MARC

Kimberlee Coronado recalls listening to a presentation of statewide data on children, poverty and trauma, and feeling acutely aware of the survey’s missing piece. It was a meeting on trauma-informed care; around the table were social service providers and representatives of local and county agencies.

Coronado felt her anger rising. “I said, ‘What’s not even on your radar are kids with disabilities; you’re missing a whole category of kids who experience daily trauma,’” she recalls. Coronado spoke from experience: three of her four children, aged 8 to 18, have autism, and all have suffered a range of mood, behavior and anxiety disorders.

In addition, she’d read that children with attention deficit and similar disorders are more likely to be disciplined at school; in a landmark Texas study of 900,000 children, among those who had been suspended eleven or more times, one out of six had learning disabilities (compared to one in twelve of those who’d been suspended just once).

When Coronado voiced her frustration with the data, she was startled to hear the presenter say, “We need your voice. Do you want to be a collective impact partner?”