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NEW YORK — At Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brooklyn, barbed wire and tall unclimbable fences enclose the housing building, basketball courts and outdoor areas, like in every jail or prison. Detention hardware and security cameras are all over the place, like in every jail or prison. Yet, says the facility director, Louis L. Watts, Crossroads is anything but a jail or a prison. “When parents come, they see the outside and they tell me, ‘Oh my god, my son is in jail,’ but when they...

California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation that ended money bail in California. The bill abolishes paying money as a condition of release from jail pre-trial. The money-bail system has been consistently criticized as unfair to low-income people: Unable to afford bail, poorer people were forced to spend more time in prison pre-trial. Hoping to resolve these inequalities—and compelled by years of activism —state legislators put forward legislation that sought to replace...

Research shows an undeniable link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and socioeconomic crises, such as poverty, crime, poor educational outcomes, chronic illness, behavioral health problems and more. Through collaboration within the human services, community restoration, healthcare, educational and criminal justice sectors, Wisconsin is at the forefront of the trauma informed care (TIC) movement. That's why Milwaukee is host site for a large conference Sept. 26-28, 2018. About the...

Hi ACEs Community! Wrestling Ghosts , a new documentary about breaking the cycle of trauma, has launched a social media campaign. Follow us on Twitter ! And on Instagram ! We want to reach the widest audience of trauma-informed persons possible, and we would love your help. Follow us on our social media pages if you feel passionate about the work we want to do. Wrestling Ghosts is premiering at the at LA Film Festival on September 27th, and the premiere will be followed by two other event...

Whether it's microbes in the dirt or fresh air—or both—researchers do know this: Gardening is strong medicine.

Fallout of Change occurs when positive change initially causes our clients to get worse before they get better. It is like stretching a rubber band that will snap back when we let go. This is a normal occurrence, especially with traumatized children. As a result, a tension point emerges between “I want to change but I don’t want to change”. This tension can then lead to relapse or the fallout of change until the traumatized child and family is able to hang on long enough to settle into a new...

In all of the interviews and talks I have done about Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), as well as the articles I have written, certain questions keep coming up over and over again. They are excellent questions that are natural for anyone to ask, especially if you have realized that you grew up in an emotionally neglectful home, but also if you are wondering if CEN applies to you. First, let’s define what Childhood Emotional Neglect is. It’s your parents’ failure to respond enough to your...

American Indians and Alaskan Natives in Kansas are less healthy — significantly so in some categories — than other racial or ethnic groups, and the issue has drawn four tribes from the region together to impact those disparities. A two-day 2018 Kansas Tribal Health Summit, which includes the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, began Monday at the Prairie Band Casino and...

Warsaw Community Schools is committed to promoting the wellbeing of its students and staff, according to a news release from WCS. In order to further the district’s social emotional learning (SEL) initiative, numerous staff members have undergone training in a variety of settings with Dr. Lori Desautels, an expert in neuroscience in education and assistant professor in the College of Education at Butler University, in order to better understand and equip students’ minds. To promote social...

A Guatemalan mother falls to her knees as her seven-year-old daughter walks through the door. They've been separated for 55 days, and the mother is completely overcome with emotion. She embraces her child, rocking her and rubbing her back, openly weeping and speaking to her daughter in Spanish. When she pulls back, the child's face appears somewhat frozen, but she clearly has tears in her eyes; her mother wipes her face with the tissue she has been clutching. This video from CNN is just one...

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty crushed by all of the bad news these days. Frightened children separated from parents at the U.S. border; politicians involved in money laundering and sex scandals; gun violence in schools. Reading these stories makes me feel hopeless and helpless, not to mention angry and disconnected from my fellow citizens. That’s why I need some inspiration right now, to motivate me to stay true to my values of caring for others’ welfare and fighting for what’s...

When I wake at 5:00 a.m. on a summer desert morning, it’s to catch the only cool moments before the day begins. In a few hours, the temperature will rise past 100 degrees, and by mid-day, the dashboard thermometer in my car will read 117 degrees. I keep my children’s car seats covered with old towels and grocery bags to prevent the buckles from heating up like branding irons. Along the roadsides, the leaves on the orange trees droop and even the cacti look thirsty. At the Santa Rita Park,...