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TUCKED QUIETLY INTO the most recent congressional measure to keep the government open was the most sweeping and ambitious piece of child welfare legislation passed in at least a decade. It’s an attempt to reshape the entrenched foster care system as a raging opioid epidemic swells the population of children in need. The measure overcame the opposition of group homes, which pocket thousands of dollars per month for each child warehoused in their custody. The Family First Prevention Services...

KPJR Films announces the long-awaited PAPER TIGERS & RESILIENCE bundle package. Now you can get both films to use together or separately at a discounted price. During February, we are offering a 20% discount off both films or a single film! You can get them in time to host a screening in April for National Child Abuse Prevention Month. PAPER TIGERS and RESILIENCE are proven, innovative media tools used to build awareness and provide additional education about ACEs and shows the impact of...

Reporter Tennessee Watson says she was sexually abused by her gymnastics coach when she was a kid in the 1980s. More than 25 years later, when she learned he still was coaching children, she called the police. Her inside account of the painful process of seeking justice in her own case exposes discrepancies in prosecutors’ responses to reports of child sexual abuse and spotlights a lack of accountability. In this hour of Reveal, we meet Tennessee, who decides to confront the man she says...

In 2015, I set out to study the unlikeliest of Olympic pipelines: Norwich, Vt., a small town that has placed at least one of its own on almost every United States Winter Olympics team since 1984. In all, Norwich, with its population of roughly 3,000, has produced 11 Olympians — including two Summer Games participants — who have come home with three medals, including one gold. What started out as a sports book evolved into what is essentially a parenting guide as I came to realize that...

Excerpts from the University of California Merced Study The ACE Overcomers Program offers considerable promise to address the gap in intervention programs for reducing the detrimental psychological, social, and health consequences of adverse childhood experiences (ACES). The ACE Overcomers program builds... with concrete steps aimed at remediating the effects of a stressful childhood. Participants learn the skills of self-awareness, self-efficacy, moral control, self-reflection,...

Nearly one in three Rochester-area children have had at least one traumatic experience that threatens to harm their health, emotions and grades, according to new data released Thursday by Monroe County. The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey captures growing concern over traumatic stress as measured in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as living with violent or addicted adults, lacking money for food or being physically or sexually assaulted. National and local research shows that the...

Families, community members and local dignitaries came out to support the official opening of Community Hubs, an innovative and collaborative project in El Dorado County that is connecting parents to resources and building strong, resilient families. Ribbon cutting events are taking place during the month of February at each of the five Community Hubs located throughout the county to recognize and celebrate the hubs and their teams. The Community Hubs in Placerville and South Lake Tahoe...

If you laid eyes on Simionie Kunnuk, a small, gentle older man with a fetching gap-toothed smile, you probably wouldn't think, "Now, there's a guy who used to have 300 run-ins with the police every year." However, in 2007, Kunnuk spent his time chugging malt liquor, urinating in public , sleeping wherever, and screaming at passing white people—his personal revenge for Canada's horrific treatment of him and other indigenous people. More nights than not, these antics landed him in the drunk...

Anthony Ballard grew up with multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before those disruptive childhood experiences had a name. Ballard was raised, along with 11 siblings, in a North Philadelphia housing project by “a beautiful God-fearing mother and a loving father who suffered from alcoholism.” Ballard witnessed relatives who developed addictions or landed in prison; in his early 20s, he, too, abused alcohol. He got sober. He became a firefighter. And when he learned about ACEs a few...

After peaking in 2008, the nation’s imprisonment rate fell 11 percent over eight years, reaching its lowest level since 1997, according to an analysis of new federal statistics by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The decline from 2015-16 was 2 percent, much of which was due to a drop in the number of federal prisoners. The rate at which black adults are imprisoned fell 4 percent from 2015-16 and has declined 29 percent over the past decade. The ongoing decrease in imprisonment has occurred...

Boot-strapping types who believe that surmounting a difficult childhood is mainly a matter of will may be perplexed by an anecdote near the beginning of Nadine Burke Harris’s new book, “The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.” In it, the pediatrician describes a 7-year-old boy named Diego, who showed up at her Bay Area clinic looking like an undersized 4-year old. He had been referred by a school nurse for suspected ADHD . But Burke Harris also noted that her...

San Francisco is on track to open its first two safe injection sites this July, a milestone that will likely make the city the first in the country to embrace the controversial model of allowing drug users to shoot up under supervision. Other cities — including Seattle, Baltimore and Philadelphia — are talking about opening their own safe injection facilities, but San Francisco could get there first. Facilities already exist in Canada, Australia and Europe. Barbara Garcia, director of San...