Watauga County Tackles Childhood Trauma

A new community initiative is tackling childhood trauma in the Boone area. The aim is to connect educators, doctors, law enforcement and other agencies to raise awareness and provide resources and training.

The effort was spearheaded by Denise Presnell, a school social worker in Watauga County. She's worked all over the area at different schools for 24 years. For nearly a decade, she was the only social worker there for the eight elementary schools and one high school in the county. She says that experience made her appreciate a wide range of school personalities.

“I've worked at schools with 100 kids where they've all lived in the same community their entire lives. Their mothers, fathers and grandparents went to the same school,” says Presnell. “But the school where I'm based now has 900 students. We're the school that the folks living in the domestic violence shelter feed into. The homeless shelter feeds into. The largest mobile home park in the county feeds in here. We have the highest rate of diversity here.”

Presnell's own childhood was fraught with challenges at home including domestic violence, substance abuse and mental illness, and she struggled in school. After graduating from college, she was drawn to helping children with the same sorts of challenges she faced growing up. Presnell loves her work, and says her long career in the same community—counseling today the children of former students she counseled decades ago—has given her unique insights into the generational cycles of behavior within families.

Some of that behavior leads to traumatic experiences for kids, and over the past year, Presnell has begun focusing on their impact. She says she now realizes that much of the student behavior that she sees originates from unresolved childhood trauma.  

“Children in trauma have much worse outcomes in school. They're more likely to be retained. They have lower attendance rates. They are more likely to be disciplined, expelled or suspended. They have lower test scores. And they're harder to teach, because their brains are so caught up in surviving trauma, it's really hard for them to take in math, reading, and social skills.”

Presnell launched a forum in the spring called the State of Our Child to bring citizens and local agencies together and design an action plan that would begin equipping the community with tools to address the issue of childhood trauma. Presnell says that when left undiagnosed and untreated, it can have lifelong consequences.

“They have higher rates of incarceration, involvement with the legal system, higher rates of homelessness, substance abuse, addiction, divorce, child abuse, involvement in child welfare. But they also have much higher rates of health problems, like heart disease, diabetes and cancer,” says Presnell.

Recently the leadership team of the State of Our Child steering committee gave its group a new name — the Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative. Presnell says this hub will create what she calls a trauma-informed community. The new organization will hold monthly meetings, with the next one scheduled for mid-September.