
- Narrator: Abuse that results in the fear response
causes additional harm.
- Chuck Price: Your brain then
is constantly dispersing cortisol all the time
which it's meant to do that
for short periods of time.
But if it's constant, it impacts the brain.
[keyboard clicking]
- Narrator: Waupaca County Health and Human Services
Director Chuck Price doesn't see the effects on a CAT scan,
but in the struggles he sees within families.
- Price: Your neural pathways get set on certain ways
and if you've been raised in an environment of--
of a lot of trauma or adversities
or it's consistent and constant,
you're going to be set up more in survival mode
where everything is "fight or flight."
And, "How do I-- How do I protect myself?"
and the brain sets up pathways like that.
- Tammy Fry: I used to be, like, a bad kid.
But that's only because how I've been treated.
I've never been treated with love
or been taught what's right.
I never been...
I never had, like, the mother and father that I should have.
- Narrator: Tammy Fry has her own high ACE score
and has worked through her teenage years
to control her angry outbursts.
- Eileen Fredericks: She had so much trauma
with her mom dying,
and then her being sec-- or, you know, abused by her father,
and then being adopted by a biological aunt.
- Fry: My mom passed away in a car accident
when I was three-and-a-half.
And then, I lived with my dad.
My dad, he was abusive.
Then my aunt took me in.
She said that she couldn't handle me
when she locked me in my room.
As, like, like, she treated me basically like an animal.
And then, after that, she said she couldn't handle me
and put me into foster care.
- Narrator: Like many children of trauma,
Tammy ended up in the system.
The child welfare system
and then
the juvenile justice system.
- Fredericks: I see this with a lot of kids.
It's like they kind of give up
where they just feel like,
"I'm going to test everybody
to see if everybody is gonna give up on me."
And then, the testing does lead to everybody giving up because
it's very difficult.
- Narrator: For her part, Reyna Saldaņa
says she could tell
people around her had all but given up,
only adding to her pain and isolation.
- Saldaņa: I always thought people always saw
the bad before they saw the good.
Like, I could never do anything right.
So, as a kid,
I guess I felt really trapped, you know, like, where...
like, who could understand that, you know?
And there wasn't really anybody, you know.
So, like...
- Narrator: Isolation and sadness and anger
often not cured by being removed from home.
- Fry: In foster homes,
like, they'll just put you in there with anybody.
They don't care.
So, like, if you got
anger issues, or depression, anxiety,
or any other thing, like,
they'll just put you in there with somebody else.
Like, because I've always gotten into fights
so that's why I've been bounced around.
[traffic noise, opening a car door]
[opening creaky screen door, knocking on door]
- Tina Czappa: Most foster parents
are really good and they're really loving
and they want to open their home and their family.
But, you have those moments where
it's hard for you to receive
that kind of love and support
because you think, "Okay,
"your entire life is mostly filled
with the abandonment and the rejection."
- Alisha Haase: I mean, I often ask people,
Think about how you would feel, as an adult,
if I walked into your home and said,
"You have to come with me.
"I can't tell you very much about where we're going.
"I don't know when you're going to see your mom and dad again.
"You're gonna leave your school.
"You're gonna leave your friends.
"You're gonna leave your family
and I don't know when you're going to see them again."
- Tina Czappa: At age one,
I was removed from my mom and her significant other.
Trauma is so prevalent
and so highly-prevalent in foster youth
because that's usually why they enter into foster care.
- Grove: One of the hard parts
about being in foster care
is often kids move
two, three, four, or five times.
- Pat Snyder: These kids already
are going through, probably, neglect and abuse at home.
So, there's a couple of ACEs or traumas.
Now suddenly, they're removed from the home they know
and then put into another home.
We're finding that the trauma builds up and continues.
[conversation echoes off ceiling]
- Narrator: State representative Pat Snyder
worked on 11 Legislative foster care bills
signed into law in 2018.
- Pat Snyder: Every single one...
- Narrator: Including provisions increasing incentive funding
to retain foster homes and encourage permanent homes.
He says the need is high for more placements.
