Advancing the Cause: Maryland’s ACEs Awareness Day and Project Bounce Back

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Ending Child Sexual Abuse requires the efforts of many different people from many different sectors of society. This month we are excited for some far-reaching developments in child protection and wellbeing in the State of Maryland.

On May 6th, Governor Hogan declared that that day would be Maryland’s annual Adverse Childhood Experiences Awareness Day. Coinciding with that, Governor Hogan’s Executive Order also stipulated that all State agencies:

  • Consider how to implement policies to reduce ACEs
  • Cooperate with the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services to enable study and monitoring of State policies and programming that prevent and mitigate adverse childhood experiences

Additionally, all State Agencies that serve children and families are tasked to:

  • Incorporate an understanding of ACEs into treatment and other interactions
  • Implement ACE-informed care models

These are essential steps in moving Maryland toward a more trauma- and ACE-informed future, but there are also many pressing needs among Maryland’s children and youth related to the unprecedented disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing this, Governor Hogan also announced Project Bounce Back, a $25 million, first-in-the-nation public-private partnership to help Maryland youth recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19.

Project Bounce Back has 3 main goals:

  1. The Expansion of Maryland Alliance Boys and Girls Clubs into every county in the State
  2. The launch of 6 regional mental health crisis teams through the Maryland State Department of Education
  3. A new technology platform developed by Microsoft, LinkedIn Learning, and others, in order to enable nonprofits to provide better services and job development skills to youth.

You can read more about Project Bounce Back, here. No More Stolen Childhoods is thankful for the dedicated efforts of so many in advancing these causes for the benefit of all our communities.