Blog

Just a heads-up about a programme being broadcast tonight then available on iPlayer (in UK). 30 minutes looking at Scotland's approach to tackling violent crime by taking a broad 'public health approach' to tackle the roots of the problem. Apparently the journalist Kate Silverton has been retraining as a child psychologist so this is a pet project she wanted to highlight. Don't blame me if the programme is rubbish!

By Selena Simmons-Duffin and Pien Huang, National Public Radio, July 13, 2020 More than 1,000 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address "ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination" against Black employees, NPR has learned. In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic's...

Inspired her work with ACEs, resilience and Walla Walla’s Community Resilience Initiative , documentary-film director Amy L. Erickson created Visceral: transforming trauma though theatre , which has its first screening at the 5 th Annual “Beyond Paper Tigers” conference June 24-25, 2020. The film features a number of Walla Walla residents, including Etiene Vela, a student at Walla Walla Community College (WWCC), whose life is transformed by performing in WWCC productions with Kevin Loomer,...

July 13, 2020 Police officers, nurses, doctors, nursing aides, and many other professionals stand on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. While catching the virus themselves is a huge danger, the second danger is burnout, with the third being secondary trauma. This article will focus on the danger of burnout and how first responders are at risk of having burnout and secondary trauma. What is Burnout? Being a first responder during COVID-19, and indeed, any time during the helping...

positiveexperience.org/blog, 7/13/20 Today’s post is based on an interview with Brooke Adams , Director of Organizational Change at Marathon Scholars. Brooke Adams is a first-generation college graduate with a master’s degree in social work and a passion for working with students from under-resourced communities. Please introduce yourself and your work for our blog readers. I’m Brooke Adams. I am 33 years old, I live in Portland, Oregon, and I have an ACE score of 8. I work with underserved...

By Julian Brave NoiseCat, The Atlantic, July 12, 2020 Mari Hulbutta, my friend and suitemate from college—we were both members of the Native American student group—couldn’t sleep Wednesday, the night before the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark Native-treaty-rights case, McGirt v. Oklahoma . Hulbutta is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a descendant of the Muscogee Creek and Seminole Nations, all in present-day Oklahoma. The McGirt case centered on whether Jimcy McGirt, a...

By Charity Chandler-Cole, The Chronicle of Social Change, July 1, 2020 The plight of Black children in the child welfare system is one plagued with failure after failure from those who have been put in place to protect them. As activist, sociologist and historian, W.E.B. DuBois, so accurately stated, “A system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect.” Our foster care system was not designed to protect our Black children, but rather mirrors the oppression, discrimination and...

By Ailsa Chang and Jonaki Mehta, National Public Radio, July 10, 2020 Across the country, students of color have been demanding change from their schools. At one Denver school, the push for a more inclusive and diverse curriculum came last year, from a group of African American high school students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Early College. Black students at the joint middle school and high school say they didn't see their history and culture reflected in the curriculum at a school that's...

By Sylvia Paull, Thrive Global, July 10, 2020 Recognizing one’s own traumatic childhood experiences can help us develop resilience for the current global traumas we are facing. I work with Jane Stevens, founder and publisher of ACEsConnection.com , to write profiles of professionals who have integrated what’s known as ACEs science (adverse childhood experiences) into their professional and often their personal lives as well. Since March 2020, ever since the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns...

Just one of nature's many sanctuaries, where C-PTSD survivors (like me or those you know and love) can find beneficial grounding - for healing during these prolonged rumblings of isolation and instability.

I am teaching at three hour affordable Zoom course at Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work on how to create trauma response schools, organizations and businesses. It is July 31 and it is easy to enroll and you get a discount code for my new book (which ties in) titled: Trauma Doesn't Stop at the School Door (just released from Teachers College Press, June 2020). Here's a link to the course: https://ssw-web.rutgers.edu/ssw/ce/index.php?m=catalog&f=4 I cannot think of a time in which we...

Vic Goddard is one of many school leaders daunted by the burden of supporting pupils and staff through their grief. By Donna Ferguson, July 4, 2020 V ic Goddard is trying not to cry. The headteacher of Passmores academy in Harlow and star of the 2011 TV series Educating Essex is thinking about the 23 pupils and two staff at his school who have been bereaved during the coronavirus pandemic. His greatest fear, a fear that keeps him awake at night and is making his voice tremble, is what could...