UW-Whitewater social work major Tina Czappa
formally advocates for such bills
in her leadership role in a statewide Youth Advisory Council
made up of current and former foster care children.
She says after entering foster care at age one,
she moved repeatedly
between her biological family and foster homes
including emergency placements
due to abuse and neglect.
- They didn't really have places
that they knew where they were going to put me.
In their eyes, like, there's really a struggle,
a shortage foster home placements.
- Narrator: The problem of having enough placements
increasingly plagues those responsible
for making that decision.
- What do you think you're working on that's going right?
- Narrator: Like Dane County juvenile court judge
Shelly Gaylord, presiding here during a hearing
concerning a child in a residential care center.
Gaylord says she likes to accentuate the positive
and give children the first chance to speak.
- Gaylord: We've heard from many children
who've come through the system as foster home placements
talk often about how they feel like
they don't get a chance to talk
and when they do, they feel like nobody hears them.
- Narrator: The girl in court appears by telephone,
updating the judge about
how she's working through her trauma
that resulted from extreme abuse at home.
- Girl: I'm going to sessions a lot more.
And I'm talking more about my trauma history
- I think we're all
in agreement that
the types of trauma that kids are enduring
and repeated trauma that they're enduring,
it just seems to be more severe and more long-lasting.
- Narrator: The reason this was a phone hearing
is because the child was at a treatment center
that's out of state,
400 miles from Wisconsin.
- Fredericks: I think people would be concerned
if they knew that right now our options are so limited
that we're sending kids out of state.
We used to have a lot more options for kids.
And I feel like things have just--
over the past nine years I've been here--
just gotten worse and worse in terms of foster homes,
group homes, treatment centers, all of them.
Those options have kind of gone away.
- Narrator: From 2018 into 2019,
Wisconsin placed more than 100 juveniles
in out-of-state residential care centers in 17 states,
placed there because the children
have such high treatment needs they can't be maintained
in their own communities
with existing services.
- Gaylord: When you have higher needs and fewer resources,
that's a perfect storm.
- Narrator: A different Dane County child
placed out of state
talked with us about being so far from family
at a treatment center in Arkansas.
Her parents did not want to show her identity.
- Girl: I want to go home. I really do.
- Narrator: This 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was being treated
at Mill Creek Behavioral Health Care
in a small town an hour south of Little Rock.
Do you know why you had to be sent here
instead of staying there?
- Girl: Because none of the other facilities would accept me
in Wisconsin.
- Benjamin Gonring: The thing
that was really bothering me
and the reason, I think, I was
most happy to have you come
and shine a light on this
is this idea that we're...
Things have gotten to a point
where we're sending kids hundreds of miles away
from whatever supports they have, which are not great,
but they're still the most important supports
in that kid's life.
And the idea that we're sending them 500, 900 miles away
was just unconscionable to me.
- Narrator: Hundreds of miles from home,
the girl in Arkansas
and the girl appearing by telephone in court
where her biological parents had their say.
- Atty: On behalf of the father,
he continues to object to
her being placed out of state.
He thinks she'd be better off
in Wisconsin
closer to her family.
- Narrator: But it was due to extreme abuse by her family
that authorities were forced to remove the child from her home.
The child's artwork fills the office walls of her attorney,
who helped guide her care.
What happened to her resulted in the need
for high-level mental health care
in a secured setting not available in Wisconsin.
- Atty: Brave and being thoughtful...
- Narrator: Judge Gaylord calmly presides over tense interactions,
hearing from the child's mother, also by phone.
- This is going to be slow
when there's a history of this kind of treatment,
frankly, by you... and by others.
[girl's mother starts speaking] - No, ma'am.
Ma'am, It's my-- It's my turn to talk.
- Mother: But she has not had-- She has not had that chance
to deal with...
- Narrator: The process is often fraught.
Gaylord concluded this hearing,
encouraging the girl on the phone
to keep up the hard work of dealing with her trauma.
- Gaylord: Things that happened to you are not your fault.
Things that you do are your responsibility to fix.
Right?
- Narrator: The teenager we visited in Arkansas
said the intensive treatment there helped her,
but she was conflicted
about sending other children like herself out of state.
