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By Melissa Fay Greene, The Atlantic, June 23, 2020 F or his first three years of life, Izidor lived at the hospital. The dark-eyed, black-haired boy, born June 20, 1980, had been abandoned when he was a few weeks old. The reason was obvious to anyone who bothered to look: His right leg was a bit deformed. After a bout of illness (probably polio), he had been tossed into a sea of abandoned infants in the Socialist Republic of Romania. In films of the period documenting orphan care, you see...

By Maurice Chammah, NBC News, July 1, 2020 With her 4-year-old in the back seat, Dalila Reynoso parked between a gun store and a bail bond agency in downtown Tyler, Texas, peering through the window at the Smith County Jail. When she saw a deputy without a mask on, she snapped a photo. When she saw another fail to wipe down his vehicle, she jotted it down in her notebook. It was mid-April, and Reynoso had begun regularly staking out the facility in this conservative east Texas county of...

From The Corporation for National and Community Service, July 6, 2020 81,592 Subscribers Federal Grant Announcement Federal Press Release 9/11 Day Federal Grant Awarded to Global Youth Justice, Inc. from The Corporation for National and Community Service Global Youth Justice, Inc. announces it has been awarded a 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance Grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the USA federal agency for Volunteering and Service. This grant will support Global...

Regulation Before Education: The Roots and Fruits of a Trauma-Informed School July 29-31st | 12:00 - 3:00pm EDT These times are unsettling in many ways. But the disruptions have widened opportunities for different ways of being, thinking and doing in education. The trauma-informed schools movement has never been more relevant. Schools committed to cultivating trauma-informed change can successfully buffer the adverse effects of the pandemic, economic collapse, and persistent racial...

By Ashish Valentine, National Public Radio, July 5, 2020 When the urban planner Robert Moses began building projects in New York during the 1920s, he bulldozed Black and Latino homes to make way for parks, and built highways through the middle of minority neighborhoods. According to one biography , Moses even made sure bridges on the parkways connecting New York City to beaches in Long Island were low enough to keep city buses — which would likely be carrying poor minorities — from passing...

You are invited to join a free 1 hr. webinar on Tuesday , July 28 from 12:30-1:30 pm Pacific Time (3:30-4:30 pm ET) on the new ITRC Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy Click here to register for the free webinar What is the Need for a New Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy? Climate science indicates that global temperatures will, in the not too distant future, rise above the 2.7-degree F. temperature threshold that unleashes civilization-changing impacts. The U.S. is...

By Richard E. Besser, USA Today, June 30, 2020 California and Texas show the folly of viewing this pandemic through a political lens. The two most populous states are seeing record numbers of COVID-19 infections amid other concerning trend lines. The Golden State was hit early on by this pandemic and had taken a cautious, calibrated approach to reopening, while the Lone Star State was one of the first to reopen and until this past week had greeted the virus with Texas swagger. Both are now...

By Jennifer B. Nuzzo and Joshua M. Sharfstein, The New York Times, July 1, 2020 The way states lifted social distancing restrictions imposed to fight the coronavirus sadly demonstrates our priorities. Officials let bars, restaurants and gyms open, despite warnings from public health experts that these environments pose the greatest risk for spreading the disease. Yet political leaders seem to have paid scant attention to safely reopening schools. The consequences of those backward priorities...

By Cathy Cassata, Healthline, June 30, 2020 Lorenzo P. Lewis was born while his parents were incarcerated. At birth, his aunt was declared his legal guardian. When he was 10 years old, his father died from substance use. “My being born in prison was a symptom of generational trauma. Across both sides of my families, I have several family members who were incarcerated and who had substance abuse. I believe trauma evolves over generations and doesn’t just happen to one person,” Lewis told...

By Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post, July 2, 2020 State by state, neighborhood by neighborhood, black families pay 13 percent more in property taxes each year than a white family would in the same situation, a massive new data analysis shows. Black-owned homes are consistently assessed at higher values, relative to their actual sale price, than white homes, according to a new working paper by economists Troup Howard of the University of Utah and Carlos Avenancio-León of Indiana...

As Americans, we have grown accustomed to calling 911 when we are in trouble. We pick up the phone, talk to an operator, and fully expect first responders to appear as if by magic and save us. However, there is a darker side to this privilege. The hidden problem of what happens to the mental health of first responders when they answer calls for accidents involving kids or, god forbid, a school shooting.

6/29/20, positiveexperience.org Today’s post is based on an interview with Victor Sims, an active advocate for children in foster care. Victor works as a case manager supervisor at SailFuture , won a 2020 Casey Excellence for Children Award , and is an American Bar Association Reunification Hero . Please introduce yourself and your work for our blog readers. My name is Victor Sims. I’ve lived in Florida my whole life, primarily in Polk County. I have been a child welfare advocate since I was...