Chair Pavliga, Vice Chair White, Ranking Member Brewer, and members of the House Behavioral Health Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide proponent testimony on House Bill 352. My name is Tara Britton, and I am the Director of Public Policy at The Center for Community Solutions. Community Solutions is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that aims to improve health, social and economic conditions through research, policy analysis and communication. We want to thank Representatives Baker and Carruthers for their work on HB 352 that would establish a study commission on Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs. A thanks also goes to Chair Pavliga and Representative Edwards for their work on a similar bill in the last General Assembly.

Over the last several years, our organization has examined ACEs and trauma and how they impact people across their lifespan. Eliminating ACEs and the associated trauma should be prioritized and understanding ways to address them is an important endeavor that this study commission will be tasked with. There are myriad policies that can make a difference in reducing incidences of ACEs and trauma, but I want to focus on one area: addressing the needs of children and youth with complex needs, known as multi-system youth (MSY).

These children and youth are often served by multiple public systems due to complex behavioral health and developmental needs. Some of these children are engaged with the child welfare system because their parents had no other choice than to relinquish custody to access limited and expensive services, while other children are engaged with the child welfare system because of neglect or abuse in their household. This tragically translates to some multi-system youth having experienced trauma as well. This underscores how critical it is that the recommendations of the ACEs Study Commission focus on trauma-informed care across these multiple systems. The Commission should work alongside the state in its work to bring coordinated care to 50,000 to 60,000 children and youth across multiple systems through OhioRISE (Ohio Resilience through Integrated Systems and Excellence) which began enrolling children in July 2022.

We look forward to engaging with the Study Commission and would be happy to share more about the work of our organization with multi-system youth. I’ve included resources below on ACEs and multi-system youth. Do not hesitate to reach out with additional questions at tbritton@communitysolutions.com. Thank you for your time.