- Girl: If it's going to help, then go for it.
But I would love to see every kid in Wisconsin
just stay there, just stay at home.
Yes.
- Narrator: Sending children out of state is a last resort.
But even in the home community, the kinds of transitions
children in foster care can experience
layers trauma on top of trauma
according to those who've lived it.
- Tina Czappa: Just the uncertainty of knowing
where your next bed is gonna be,
who's going to be your family next,
and who you can really trust,
who's being there and being real for you.
It's very confusing and unsettling for a child.
- Narrator: Foster youth advocates like Tina Czappa
are giving back.
Hopeful for a new generation,
hopeful because of an emerging awareness
of the impacts of trauma and new responses to it.
She offers this advice to children
who've experienced the trauma of abuse or neglect,
of repeated placements, of being in the system.
- Czappa: You didn't choose it
and it was someone else's choice and control.
And that doesn't make you wrong, or damaged,
or someone that can't be loved.
And that's really an eye-opening important part
in the healing of any trauma that someone goes through
because that's definitely a thought
that occurs very frequently is,
"What is wrong with me?"
[dog huffs, barks, jingles] - Alisha Fox: Stop.
What is wrong with you?
Come on!
Yeah, good girl.
- Elizabeth Hudson: Trauma-informed care is about a culture change.
It's about shifting the way we understand behavior
and how we respond to it.
- Saldaņa: I think if people knew about trauma-informed care,
I don't think I would have gone through as much.
- Narrator: An understanding of trauma's impact
on physical and mental health
first emerged more than 20-years ago.
In response, trauma-informed care
has emerged in the decades since.
- Chuck Price: How do we start, you know, asking
every single time we're working with families
that question,
the trauma-informed question
of switching the lens
from, you know,
"What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"
- Narrator: Trauma-informed care expert Elizabeth Hudson
says this so-called "switching the lens"
results in a perspective shift
allowing teachers or caregivers to recognize
why a child might be acting out or shutting down.
- Hudson: What becomes hard is
when the behaviors push people away
or turn people off.
- Narrator: Tammy Fry says after her mother died
and she was removed from her father's care because of abuse,
her anger would erupt.
- Fry: I got charged with battery
and then, I spent
most of my years in detention.
- Hudson: One of the big shifts in perspective
is being able to see the behavior
as a communication.
- Narrator: Communication as the expression of trauma.
But with trauma-informed care, the point is
to not blame or shame people for their behavior.
- Caregiver: You want to fix my hair? - Child: Yeah.
- Grove: We know that one of the hallmark symptoms
of kids trying to sort of work their way through
that overwhelming stress for some of them
is to stare blankly at the chalkboard.
- Fox: Yeah.
- Narrator: An experience familiar to Alisha Fox.
- Fox: But, there's ways to deal with it now.
- Grove: And the teacher's approach is critical.
If I approach her and I say, "Hey!"
[knocking] and maybe startle her further
by banging on the table,
I'm actually potentially going to make it worse.
If I'm more careful and informed
about how I approach her,
I might actually help her relax and settle down
and make it better.
[energetic kids holler, laugh] - Hudson: But what we know about many of these kids
is they have had to adapt to the stress in their life
by, in many ways, shutting down
when it comes to relationships
because relationships have been the hardship
and they have caused the danger and the lack of safety.
- Saldaņa: I built this wall where it was like,
after a young age, I knew that it was only me.
[brushing sounds]
- Narrator: When Reyna Saldaņa was removed from her home
because of abuse
she was placed in a succession of facilities.
But when she was 12 years old,
she says a riding mentor
made a critical connection.
- Saldaņa: I didn't really have anybody until I met her.
I went out there, originally,
not because I wanted to ride horses,
but because I got in trouble with the law
and I had to do community service.
She let me know that, like,
there are things about me that she loved,
that I could love,
that I just had to understand myself more.
- Narrator: Trauma-informed care experts
say safe and trusted human connections
are the key to healing and behavior change.
Connections like those Alisha Fox came to develop
with her grandmother and aunt.
- Grandmother: She's a keeper, aren't you, Bella?
