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ACEsConnection.com’s secret sauce is in its groups — such as the ACEs in Education group, which has just over 200 members at this point. Our goal is to make this group the go-to place for information about trauma-informed schools.

I have an amazing story to share! I am a child psychiatrist, poet and artist. The story I wrote at a Therapeutic Arts Alliance of Manhattan workshop for my own healing from early childhood trauma, has become a beautifully illustrated book, Bird That Wants to Fly, and has inspired a children's opera! As if this were not amazing enough, the story is narrated by actor Danny Glover! The book is a featured resource of Trauma Informed Oregon and SMART ( Start Making a Reader Today ). There is also...

Reading feel-good stories is a part of life that helps us appreciate life. I had to smile while reading about Iris. [ LINK HERE ] She is apparently a successful teen despite a rocky beginning in school. The stories always include the people that helped them along the way, and Iris had a teacher who engaged her. I had mine, certainly very influential role models at a time when I needed them. They guided me in certain ways. But they were not a part of any close relationships. They were adults...

When communities want to snip the school-to-prison pipeline, how do they do it? They revise their code of conduct, redefine the role of school police, address bias, build a positive school climate and address problematic behavior in a positive way, among other things. School officials in the Southeast learned some of these new strategies at the Rethink Discipline Regional Convening in Atlanta last week. The conference was sponsored by the Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative of the U.S.

Children involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems face countless barriers to educational success. Our historic failure to address these challenges has resulted in a dramatic achievement gap between these youth and their peers. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December, provides an opportunity and a responsibility for states to begin narrowing this gap. Removed from their families due to abuse or neglect, many foster youth are forced to move from...

The term "trauma-informed approach" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But the idea of looking at the traumatized past of people as a reason for their behavior today and meeting them where they're at makes sense. I wrote in-depth about this on Sunday, and now we're giving local businesses the opportunity to learn directly from experts on how to implement this in the workplace. Employees walk into work every day with varied backgrounds, and usually you don't know what's going on behind the...

She talks with parents about the relationship between childhood adversities they have experienced and how that may have an impact on parenting. “I frame things a bit more broadly than ACEs,” she said, “because I think it’s very important to reflect on a broader number of exposures than were covered in the original study, such as poverty or structural violence and racism.”

The first year of Trauma-Informed DC (TIDC) has been action filledthere have been several large public events ( screenings of Paper Tigers and Wounded Places, a School to Prison Pipeline forum and more) as well as small gatherings that have helped gauge where community interests lie and that have built a network, now comprising nearly 600 people. The founder of TIDC, Leah Harris, felt the time seemed right to pause and take stock of what had been accomplished and plan for the future. Harris...

Members of the Philadelphia ACE Task Force (PATF) decided it was time to move from talk to action. After meeting regularly since 2012, the PATFan increasingly diverse group of practitioners in pediatrics, primary care, juvenile justice, early childhood intervention and anti-violence workinvited each member to write down his or her vision for ACEs work in the city. From that batch of cards, three priorities emerged: To educate the wider community about ACEs and their impact. To develop a...

If theres one thing most television lovers and critics have come to agree on in the last few years, its that the medium has become more racially diverse. If challenged by a skeptic on this subject, Id cheerfully rattle off the names of great and popular shows currently on air starring and created by people of color . See? Progress! And yet, maybe not so much. I can count the number of Native American charactersnot even showsthat Ive personally seen on TV in the last year on one hand. Theres...

The U.S. military is struggling to provide adequate therapy sessions for thousands of active-duty troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, a massive study released Thursday concludes. The RAND Corp. study of 40,000 cases, the largest ever, found that only a third of troops with PTSD and less than a quarter who are clinically depressed receive the minimum number of therapy sessions after being diagnosed. A RAND review of U.S. military and Department of Veterans...

Leon Sykes has eight children at home, works two jobs, and drives for Uber and Lyft on the side. Yet the 34-year-old father has found time to take classes Monday through Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. to earn his high-school credentials at Academy of Hope, an adult public charter school in Washington, D.C. Sykes is about two years into the program. His wife usually picks up their children, ages 5 to 15, from after-school activities, but he still cant always make it to class. Some days, you just...