Founder & Program Origin

Founder & Origin of the ACE-to-BASE™ Concept

ACE-to-BASE™ (Adverse Childhood Experiences → Building Adaptive Social-Emotional Skills) was developed by Rebecca Bertone, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, founder of WeeKids PsychCare, Inc., as a direct response to decades of frontline clinical work across emergency, inpatient, correctional, and community mental health systems, and the repeated absence of coordinated early-intervention prevention infrastructure within school environments.

The framework was not created as a curriculum or a commercial product. It was designed as a systems-level early-intervention and prevention solution to address what is repeatedly observed when prevention is delayed until after crisis occurs.

Primary Systems-Level Goal of ACE-to-BASE™

The primary goal of ACE-to-BASE™ is to develop and deploy a Tier 1 Universal Early-Intervention Screening & Prevention System designed to:

• Be universally accessible to all children
  
  

• Operate primarily within the school-based environment
  
  

• Identify social-emotional risk early — before escalation into crisis
  
  

• Reduce downstream reliance on Tier 2 and Tier 3 intensive interventions
  
  

• Maintain high clinical and educational impact
  
  

• Create low administrative and teacher burden
  
  

• Be sustainable long-term
  
  

• Generate trackable, evidence-aligned outcome data
  
  

• Scale responsibly at:
  
  

  • County
    
    

  • Regional
    
    

  • Statewide
    
    

  • National levels
    
    

ACE-to-BASE™ is intentionally designed as upstream infrastructure, not reactive intervention — built to prevent crisis instead of only responding to it.

The Public Data Gap That Accelerated Development

Through multiple Florida public records requests and county-level data inquiries, it became clear that:

• Many counties were not conducting any formal mental health screening for students
  
  

• Others had fragmented, inconsistent, or non-standardized approaches
  
  

• Very few counties had universal Tier 1 screening tied to measurable prevention outcomes
  
  

This absence of coordinated early screening, paired with consistently rising behavioral crises, significantly accelerated the development of ACE-to-BASE™.

The guiding public-health principle became:

"We must help children heal before “broken children” grow into “broken adults.”

ACE-to-BASE™ was therefore structured to close this systemic gap with a universal, sustainable, and accountable Tier 1 prevention platform.

Founder’s Clinical & Systems-Level Background

Rebecca Bertone’s clinical experience spans the entire continuum of psychiatric acuity, including:

• Emergency psychiatric evaluation and crisis stabilization

• Emergency Room in a  Trauma level 1 teaching Hospital . She is a Certified Emergency Room Nurse (CEN).

• Baker Act inpatient psychiatric treatment

• Community inpatient psychiatric hospitals

• Inpatient correctional psychiatry

• Outpatient correctional psychiatry

• Community outpatient psychiatry

• Youth offenders and juvenile justice-involved populations

• Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP)

• Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP)

• Detoxification (Detox) and substance-use stabilization environments

• Medical- Surgical Hospital  Care. She is a  Certified  Medical- Surgical  Nurse (MEDSURG-BC).
  
  

She has worked extensively with:

• Children and adolescents exposed to trauma
  
  

• Families navigating multigenerational mental-health challenges
  
  

• Individuals with co-occurring psychiatric and substance-use conditions
  
  

• Justice-involved youth and adults
  
  

• High-risk and high-acuity populations often seen only after prevention fails
  
  

This breadth of experience revealed a consistent pattern:

By the time most patients entered intensive systems, the opportunity for early prevention had already passed.

ACE-to-BASE™ was designed to move the system upstream, into the earliest possible point of intervention — before emergency rooms, Baker Acts, incarceration, and chronic disability become the default pathway.

From Clinical Observation to Scalable Public Infrastructure

ACE-to-BASE™ is grounded in:

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research
  
  

• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) science
  
  

• Early childhood brain development
  
  

• Trauma-aware educational practices
  
  

• Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
  
  

• Longitudinal outcome-tracking methodologies
  
  

Rather than operating as an isolated program, ACE-to-BASE™ is engineered as a public-facing, data-accountable prevention infrastructure that can integrate into:

• School districts
  
  

• Public health systems
  
  

• Community mental health networks
  
  

• Legislative and funding accountability frameworks
  
  

Clinical Services vs. Program Development (Formal Separation)

ACE-to-BASE™ is developed by WeeKids PsychCare, Inc., but operates as a distinct program-development and prevention initiative separate from direct clinical psychiatric care.

• Clinical services are delivered through the WeeKids PsychCare clinical practice division
  
  

• ACE-to-BASE™ functions as:
  
  

  • A Tier 1 prevention and early-intervention system
    
    

  • An education-aligned screening & data platform
    
    

  • A training and certification infrastructure
    
    

  • A population-level outcome measurement model
    
    

No ACE-to-BASE™ development funding:

• Directs individual clinical treatment
  
  

• Influences patient-specific care
  
  

• Replaces clinical diagnosis or therapy
  
  

• Overrides district or medical decision-making authority
  
  

This structural separation preserves:

• Ethical boundaries
  
  

• Clinical independence
  
  

• Educational neutrality
  
  

• Legislative and regulatory compliance
  
  

Why Founder-Led Development Is Critical at This Stage

ACE-to-BASE™ is currently in the Program Development & Pilot Readiness Phase, which requires:

• Cross-sector clinical expertise
  
  

• Educational systems alignment
  
  

• Legislative and compliance engineering
  
  

• Data governance design
  
  

• Multi-year sustainability modeling
  
  

Founder-led development at this phase ensures:

• Clinical accuracy
  
  

• Developmental appropriateness
  
  

• Ethical integrity
  
  

• Institutional-grade program architecture
  
  

As the program scales, governance will continue transitioning into multi-institution advisory, legislative, and board-driven leadership structures.

Long-Term Vision

The long-term vision for ACE-to-BASE™ is to operate as:

• A county-deployable Tier 1 prevention infrastructure
  
  

• A regional early-intervention system
  
  

• A statewide public-health aligned screening platform
  
  

• A model capable of national replication
  
  

With the goal of reducing:

• Educational disruption
  
  

• Juvenile justice system entry
  
  

• Emergency psychiatric utilization
  
  

• Chronic adult mental-health disability
  
  

• Long-term public system expenditure
  
  

Through measurable prevention, early identification, system coordination, and longitudinal outcomes tracking.

Institutional Notice

ACE-to-BASE™ is developed and operated by WeeKids PsychCare, Inc., a Florida S-Corporation. All content on this page is informational and historical and does not constitute medical advice, clinical treatment, or a guarantee of school or district implementation.