- Hudson: We know it's the relational dance with other people
that is going to build their neural capacity
to have stronger relationships.
- Fox: Good dog!
- Grove: One of the kind of insidious and lesser-known impacts
of kids who experience trauma
is often it's their source of identity.
Their families that are-- that are hurting them.
How do you make sense of that?
- Fox: I was just trying to survive until I got older
and you become more knowledgeable
about relationships and things like that.
And then, I finally was like,
"Well, this doesn't seem right."
- Narrator: The trauma-informed care model
emphasizes physical, psychological, and emotional safety.
- Grove: With enough grown men and women who help you,
who provide safety,
who provide regulation or relaxation,
eventually, you can at least establish a competing truth.
And then, you've at least got a fighting chance.
- Narrator: That fighting chance
comes from developing resilience.
Research shows the number one factor
for children who develop resilience
is having at least one stable and committed relationship
with a caring adult.
- Fox: Once you make connections like that,
you're strong enough to tell your story
and you deserve a better life
than what you're living right now.
- Narrator: Resilience also comes
from learning how to self-regulate,
especially when overcome by anger.
- Saldaņa: As soon as I start to feel an emotion like that
and then process it away from people
and, like, collect myself,
helps me be able to go back
and then approach the situation at a different angle.
- Narrator: Caring adults can show children
how to regain the calm within themselves.
- One of the main things
that we can do for kids and families in these situations
is allow ourselves
to be at peace and balanced during our interactions.
- Grove: The idea that the possibility of another alternative exists
is the beginning prospect of hope
and we see those stories all the time.
Kids, families, adults,
even now a growing number of communities
who are feeling the effects of saying, "Huh?
"There's a whole new truth.
"There's a whole new possibility:
"Maybe all humans don't hurt.
"Maybe I can relax and take some relational risk.
Maybe I can feel safe."
That really is the essence of what
the outcome of trauma-informed care is all about.
[children laugh joyfully]
- Price: It's really about taking on that whole philosophy
and really embedding that.
- Narrator: Child welfare agencies, courts, schools,
and workplaces across Wisconsin are starting to take on
the philosophy of trauma-informed care.
- Erica Becker: It first began with, right, the number one goal
that we're not going to place any children with a stranger.
- Narrator: Child Protective Services staff in Waupaca County
describe how they now work,
- Cristin Bauch: I think of how many families would say,
"Don't take my kids away!"
the first time I met them.
I said, "Whoa, I don't even know you!
[laughs uncomfortably] "I don't even know who your family is.
"That's why I'm here today to figure out
who you guys are, what you do."
- Alisha Haase: So, we're entering homes, not giving off judgment,
really wanting to welcome them
into a role or our services.
Building that trust with them
as far as just taking time, you know,
figuring out what it is that they could use help with.
You know, not shaming or blaming them.
Obviously, I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning
and says, "I want to hurt my child."
And so, really identifying
that we know that they love their kids
and that they just need help in this situation
and trying to find a way to partner with them.
- Is the safety issue present in the home most of the time?
Or, is this something that happened once because,
you know, dad lost his cool?
And now, how can we get it to support him in the home
so that next time when this comes up,
he's not responding in that way?
- Narrator: Waupaca County's child welfare agency
can measure the success of its new model.
- Price: We've seen
a pretty significant reduction
in the amount of placements that we're doing
outside of the parental home.
And so, when we're talking about foster care,
our foster care numbers have been down.
My first whole thing with trauma-informed care
was about: how are we gonna treat
the folks coming through the front door
better than they've ever been served
and with a whole different understanding
of traumas and adversities that they're bringing
and not to further traumatize folks.
- Narrator: Human Services Director Price
first learned of trauma-informed care
when former first lady Tonette Walker was touring the state
promoting her "Fostering Futures" platform.
- Tonette Walker: It's talking about
what happened to someone
and really moving on from that point.
Not staying there in dwelling on that,
but really saying, "You know what?
"We know that you can--
we can teach you resiliency,
"we can change the way that you act,
that you can change your behavior,"
and moving forward.
And so, for us, it's a philosophy change.
