About Resilient Midlands

What is resilience?

The greatest accelerant to igniting resilience is developing encouraging relationships that generate the type of social support that makes marginalized youth feel cared for and included. Through Targeted Training and Community Awareness Events, Resilient Midlands aims to reduce the stigma of trauma by equipping individuals and organizations that work with children with information and skills to build resilience within our youth community. In doing so, we become a more trauma-informed and resilient community. 

Studies show that early childhood trauma puts kids at risk of developmental delays, and often lead to poor health outcomes later in life. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include physical, sexual, or verbal abuse, as well as physical and emotional neglect. To reduce the effect of those traumatic experiences we focus on proven protections such as building strong support systems and positive family bonding skills, connecting families to resources, understanding child development and helping children handle their feelings and emotions.   

The hope is to provide children with the support to cope, adapt and rebound from traumatic experiences to reduce the likelihood of the poor health outcomes affiliated with ACEs. Help us make an impact by volunteering your time to work with a child, donating financial resources to the cause and making the decision to be more trauma-informed.  

About ACEs

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic experiences that occur in a child’s life prior to the age of 18, including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse; domestic violence; substance use and mental illness in the household; separation from parents (e.g. incarceration and divorce); food insecurity; and homelessness.

In Richland County:

67% have at least one ACEs
27% have one ACE
14% have two ACEs
12% have three ACEs
14% have four or more ACEs

The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:

$32,648 in childhood health care costs
$10,530 in adult medical costs
$144,360 in productivity losses
$7,728 in child welfare costs
$6,747 in criminal justice costs
$7,999 in special education costs

That totals $210,012 average lifetime cost per child, which would be $173,679,924 for Richland County.

*Based on CDC estimates from 2010 study.

Help us help them.

We're looking for sponsors and community partners to help us prevent and address childhood trauma in our community.