Blog

Though now serving as both a national and international consultant, it was in 2014, shortly after my "ah-ha" moment learning about the significance of ACEs science while working for the police, that my career altering journey began. In the early days, my mindset was to "trauma inform" the region. Those adventures and outcomes I've written about in blogs published in PACEs Connection over the past 8 years along the way. Within rural Appalachia I've delivered training and coaching to thousands...

By Jason Pohl, Greater Good Magazine, March 10, 2023 When it comes to workplace woes, Christina Maslach has heard it all. The hard-working team that’s celebrated less than the office slackers. The professionals who wind up in a soul-sucking job. The employees required to attend office BBQs but left out of workplace decision making. It’s been 40-plus years since Maslach, a psychology professor emerita at UC Berkeley, first wrote about workplace trauma and burnout. She’s since pioneered a body...

The Deep Well Project – a Hilton Hilton-based nonprofit – patches damages driven by environmental stressors. By Mary Dimitrov By Sarah Haselhorst and Mary Dimitrov, The Island Packet, March 9, 2023 There’s no longer a trace that Audrey Hamilton’s great-granddaughter fell through the kitchen floor of her great-grandmother’s mobile home. Or that the refrigerator the teen was trying to get to sank below the soggy presswood. Both were swallowed up after the floor had been weighed down and...

By Caitlin Young, Photo: Kusska/Shutterstock, Housing Matters, March 15, 2023 Most local governments rely on property taxes to fund amenities and services for their residents, including public schools, libraries, roads, parks, and other public services. Property tax rates vary significantly by locality but generally are calculated based on assessments of property values conducted by local assessors’ offices. That means that if assessed values are accurate, property owners are paying a flat...

Before the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act went up for a vote, supporters of the law gather with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Reps. Heather Keeler, Alicia Kozlowski and Jamie Becker-Finn at the Minnesota Capitol. Here, Flanagan lights sage in an abalone shell while a community member sings a Dakota prayer song and others wait to be smudged. Photo by Jaida Grey Eagle. By Farrah Mina, The Imprint, March 9, 2023 Well before she became a Minnesota state senator, Mary Kunesh’s great uncle...

By Laura Braden Quigley, Director of Communications and Outreach CTIPP CAN and other advocates are encouraged to urge their Representative in the U.S. House to sign onto a bipartisan letter (see full text enclosed*) that supports robust funding for several trauma-mitigating programs in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education FY 2024 Appropriations bill: New Interagency Task Force (authorized by P.L. 115-271) charged with setting a national strategy for a coordinated federal...

Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country Amid increasing child labor violations, lawmakers must act to strengthen standards ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE MARCH 14, 2023 States across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections, just as violations of these standards are rising. This report identifies bills weakening child labor standards in 10 states that have been introduced or passed in the past two years alone. It provides background on child labor...

“We typically don’t talk about poverty as a condition that benefits some of us,” Desmond writes in his morally charged manifesto. “It seems we prefer more absolving theories of the problem.”Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker By Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, March 13, 2023 “Books about poverty tend to be books about the poor,” the sociologist Matthew Desmond writes in “Poverty, by America” (Crown). That’s true whether the motivation is to blame the poor for their...

By Mensah M. Dean, The Trace, March 14, 2023 An unexpected knock at the door in December caught Zeem off guard. He had not been expecting the visit from a social worker, a representative from the District Attorney’s Office, a mentor — called a credible messenger — two police officers, and a mother who had lost a child to violence. They were from the city’s program for Group Violence Intervention, and they had come to offer the initiative’s services to Zeem, whose past included dealing drugs...

The first class at the University of California, Davis medical school, in 1972, was predominantly white and male. CHRISTINE KAO/STAT By Usha Lee McFarling, STAT, March 7, 2023 The diversity of medical school classes has barely budged in recent decades, even with the ability to consider an applicant’s race as one factor in admissions. Now, many medical school leaders fear a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision to restrict or ban race-conscious admissions policies could lead to precipitous...

By Emine Saner, Illustration: Fran Pulido/The Guardian, The Guardian, March 12, 2023 When I was studying as an undergraduate, almost 30 years ago, I was taught that the human brain stops developing in childhood. But that is wrong. Now that we have the technology to look inside the living human brain and track changes in its structure and function across a lifespan, we know that the brain continues to develop substantially throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. We define adolescence...

By Alissa Quart, Illustration: Paola Saliby, The New York Times, March9, 2023 From a child's earliest age, independence is extolled as a virtue, with “doing things on your own” as proof of maturity. I celebrated my daughter when she was little for picking out her books herself. She always wanted to go on the monkey bars without help and swung and did tricks until her hands were blistered. Now that she’s 12, I cheer her for taking herself home from school on the train and for climbing by...