- Narrator: And given her position,
Walker was able to get trauma-informed principles
incorporated into seven state agencies.
- Elizabeth Hudson: I know
that people across the country
are calling us
and they're asking us how we're doing this.
We are getting attention internationally.
We have a voice that is saying,
"This is important."
And definitely, within our governmental structures,
this is unheard of.
- Walker: We brought the three branches of government together.
We had judges and legislatures together.
Republicans, Democrats.
We never even asked if we were Republican or Democrat.
It doesn't matter.
- Narrator: Waupaca County was able to save costs
by not placing children
in expensive treatment centers.
The shift allowed for more staff and less turnover.
It meant hiring in-home parenting aides
to help families learn and heal.
With that number one goal being to keep families together
because experts acknowledge repeated out-of-home placements
result in new traumas.
- Carey Sorenson: I think that's the hard thing about trauma
I think a lot of people--
I hear a lot of people say,
you know, "Just get over it,"
or "Just go through it," or "Just get done with it."
That is not the way it is.
Trauma sits with you.
- Narrator: Carey Sorensen
cares for a boy Waupaca County placed with her
after removing him from his own home.
She's a relative, so he's not with his parents,
but he's also not with strangers in foster care.
- Sorensen: It became very evident that they understand trauma,
they understand how to help people with trauma,
they understand how to come into a home
and be respectful of every player in the situation.
No judgment was ever felt.
[Wendell Waukau speaking Menominee language] - Posoh mip, good morning.
How we doing? All right!
- Posoh mip, posoh mip, good morning!
Posoh! Hey, good morning!
Hey, we got time for a shoe tie?
- Narrator: Every morning,
the superintendent of the Menominee Indian School District
greets grade school students at the front doors.
- Wendell Waukau: Why can't our kids,
before they even walk into the classroom,
why can't they be greeted by caring adults?
- Good morning, guys.
Good morning!
- Hello there, smiley.
Good morning.
- Narrator: A social worker and trauma coach
also man the bus arrivals.
- We're both out on buses at the end of the day,too.
When the kids come out and we're all, you know,
"Have a good night, we'll see you tomorrow,"
just to remind them that we'll be here tomorrow,
and we welcome them back again.
- Narrator: The school works in many
of what they call "positive touches"
that happen before the students even open a book.
[speaking in Menominee] - Margaret Snow: Pon- waepenon.
Posoh, waewaenen. Posoh mip!
Hello, early. [laughs]
- Narrator: Identity that may have been stripped
through the generations is reinforced.
- Snow: I teach Menominee language and culture.
Pianon, come on!
And I like to introduce myself in my native language.
Margaret Snow eneq aes wihseyan
mohkomaneweqnaesen.
My English name is Margaret Snow.
- Narrator: Reinforced to help heal from historical trauma
which traces back hundreds of years.
- Waukau: One term I heard from an elder was,
you know, basically, what happened to us is
we got an "ethnic cleansing."
We were told we were no longer Menominees.
And today, we addressed that by going back
and honoring our ancestors who endured all of that--
that pain and suffering
that allowed us to be here today.
Take the example of kids who were taken,
removed from their homes
and then placed in boarding schools.
Well, essentially, what happened was
you took away the parent's right to parent.
They were learning their language,
their culture, their identity
and you took that away from them.
This was passed on
through generations.
- Michelle Frechette: When you live in this community and you work in this community,
I think that we don't realize
how deep the trauma can be
for some of our students.
- Isaac Webster: But when it comes down to it,
our community is really broken.
- Deziray Sanapaw: Drinking and drugs and alcoholism,
and, like, it repeats itself a lot
and, like, it affects the kids growing up
because you have to deal with it.
The school helps us.
You get in trouble,
they won't yell at you or tell you.
They'll question you and let you talk to them
and they want to know how you feel.
- Narrator: Wendell Waukau went to these schools
and later returned as superintendent.
- Wendell Waukau: I am from the Menominee Nation.
Proud.
- Narrator: Ten years ago,
Waukau set out to address factors
like adverse childhood experiences
that he believes result in his district
having some of the lowest student achievement rankings
in the state.
