National Lawmakers

National lawmakers(senators, representatives, key committees, and congressional leaders) have unmatched power to shape how the United States understands, prevents, and responds to childhood trauma and abuse. Your decisions on law, funding, and priorities ripple through every state and community, setting the floor for agencies, courts, schools, health systems, and families.

Establish Child Well-Being and Trauma Protection as National Priorities

Congress can frame childhood trauma as both a public-health emergency and a national security concern by enacting a comprehensive federal strategy for child safety and recovery. A National Childhood Trauma Strategy, led by a federal children’s czar or bipartisan task force that includes survivors and advocates, can coordinate efforts across health, education, justice, and human services with clear benchmarks for reducing abuse, foster-care caseloads, youth incarceration, and school exclusion, and for improving graduation, trauma-care access, and safe reunification. Requiring child-impact statements for major education, health, housing, and justice bills would force lawmakers to consider how federal actions affect children’s safety and development.

Legislate and Fund Universal Screening and Early Intervention

Federal law can scale proven early-intervention strategies nationwide. Congress can fund and promote ACEs and trauma screening across Medicaid/CHIP providers, community health centers, and school-based clinics, coupled with clear, supportive referral pathways. Expanded support for evidence-based home visiting, high-quality early education, and trauma-informed parenting programs, especially for families in or near poverty, would reduce risk before systems intervene, while tying portions of federal child-welfare funds to state adoption of trauma screening and prevention metrics aligns incentives.

Transform Foster Care and Child Welfare Systems

Congress can require states receiving IV-E and IV-B funds to report standardized, child-centered outcomes(safety, stability, school progress, and health) rather than just compliance statistics. A federal interagency data exchange linking HHS, DOJ, Education, and HUD would help track how children move through schools, child welfare, juvenile justice, and health systems, enabling earlier intervention. Increasing federal matches for effective prevention, reunification, and aftercare, and tracking outcomes for foster-care alumni (housing, employment, education, health, justice involvement) would support reforms that interrupt the pipeline from care into homelessness and incarceration.

Ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United States remains the only UN member that has not ratified the UNCRC. Ratification, with appropriate reservations and implementing legislation, would formalize children’s rights to safety, education, health care, and freedom from exploitation, and commit all levels of government to child-focused standards. This would strengthen the legal foundation for reforms described in this book and reinforce U.S. leadership in global child rights.

Reform Juvenile Justice and Extreme Sentencing for Youth

At the federal level, lawmakers can ban life-without-parole sentences and the death penalty for offenses committed under 18 and incentivize states to raise minimum ages for adult prosecution and scale back automatic transfers to adult court. Federal grant conditions can require trauma screening, developmental assessments, and therapeutic programming in youth facilities, with audits and consequences for abusive or purely punitive conditions. Expanded support for diversion, restorative justice, and community-based alternatives would help shift systems from punishing trauma symptoms to addressing their causes. The economic and child rights arguments for restorative justice are strong.

Require Transparency in Child Fatality and Severe Abuse Data

Mandate standardized national reporting of all child deaths, near-fatalities, and serious injuries among children known to CPS, foster care, or juvenile justice. A federal Child Well-Being Scorecard, updated annually and disaggregated by race, disability, geography, and system involvement, would highlight where children face greatest risk and where reforms are working. Funding independent review panels to analyze patterns and recommend fixes after systemic failures would help ensure tragedies lead to learning instead of secrecy.

Transform Access to Children’s Mental and Behavioral Health Services

Strengthening parity laws and Medicaid/CHIP rules can guarantee coverage for trauma-informed and ongoing therapeutic care, not just crisis stabilization. Congress can significantly increase support for school-based mental-health staff in federally aided districts, enforcing evidence-based staff-to-student ratios, and pilot trauma-informed care certification for child-serving professions, with incentives for completion, to standardize practice across pediatric, school, and mental-health settings.

Realign Federal Spending Toward Prevention and Family Preservation

You can provide more dollars for prevention and safely keeping children with families and kin. Targeted investments in affordable housing, nutrition, maternal mental health, and substance-use treatment would address root causes of neglect, while Strengthen Mandated Reporting Systems and Protections. Fully funding programs that help at risk children and families save money and communities in the long run. The short term costs of doing otherwise needs to be better understood by citizens and lawmakers.

Federal funding can support high-quality, trauma-informed mandated-reporter training for all federally supported child-facing professions. National whistleblower protections can shield reporters who act in good faith and expose institutional cover-ups. Conditions on federal funds can require agencies to log, act on, and track all reports within clear timelines, and to publish aggregate data on substantiated, unsubstantiated, and screened-out cases, making chronic under-response and misuse of screening visible.

Catalyze Public Awareness and Anti-Stigma Campaigns

Congress can direct agencies such as CDC, HHS, and Education to run sustained campaigns explaining ACEs, trauma, and resilience; how to recognize abuse and neglect; and how to seek help. These efforts can highlight both risks and recovery, reduce shame for survivors and families, and guide the public toward resources. Supporting investigative journalism and public-interest research on child outcomes can help keep children’s realities visible beyond momentary crises.

Embed Anti-Racism and Equity in Federal Child Policy

Tying portions of federal funds to measurable reductions in racial, ethnic, and disability-based disparities in child welfare, school discipline, and juvenile justice would press states to confront longstanding inequities. Federal law can require fully disaggregated data across programs affecting children and demand corrective plans when gaps persist, while targeted grants to tribal, Black-, Latinx-, and immigrant-led initiatives can expand culturally rooted prevention and care models.

