Blog

By Theresa Vargas, The Washington Post, September 26, 2020 A 13-year-old girl sits in her home on the Northwest side of the nation’s capital, taps on her screen to get to class — and feels relieved. Relieved that she doesn’t have to sling her backpack over her shoulder and say goodbye to her mom and little sister. Relieved that she doesn’t have to step outside and make the 2-minute walk to her middle school. Relieved that at the end of the school day, she doesn’t have to walk home alone.

By Lauren E. Wisk, Alon Peltz, and Alison A. Galbraith, JAMA Pediatrics, September 28, 2020 Key Points Question Is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) associated with a change in health care–related financial burden for families with children? Findings In this cohort study of US families with children using a difference-in-differences design, low- and middle-income families experienced a larger reduction in out-of-pocket costs after initiation of the ACA compared with higher income families who...

By Paul Gorski, Educational Leadership, October 2020 "I have a story for you," Shari said as she jogged toward me. I had spent the day with her high school's administrative team discussing an equity assessment they hoped to conduct. A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program after shiny new program rather than addressing deep institutional problems. Their latest shiny new program was trauma-informed education. That...

Join us 9/29/20 @ 11:00 am PST to hear trauma informed policy experts discuss the state and federal legislative/budget context, and provide actionable information for California advocates who are working to advance policy on children’s resilience/adversity in 2021.

Morning meetings are a good place to start, but what you really need is a toolkit of strategies to meet your students’ social and emotional needs all day long. By Tom Berger September 23, 2020 “Maslow before Bloom”—we hear it all the time. The idea that educators should meet students’ basic needs for safety and belonging before turning to challenging academic tasks is one that guides the work of many schools. In this era of high-stakes testing and inflexible curricula, that’s not as easy to...

SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3 (AAP-CA3 ) together with YMCA of San Diego County , San Diego State University Social Policy Institute and San Diego Accountable Community for Health (SDACH) are joining forces as ACEs Aware grantees to assist San Diego Medi-Cal providers screen and treat Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. The ACEs Aware initiative is a first-of-its-kind effort led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and the...

The 16 Strong Project is dedicated to empowering resilience to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) through educational workshops, school partnerships, and community outreach. 16 Strong strives to continue conversations that help young people recognize and navigate the challenges they are facing as a result of ACEs. We believe that with strong support systems, healthy coping mechanisms and a positive mindset, the negative impacts of ACEs can be mitigated.

"The science of the developing child is clear: Infants and toddlers need loving, stimulating, stable, and secure care environments with limited exposure to adversity. However, to date states have lacked clear guidance on how to effectively promote the environments in which children thrive.’ This Roadmap provides a guide to policies that promote environments where kids can thrive.

Growing up in the Central Valley town of Kerman, population 15,000, wasn’t easy for Michael Piña, who self-identified as queer. Piña, who prefers the pronoun “she,” suffered abuse from family, local youth and a Catholic priest who, at a church retreat, “threw holy water at me, trying to get the devil out of me,” she said. “It caused a lot of emotional trauma.” But in Fresno County, where less than 20% of all residents and less than 10% of Latinx residents have a bachelor’s degree,...

STRIVE (Supportive Trauma Interventions for Educators) FALL 2020 TRAININGS Trauma 101 Workshops for Massachusetts Early Education and Care Saturdays from 9:30-12:30pm September 26th - REGISTER HERE October 3rd - REGISTER HERE October 17th - REGISTER HERE November 7th - REGISTER HERE STRIVE is a collaborative project between Boston Medical Center’s Child Witness to Violence Project and Vital Village Network that aims to help schools and early education systems of care increase their capacity...

Trauma can occur at any age and to anyone. In fact, there is no one alive who will escape having some trauma occur in their lifetime. All of us will experience the death of a loved one, a disappointment from a friend, or perhaps losing a job to layoffs. While these are all valid traumatic events, they are commonplace and are not ordinarily life-long in their toxicity to the lives of those experiencing them.

If you are a coordinator or leader of a trauma-informed community network, you can always reach out to the State Coordinator for the VA TICNs, Melissa McGinn, mmcginn@grscan.com . Melissa is here to offer support and technical assistance for anything related to building and sustaining a TICN, from getting on a call or attending a meeting to connecting you with other network coordinators around the state. Click here for a current list of VA TICNs around the state . Happy Hispanic and Latinx...