He says tribal leaders embraced
the concept of healing and resiliency
in partnership with the State initiative.
Waukau says, "It's a community public health effort--
not just 8 to 3 during the school day.
- Class: For four years. - Kate Mikle: For four years.
How long is four years? - Class: Forty eight months.
- Narrator: But in the schools,
the work is deliberate and encompassing,
reaching from the high school.
- Mikle: If they're five minutes late
or a half an hour late, it's still,
"Hi, I'm glad you're here,"
not "You're late. Where were you?"
- Narrator: To the grade school.
- Myrtle Mahkimetas: Last week, we were doing our state testing
and one came in,
and out of the ordinary,
he had his hood on.
And he sat and I could tell there was something wrong.
I knew from all the training
that we had that we weren't going to get any results
from this test that we needed.
Pretty much all he needed was just some time
to say, "It's Okay.
"Whatever happened this morning,
it's done, it's not here at school."
- Narrator: In this fifth grade classroom,
students arrive to calming music and dimmed lights.
- Teacher: Posoh mip!
[bell rings] Make sure you check in.
- Narrator: In time, they're asked to check in.
This means they register how they're feeling that morning
by marking on a computer
whether they're in the front seat of a car and ready to go
or in the trunk, feeling bad and not ready to learn.
- Teacher: Okay, I can't push this child so hard today.
There's something going on in his or her life
that I need to be more understanding
of what's happening with them today.
- Teacher: Thank you.
Miguel and Darren,
would you guys please be sure to go check in
so I know how you're doing today?
- Narrator: In the younger grades,
the children put a stick in a colored pot.
Green for good,
yellow for not so good,
and red for feeling bad.
- Teacher: Hey, I saw that you were on yellow.
What's going on? What's the matter?
Come here.
- Narrator: The teacher immediately responds,
asking about the student's family.
The child says she's hungry
and so, it becomes snack time.
- Teacher: Who would like to start
and tell me what made them happy?
- Narrator: The classrooms have safe zones and calm down boxes
and children can go to them at any time.
- Ryan Coffey: We're finding out that kids from trauma,
when they come into schools, they have walls up
because they have trust issues sometimes
and so we need to build those relationships first,
before any learning can take place.
- Narrator: Ryan Coffey is the trauma coach on staff
at the grade school.
His office is always open for children
who need more help understanding their feelings.
It's called the "Peace Room."
I talk about a time that I felt lonely,
and then, they spin it,
and they'll talk about the time that they felt whatever.
It's part of the coping process.
They need to know what it is inside
and how or what the best strategy is
to deal with those feelings.
I mean, we want them to know that
no feeling that they ever have is bad.
Feelings are good,
and they're there for a reason.
- I go out to the Student Health Center every Wednesday
to talk to somebody.
- Narrator: For students in all grades who need additional help,
the health center is right on school district grounds,
staffed by behavioral health professionals.
The schools also provide dental care.
- Waukau: Our promise was that
we would engage the community in a process
that could build and could help heal.
A lot of our social and health determinants
that impact so many, so many things,
education being one of them.
- Narrator: Waukau says the district has moved
beyond trauma-informed to trauma-responsive
and it's working.
- Waukau: We have put resources
into key grade levels,
particularly ninth grade.
Where now,
instead of graduating 60% of our kids on time,
were at 90%.
- Narrator: But slowing down, calming down, talking:
Who can do all that and still teach?
- Waukau: People say, "Well, you won't have enough time."
Well, yeah, but that's all we have.
- Teacher: You guys get to play seven games today.
- Children: Yeah!
- Narrator: And now the Menominee Indian School District
has brought its trauma-responsiveness
into its preschools.
- Waukau: Well, we're not done
because we need to get into the pediatricians' office.
But, more importantly, if this is really going to work
we've got to get this into the homes
because those are where the teachers are.
- Judge Mary Triggiano: We understand so much more about trauma
and its impact on our families
and behavior of our families.
- Narrator: In the state's largest city,
trauma-informed care starts with baby's first breath.
- Judge M. Joseph Donald: You say to yourself, "Well, there's something else.
We have to do something else."
There's another way
at getting at these root causes.