Enlist Child, Family, and Survivor Voices in Federal Decision-Making

National policymakers should institutionalize youth and family participation. A permanent, compensated National Youth Advisory Council on foster care, child protection, and juvenile justice can inform legislation and oversight. Federal agencies can be required to hold regular listening sessions with youth and families impacted by CPS, kin and foster caregivers, and front-line workers, and to publicly respond with specific action steps.

• Support Innovation, Cross-System Research, and Collaboration

Help find funding for longitudinal and long-term research on trauma prevention and recovery and cross-system evaluations that track children across education, health, justice, and welfare. Federal innovation funds can seed demonstration projects in high-risk communities, such as trauma-informed school districts or integrated family resource hubs, and support rapid expansion when they succeed. Grant programs can encourage joint applications and data sharing across agencies, breaking down silos.

Champion Professional Education and Workforce Support

Mandating trauma-informed and culturally responsive training standards for federally certified child-serving professions, coupled with grants for workforce development, supervision, and peer support, would embed best practice into daily work. Linking some funding to states’ efforts to support and retain experienced child-welfare, behavioral-health, and school staff can reduce turnover and improve continuity of care for children.

• Hold Themselves Publicly Accountable

Work for accountability through annual hearings focused on child welfare, trauma, and outcomes, featuring survivors, experts, and families. Strengthening nonpartisan analytical offices to assess the child impact of proposed laws and budgets would align federal action with children’s interests. Framing child safety and healing as essential to national security, economic strength, and democratic legitimacy can help sustain bipartisan commitment.

Stories and Lessons From the Field

At a historic House Oversight Committee hearing on childhood trauma, members of Congress listened as survivor William Kellibrew described witnessing the murder of his mother and brother at age 10 and years of trying to “forget,” until one therapist finally listened without judgment: an emotional testimony that helped lawmakers frame childhood trauma as a nationwide public health crisis rather than a niche mental health issue.

Bipartisan senators Shelley Moore Capito and Dick Durbin tell constituents that hearing stories from families in “ground zero” communities of the opioid epidemic convinced them to introduce the RISE from Trauma Act, aiming to dramatically increase funding for community-based trauma services and expand a trauma-informed workforce in schools, health care, social services, and justice systems.

Across multiple hearings and bills, national lawmakers have begun to speak a shared trauma-informed language. Citing ACEs data that nearly half of U.S. children have at least one adverse experience, highlighting how unaddressed trauma damages health, education, and employment, and proposing legislation that boosts funding for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, creates interagency task forces, and pushes federal systems to recognize and respond to trauma rather than punishing its behavioral symptoms.

Extra Steps: Become a National Figure Defending Childhood

America’s response to child abuse and trauma will not change at scale without clear, sustained, and evidence-based national leadership. Federal lawmakers hold the tools to redefine child well-being as a central national goal; shift funding from crisis to prevention; embed trauma science and equity into law; and demand truthful data about how children are faring. By acting boldly: ratifying children’s rights, insisting on transparent outcomes, investing in families and mental health, and listening to those most affected. Congress can help build a country where safety, stability, and recovery are the birthright of every child.

Next Steps

Here are national resources especially useful for national lawmakers (Members of Congress, federal policy staff) focused on trauma-informed and child-centered policy, with links embedded.

• The CDC brief A Public Health Approach to Adverse Childhood Experiences explains how ACEs prevention fits into federal public-health strategy, data systems, and cross-agency initiatives, framing trauma as a national policy priority.
• CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Prevention Resource for Action (formerly the technical package) outlines evidence-based strategies: economic supports, family programs, early-childhood initiatives, school and community safety. That can guide federal legislation and funding priorities.
• The CDC brief Policy Approaches to Preventing ACEs highlights specific policy levers and underscores the substantial economic burden of ACEs, supporting national investment cases.
• The Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma-Informed Policy Approaches article from the Network for Public Health Law reviews ACEs research and describes trauma-informed policy tools that can be used at federal as well as state levels.
• SAMHSA’s framework Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach offers a federal, cross-system definition of trauma and trauma-informed care that can be embedded in authorizing statutes, regulations, and grant guidance.
• The National Governors Association Resource Guide on State Actions to Prevent and Mitigate Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma shows how states are using federal and state dollars to address ACEs, providing models and gaps that Congress can address through national policy.
• NASHP’s Resources to Help Prevent and Address Adverse Childhood Experiences hub compiles state and federal levers (Medicaid, CHIP, public-health programs) that national lawmakers can strengthen or replicate through federal legislation.
• The JAMA Network Open study Economic Burden of Health Conditions Associated With Adverse Childhood Experiences estimates ACE-related adult health costs at roughly $14.1 trillion annually, offering a compelling fiscal rationale for federal prevention and mitigation efforts.
• The Trust for America’s Health brief Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Funding Overview explains current federal ACEs funding, proposed increases, and how expanded investments could support state and local action.
• The CTIPP report 2023 State & Federal Trauma-Informed Policy Review analyzes recent federal trauma-informed bills and resolutions alongside state activity, helping national lawmakers see trends, gaps, and opportunities for leadership.

References

• CDC/Kaiser Permanente ACE Study – prevalence and impacts of adverse childhood experiences
• CDC – “A Public Health Approach to Adverse Childhood Experiences” and ACEs prevention resources
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Children’s Bureau – “Child Welfare Outcomes” reports and Title IV-E/IV-B guidance
• Pew Charitable Trusts – child welfare and prevention policy analyses
• Annie E. Casey Foundation – KIDS COUNT Data Center and state policy reports
• Harvard Center on the Developing Child – science of early adversity and resilience
• National CASA/GAL Association – Impact Reports on court-appointed advocacy
• National Child Traumatic Stress Network – trauma-informed systems and policy materials
• Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota – child fatality reviews and accountability advocacy
• United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – child rights framework
• Casey Family Programs – federal and state policy resources on prevention and family preservation