10th Annual P.R.I.D.E. Conference - Supports & Solutions: Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs)

Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | 8:30am – 12pm | Breakfast provided

ICONA AVALON, 7849 Dune Dr, Avalon, NJ 08202

The conference is for any person in our community that is working in some capacity to support young people in their growth and development. Educators, coaches, counselors, therapists, policemen, parents, grandparents, foster parents, and all others are invited!

Conference Features:

Pride Survey Results:

Find out what Cape May County middle school and high school students think and believe about substance misuse and other risk and protective factors as we share the county results for the Pride Survey 2023-2024.

Keynote (presented virtually):

Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) as Counterparts to Childhood Adversity

&

Resources to Harness Resilience against Intergenerational Trauma and Substance Misuse

Dr. Angela Narayan

Associate Professor in the Clinical Child Psychology Ph.D. Program

University of Denver

Dr. Angela Narayan will join us virtually to provide an overview of the Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) scale as a tool that can be directly implemented into community health. The BCEs scale assesses positive childhood experiences as protective factors in adults and parents with histories of childhood adversity and the potential to promote psychological resilience, effective parenting strategies, and positive experiences and relationships with youth.

Dr. Narayan will discuss how the BCEs scale can be used as a counterpart to the well-known ACEs scale to leverage resilience processes in diverse and marginalized families, as well as pregnant individuals and partners/non-birthing parents, to promote wellbeing across generations.

Research on associations of BCEs and ACEs, as well as profiles of individuals with varying levels of both BCEs and ACEs and real case examples will be presented to understand targeted screening, referral, and treatment strategies for community and health-related stakeholders. Dr. Narayan will also introduce a related tool, the “Angels in the Nursery Interview.”

Meet the Presenter:

Dr. Angela Narayan is an Associate Professor in the Clinical Child Psychology Ph.D. program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver (DU); she is also a licensed psychologist in Colorado with expertise in relationship-based, trauma-informed treatments for children, adolescents, and parents. Along with other experts and researchers, Dr. Narayan worked to understand the enduring effects of early childhood maltreatment, exposure to violence, and homelessness on long-term pathways of risk and resilience.

At DU, Dr. Narayan established the PROTECT Lab (Promoting Resilience in Offspring and Targeting Early Childhood Trajectories), which examines the intergenerational transmission of risk and resilience from parents to children. She directs a multi-site, prospective longitudinal study that has followed over 350 low-income families in San Francisco and Denver from pregnancy through kindergarten. This study identifies multi-system resilience processes that protect against intergenerational trauma and psychopathology. She has received several awards for her research on childhood maltreatment and trauma psychology.

Dr. Narayan has conducted dozens of local and national trainings and workshops to clinicians and providers (e.g. in community mental health, law enforcement, home visiting, Early Head Start, child welfare, etc.) on how to implement brief, trauma-informed resilience-based assessment tools into direct care with low-income, marginalized families.

Certificates of attendance will be available.

For questions, please contact Natalia Leusner at natalia@capeassist.org