Workshop Proposal

Thank you for considering presenting at NH Children’s Trust 2019 Strengthening Families Summit, Hope Starts Here : The Prevention Connection, scheduled for April 1, 2019 at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, NH

About the Summit: The NH Children’s Trust has held seven successful Strengthening Families Summits and a variety of other conferences and trainings. Approximately 250 providers, community leaders and parents from New Hampshire and beyond attend the summit yearly. The Summit is based around the Strengthening Families Framework, a research-based, cost-effective approach to in­crease family strengths, enhance child development and reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect. It focuses on building five protective factors that promote healthy outcomes and actions anyone can take to promote these factors in families.


The 2019 Summit will focus on successful strategies to promote not only protective factors, which mitigate the effects of stress of families, but also those positive experiences that result in healthy outcomes for children and their families.  The ground-breaking study that quantified how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) could have life-long impacts, has sparked unprecedented cross-sector efforts to strengthen communities and decrease the incidence and impact of ACEs.  The 2019 Strengthening Families Summit will invite us to expand that conversation to include how the facilitation of specific positive experiences can lead to healthy outcomes and also mitigate the impact of ACEs.  We invite those who are doing such work in their communities to showcase their work at the conference. 

Summit Goal:  To inspire action that strengthens policies, culture, and behaviors that prevent child abuse and neglect and promotes health and well-being.

Summit Objectives:

1.                     Explore the importance of HOPE, Health Outcomes of Positive Experience, a framework that studies and promotes positive child and family well-being1.

2.                   Highlight NH resources that exemplify strategies and approaches detailed in the research that identified the HOPE framework. 

3.                   Explore strategies and approaches representing various levels of the social ecology and examine how these create the context for healthy children and strong families.

4.                   Recharge and recommit to this important work.

The HOPE framework includes the Strengthening Families Framework, the Essentials for Childhood Framework and work involving raising awareness of the importance of ACEs and toxic stress.  We are pleased to welcome two of the authors of the report introducing the HOPE framework, to the Summit.  Dr. Robert Sege will be our keynote speaker and Dr. Bart Klika will be presenting.  Thank you for considering adding to the rich experience this day will surely be. 


We seek workshops that demonstrate local efforts that exemplify the strategies described in the HOPE framework. Prospective presenters may find it helpful to reference the report linked above and a follow-up article in Academic Pediatrics by Dr. Sege and Dr. Charlyn Harper Browne. Drs. Sege and Harper Browne explain that the “HOPE Framework seeks to expand the conventional approach by elevating the importance of maximizing positive experiences for children exposed to experiences or conditions that create toxic stress”  (Robert D. Sege & Charlyn Harper Browne, Academic Pediatrics, 2017, p. S81). These research-informed positive childhood experiences are organized in 4 broad categories:

·         Being in nurturing, supportive relationships

·         Living, developing, playing and learning in safe, stable, protective, and equitable environments

·         Having opportunities for a constructive social engagement and to develop a sense of connectedness

·         Learning social and emotional competencies.

The framework is guided by principles such as “child and parent health and well-being are inextricably linked. Thus, positive experiences must promote child health, parent health and a healthy parent-child relationship.” Our hope is to highlight efforts, initiatives, and strategies that exemplify each of these categories. Please specify which one (or more) of these categories your workshop addresses.
 
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