Blog

By Thomas Fuller and Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 Facing down 600 wildfires in the past three days alone, emergency workers rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people in Southern California on Thursday as a state utility said one of its major transmission lines broke near the source of the out-of-control Kincade blaze in Northern California. The Kincade fire, the largest this week, tore through steep canyons in the wine country of northern Sonoma County,...

By The Associated Press, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 The number of children in the U.S. foster care system has dropped for the first time since 2012, stemming a surge that was linked to substance abuse by parents, according to new federal data released on Thursday. The annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services counted 437,283 children in foster care as of Sept. 30, 2018, down from about 441,000 a year earlier. The peak was 524,000 children in foster care in...

The full moon was setting and the sun was rising as organizers from KIDS Network, Children & Family Resource Services, Casa Pacifica, and the Department of Behavioral Wellness began setting up the 2019 BRIDGES TO RESILIENCE Conference on October 14 th at the beautiful Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. The stately halls and ballrooms were a flurry of activity as staff prepared to receive over 350 community members who work with children, youth and families in Santa Barbara County.

One of the lessons learned from the Woodhull Study Revisited is that when a health reporter contacts a nurse, we need to be ready to respond in a timely manner. Just 10 days ago, I received this inquiry through the Relentless School Nurse Facebook page: I thank Barbara Glickstein for her expert guidance in nursing media competencies because I felt prepared to speak with Cathy and things certainly did move quickly! I was honored to contribute to this article along with Linda Mendonca, MSN,...

By Alexandra Chen, Catherine Panter-Brick, et al., Society for Research in Child Development, October 24, 2019 Abstract The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)—what we might call the cognitive signatures of minds under siege—are little known. We surveyed a gender‐balanced sample of 12‐ to 18‐year‐old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non‐refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of poverty, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress,...

By James King (WLA Guest), Witness LA, October, 20, 2019 I hear it all the time. “San Quentin is unique,” “If only we could take what’s happening here and reproduce it in other prisons,” blah, blah, blah. You know what? That was kind of overdramatic. Let me start again. I have yet to meet anyone here who doesn’t think San Quentin is the best prison in the state, and possibly on the country. As a person who has been here for nearly six years, I can confirm that the opportunities at this...

By Angelika Albaladejo, Capital & Main, October 16, 2019 Ingrid Archie thought she was doing everything right to protect her children. She got a restraining order against her abusive partner and moved into a domestic violence shelter with her kids. Then Archie got arrested for child endangerment. It had been only a month since she’d left the relationship and she was struggling to get back on her feet. She was stressed out and trying to run errands with her two youngest daughters. One of...

Twitter post Oct. 24 by Elizabeth Perry for @ACEs_Canada https://twitter.com/ACEs_Canada/status/1187400245568835585 This post I made has received a lot of interest. I thought you on ACEs Connection might also appreciate reading it. #ACEs are not just about children. That's the problem. Many who talk about ACEs just focus on prevention. But there are millions - probably billions of us living on this planet as #AdultsWithACEs Our potential is impeded by the lingering, unresolved effects of our...

Here's a podcast link about the host of the Trauma Therapist Podcast, Guy MacPherson, PhD. In this episode, he shares why he's "doing this work" and asking us, whether as his guest, a listener, a survivor or a therapist (or all of those things), what brings us to this work, and what is our passion, vulnerability, and purpose as it relates to thinking and talking about trauma. "As we close in on 400 episodes," he said, "I think I'm slowly being able to see what this podcast is about and I...

By Elvia Perez, Fix School Discipline, October 23, 2019 I am a recent LAUSD graduate and student rights activist. I believe that ending the random search policy is a tremendous victory for the #StudentsNotSuspects Coalition[1] who have spent years fighting for this very moment. I co-founded the Students Deserve chapter at my high school, in hopes of bringing an end to these “random” searches, as they serve to criminalize, traumatize, and degrade racial and ethnic groups. Students Deserve is...

By Abby Goodnough and Margot Sanger-Katz, The New York Times, October 23, 2019 The baby’s lips were turning blue from lack of oxygen in the blood when his mother, Kristin Johnson, rushed him to an emergency room here last month. Only after he was admitted to intensive care with a respiratory virus did Ms. Johnson learn that he had been dropped from Medicaid coverage. The 9-month-old, Elijah, had joined a growing number of children around the country with no health insurance, a trend that new...

By Naomi Schaefer Riley, Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2019 When “Sesame Street” adds a character and a story line to its fabled neighborhood, people notice. In May, the show’s creators introduced Karli, a Muppet in foster care, and this month they revealed the reason for her situation: Her mom struggles with substance abuse. In supplemental “Sesame Street in the Community” videos available online, Elmo’s dad explains to him that “Karli’s mother has a disease called addiction. Addiction...