- Narrator: These Milwaukee County judges are getting at root causes
and starting early.
They preside over a healthy infant court,
the first in Wisconsin.
- Triggiano: Babies are the largest population
of those that are removed from parents in our system,
both locally, statewide, and nationally,
and mostly for neglect.
[children laughing]
- Jonisha Neita: I came to lose them
at 20...
...3.
I was 23 when I lost my kids.
I couldn't believe that was me.
I was my mother all over.
- Narrator: Jonisha Neita is a former drug user.
She lost five children to child welfare authorities,
including an infant who is now three.
She was the first graduate of the Healthy Infant Court.
Her children are back home with her,
but by her telling,
going through the court process to regain custody
was not easy.
- Neita: Even when I was referred there,
it still wasn't mentally hitting me.
I'd used to always be the person
sitting in the back with my hood up,
and just sitting there, like,
crying.
Every time I talked to the judge, I just cried.
- Narrator: The court then assigned
infant mental health specialist
Katy Trottier to work alongside Jonisha.
- Neita: Actually, it was the point of my life
where I had to start trusting somebody,
that reality of knowin'
that I have to start trusting.
I had to start believing in something.
And Katy was the person that walked through the door.
- Donald: Because they're like, "Well, wait a minute."
- Narrator: The judges are equipped with expert training
to learn about infant mental health
and signs of toxic stress in babies.
- Triggiano: A child who might cry incessantly for hours and hours
and a parent not being able to comfort them,
or a child who you would think
is going to cry when they're hungry,
but gets sort of this sullen, glassy look to them.
- Narrator: Jonisha's babies showed such signs of stress
and she didn't know how to feed him without a struggle.
She admits she didn't have a good model in her own mother
and there was trauma going back.
My mom was a drug addict.
She got married to an abusive guy, which was my step-dad.
Still is my dad.
- Katy Trottier: It's not just
who that parent and who that child are.
It goes back to how you were parented.
So, what we find so often is there's...
There's ghosts in the nursery.
That's what infant mental health is all about.
There's ghosts in the nurseries.
- Triggiano: When a mother who has been impacted
by years and years
of toxic stress, whether that mother
was a child welfare child herself
or was abused or neglected or sexually assaulted,
they don't create
those procedural memories
that we might have from watching our mothers.
[child jabbers happily]
So, we're actually creating new procedural memories
by helping them work with the infant mental health specialist
to learn how to parent.
- Neita: I say, like, a month
into doing what I was doing with Katy,
it was like he actually started looking at me in my eyes.
- Donald: It's amazing when you actually see the connection,
when there is a strong and healthy bond
between mother and child and father and child
and then the child, when they are secure and healthy,
also develop
the ability to exercise
some self-regulation.
- Narrator: This connection and newly-patterned parenting skills
allow Jonisha to bring her children home.
- Triggiano: We knew that we could protect
the brain development of those children
so that they would have a better chance
of not being pulled deeper into the system.
[children chatting and laughing]
- Narrator: Jonisha says after successfully learning how to parent
all her children are doing well.
- Neita: They're happy.
That's all that matters
that, yep, they're happy.
- Narrator: Her bond with her once-fussy baby is clear.
[Jonisha plants a kiss]
- Trottier: Oh, he is just lovely! [happy laughter]
I love him, I love him.
- Narrator: And so, all across Wisconsin
a growing culture change
toward positive futures for generations to come.
[road traffic and water current]
*
- Bonita Hahn: Alisha came to live with me
when she was 16.
She was living with Michelle.
- Narrator: After being abused
by her father for 10 years,
Alisha Fox's grandmother gained custody of her.
Alisha's Aunt Shelly lives in the same house.
They say it took four years
for Alisha to be able to communicate with them.
- Hahn: It was hard for us
because Alisha couldn't express herself
so I-- I remember one night
when she was having
some bad night terrors
or PTSD was going on
or flashbacks
and she was curled up in her bed in the fetal position.
And I-- She just wouldn't speak or anything.
And that was when I first got her and I--
I literally didn't know what to do.
So, I just pulled a chair from the kitchen
and pulled it next to her bed
and just sat there in case she would get up or need me or...
