IWP Research & Publications · Curriculum foundation

From Roots to Resilience: Evidence Foundations

This living collection explains the research and practice knowledge informing From Roots to Resilience (FRTR). It distinguishes evidence relevant to the curriculum’s content from evidence about the program’s own effectiveness.

Evidence boundary: FRTR is evidence-informed and currently in development. The sources collected here support its rationale and subject matter. They are not evaluations of FRTR, and IWP will not describe the curriculum as an evidence-based program until appropriate independent evaluation supports that claim.

Foundation 01 · Intergenerational adversity

Parents’ childhood experiences and the next generation

Barnert and colleagues studied 1,854 parent-child dyads and found associations between parents’ reported childhood adversity and their children’s later arrest and conviction. The study offers a useful life-course framework for understanding how experiences, relationships, and systems may interact across generations.

ACEs education

Supports clear teaching about how early adversity may shape later patterns without turning a score into a label or prediction.

Pattern interruption

Supports reflection on what may be carried forward—and how awareness, responsibility, and intentional choices can help create something different.

Protective experiences

Supports attention to relationships and resilience while avoiding the claim that positive experiences simply cancel adversity.

Foundation 02 · ACEs, coping, and substance use

Understanding the pathway without excusing the behavior

Grummitt and colleagues synthesized review-level evidence connecting adverse childhood experiences with elevated risk of substance misuse. The review also examines possible pathways—including emotional distress, mental-health difficulties, emotion regulation, family and peer environments, and broader social conditions.

Coping in context

Supports explaining how substance use may sometimes develop as an attempt to manage distress, while avoiding the claim that ACEs inevitably cause addiction.

Regulation and recovery

Supports attention to emotional regulation, supportive relationships, mental-health care, and trauma-informed recovery as potential points for change.

Accountability remains

Understanding the origin or function of a behavior can guide change; it does not erase its consequences or remove responsibility for harm.

Read IWP’s plain-language review →Read the open-access source ↗

How FRTR uses this evidence

To explain associations between childhood experience, stress, development, family patterns, and later outcomes in accessible language.
To hold self-understanding and personal responsibility together.
To emphasize that risk is not fate and an ACE score is not a diagnosis.
To encourage protective relationships, reflection, regulation, and purposeful action without promising a guaranteed result.

Core learning principleTrauma may travel through families—but patterns are not destiny. Understanding what shaped us can help us take responsibility for what we carry forward and intentionally build something different for the next generation.

Read the source carefully

The study is observational and relies partly on retrospective self-report. It identifies associations, not causation. It does not prove that parental adversity causes offending, that PCEs erase ACEs, or that FRTR changes arrest, conviction, or other outcomes.

Read IWP’s plain-language review →View the official article ↗