Champion Toolkit

ACEs & Resilience Champions understand that their interactions with other people matter, and that everyone has a right to feel safe and to be heard.

ACEs & Resilience Champion Toolkit

This toolkit was created by the ACEs Coalition of Guelph and Wellington to give ACEs & Resilience Champions resources to support their colleagues and community partners to take meaningful action to address adverse childhood experiences and build resilience. 

Actions can be taken through the programs you deliver, the policies you create, and/or your interactions with clients.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic or stressful experiences that happen in a person’s life before the age of 18. These experiences can have lasting effects on an individual’s health and well-being.

Resilience is a person’s ability to adapt to or rebound from difficult times 1.

You are likely reading this toolkit because you are aware of the ACEs Coalition of Guelph and Wellington. You may have read a press release or completed ACEs & Resilience training. The messages about ACEs and resilience resonated with you, and you want to do more. You want to take an active role in preventing ACEs and building resilience in our community. You are an ACEs & Resilience Champion.

Navigating the Toolkit

The toolkit gives space to reflect on your goals as an ACEs & Resilience Champion, provides guidance on how to start a conversation with your community about ACEs and resilience, presents ideas for action, and links to useful resources. The toolkit can be read in chronological order, or you may wish to focus on specific sections that are most relevant to you.

Section 1: What is an ACEs & Resilience Champion?

An ACEs & Resilience Champion wants to take action to prevent and reduce the effects of ACEs and build resilience.

Section 2: ACEs & Resilience

This section provides a brief overview of ACEs, their effects, and the role of resilience in overcoming adversity. 

Section 3: Being an ACEs & Resilience Champion

Change takes time. This section provides an opportunity for you to think about your motivation and goals as an ACEs & Resilience Champion, and how they will influence your actions.

Section 4: Action for Change: Strengthening how your Organization Approaches ACEs & Resilience

Organizations will benefit from taking the time to understand how their processes, policies and actions help or hinder the creation of an environment that prevents and reduces the effects of ACEs and builds resilience.

This section provides a step-by-step approach to identify how your organization might better approach ACEs and promote resilience.

Section 5: Facilitated Discussion Guide for Talking about ACEs and Building Resilience

This section will help you to drive change within your organization about how ACEs and resilience are talked about, how their effects are understood, and how people who have experienced ACEs are treated. It provides a framework for facilitating discussions about ACEs and resilience, and identifying concrete actions for change.

Section 6: Communication Resource Guide

This section provides facilitators with information to consider when hosting an event, and tips for ensuring success.

Section 7: Engaging Clients

Person-Centered Care and Trauma-Informed Care are two strategies for engaging clients in a way that considers their unique experiences. This section provides an introduction to these concepts.