A study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine links adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with “functional impairment” in older adults, including “objective signs of physical mobility impairment, cognitive impairment including problems with memory and concentration, and also to report difficulty carrying out core activities of daily living”, Dr. Alison J. Huang was quoted as saying in Statnews.com article by journalist Ambar Castillo.

“Adults between the ages of 50 and 97 who had experienced violence as children, for example, were 80% more likely to have difficulty with daily living activities and 40% more likely to have mobility problems compared to those who had not,” the article goes on to say. “Older adults who reported having an unhappy family life as children were 40% more likely to have some degree of cognitive impairment.”

One commenter suggested that more research on positive childhood experiences would be useful. I think more research on positive and adverse childhood experiences would increase our knowledge of how both intertwine throughout our lifetimes. This might provide more information about how the combination of ACEs and PCEs affect us all and where limited resources can be focused.

The Imprint’s Michael Fitzgerald highlighted legislation making its way through Congress that “requires states to avoid maltreatment investigations that center solely on a family’s homelessness or lack of financial resources.”

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc)—who, as an 18-year-old college student, had her child temporarily taken from her—introduced the Family Poverty is Not Child Neglect Act, which she has introduced twice before. The act “would require child welfare agencies to provide supportive services to households in need of food, shelter and other basic assistance in order to prevent unnecessary family separation,” noted the article. “Too many children enter foster care, critics of the current systems say, simply because their parents lack resources. Those types of neglect cases do not meet the legal standard of intentional child maltreatment, they argue.”

My comment: Separating children from parents unnecessarily adds at least one more ACE, maybe more, to a child’s life and significant trauma to parents already stressed by policies that create a lack of jobs and living wages, inadequate housing, substandard education, inadequate healthcare….otherwise known as poverty not of their own making. Maybe it’s more accurate to call them poverty policies?