I mean, so sometimes, it's just a matter of being there,
even if you don't think you're making a difference,
just have to be there.
- Fox: I knew even in my darkest times that they were there.
I'm not concerned about whether somebody is gonna hurt me
or whether I'm not gonna have food on the table
or whatever the grave situation might be.
- Hahn: Okay. [laughter] - Fox: I can go home.
I go home to my dog and to my family.
It's a loving environment and that's where people can strive.
When they have connections, they strive
and when they don't...
they don't get their needs met--
and my needs are met and times 10.
So, that's where...
That's where healing can begin.
That's where your recovery story can happen.
- Fry: So I've probably been in over ten foster homes,
group homes: three.
I've been in the juvenile shelter home
like three, four times,
and then, the detention center,
I was there probably a lot.
[ducks quacking]
- Narrator: After her mother died
and she was removed from her home
because her father abused her.
Tammy Fry had gotten in enough trouble
that the state recommended
she be sent to the juvenile prison for girls.
The judge in her case did not send her.
Instead, she went to one last foster home.
She is now aged out.
- When I get stressed out sometimes I just pray to my mom.
I don't know.
Makes me feel better.
- Narrator: Tammy has advice
for adults who work with children
who have experienced trauma.
- Fry: Be mindful
and respect what the kids have been through.
And just kind of work with them and not give up on them.
Give them chances.
Work with them-- not just throw 'em back out
to be placed in another home.
[speaking "Motherese"] - What are you looking at? Yeah.
- Narrator: Tammy has started her own home and family.
[laughing, making kissy noises]
She recently had a baby,
naming the girl after her late mother.
- Fry: My mom
is part of her.
I really do believe that.
I want her to have
the life that I never lived,
that I never had.
That's...
She's my everything.
I would do anything for her.
- Saldaņa: Sometimes, when I'm really confused
or I'm really stressed out.
Just being around a horse is, like, really helpful to me
because...
they put me in check, I guess,
with understanding myself.
- Narrator: Reyna Saldaņa says she learned more
about how to find calm,
be able to pull herself back from violent outbursts
after coming to understand her trauma--
trauma resulting from abuse and then,
repeated placements where she was physically restrained,
including the juvenile prison for girls.
- Saldaņa: Speaking about it
sometimes is really raw for me
because I haven't even really worked through
a lot of it, you know.
- Narrator: But with the help of caring adults,
Reyna worked through enough of it
that she graduated from high school
and never entered the adult prison system.
- Saldaņa: What? - She says when she was a child
no one seemed to understand
her behavior was the result of trauma.
Today she understands
she is resilient.
[Saldaņa getting choked up] - I don't think giving up is really an option [sniffles]
because I feel like I have a lot to say
that other people may not have experienced.
And I really hope that, like,
[sniffles] if I keep going, and pushing through my things,
I can help those other kids.
Like, the other kids I roomed with in these facilities
and the other kids I watched be restrained,
when there was no need for it but I knew that,
but the facility didn't.
-Saldaņa: Awesome, good girl!
I started doing speaking and being able to say my story.
It took me a while to even decide to do that
'cause I was like, "No.
"No, I don't want people to know.
I don't even want to think about it."
I am still today as an adult working through things
that happened to me when I was 10.
[speaks to horse] We got this.
- Mitchell: These children:
they want to make us happy;
they want to be proud.
But they just need somebody to take the time to slow it down,
to make sure they get things they need.
I though we gonna eat some fried fish together.
- Narrator: As for the 16-year-old in so much trouble
who appeared in his courtroom...
- Mitchell: So much pain, so much pain, so much brokenness.
- Narrator: Judge Everett Mitchell just wishes someone,
anyone had taken the time
so much earlier to see the trauma
and help set the boy and others like him
on a better path.
- Mitchell: I really have embraced the idea
like Frederick Douglass said,
"It is far easier to build strong children
than to repair broken men."
- For more information and resources,
visit W-P-T dot org slash trauma.
- Funding for Not Enough Apologies: Trauma Stories
was provided by
Focus Fund for Journalism
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.