Blog

Every January, schools across the country cobble together some kind of programming to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Whether it’s taking students to a local civil rights museum or serving fried chicken and collard greens , every local school administrator puts their own spin on the holiday. In a town about forty minutes outside of Milwaukee, a group of students and teachers decided to include a privilege aptitude test in their MLK day festivities . The test, modeled after one given by the...

Lower educational attainment and income, and a higher incidence of trauma in childhood due to economic and social factors, can lead to greater health risks, according to researchers in the Office of Public Health Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa ‘s Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work . Co-authors Catherine Pirkle , an assistant professor of health policy , and Yan Yan Wu , an assistant professor of epidemiology , looked at health data of more than 2,000 people in Albania,...

On Sunday night, Oprah Winfrey hosted a “60 Minutes” segment exploring a topic that for her, hits close to home — the mental health effects of childhood trauma. Winfrey has been open in the past about her history of childhood sexual and physical abuse , which she said she experienced from ages 10 to 14. On “60 Minutes,” she shared a fellow survivors’ story, highlighting a treatment framework some experts are using to help those who’ve experienced trauma called trauma-informed care.

Isn't it more desirable to prevent a problem than fix a problem? Trauma informed care happens after the occurrence of adverse childhood experiences. How about trauma informed prevention?? Since most of the ten original adverse childhood experiences are examples of harmful parenting, prevention of aces must take the form of some kind of proactive parenting education that discourages harmful parenting and encourages supportive parenting. Visit advancingparenting.org and support our work. We've...

Would your community like to start an ACEs & Resiliency Fellowship to help spread awareness and build capacity for action? Sonoma County would like to share our tools and lessons learned with you. 1. What was the ACEs & Resiliency Fellowship? This remarkable program is unique to Sonoma County California. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) & Resiliency Fellowship is a 9-month intensive interdisciplinary program designed for community members who serve as community educators...

As a speech and language pathologist, it is so important to listen to children and understand who they are, what their development experience has been how they cope in the world. The big question for me is "What is the influence of environment and relationship have on speech and language development?" "Does a child have a speech and language disorder or have they experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) that have impacted their brain development in such a way that language is...

Calling Upon the Warrior Spirit to Heal Historical Trauma -- A Conference on Creating Trauma-informed Tribal Communities and Using Traditional Practices to Address Historical and Childhood Trauma On Saturday and Sunday, April 21-22, the Roundtable on Native American Trauma Informed Initiatives, supported by the Gila River Tribal Employment Rights Office, the Viejas Mission Band of Indians, Native Health Care Solutions LLC, the Van Ness Feldman Law Firm will be hosting a conference entitled...

ANY DISCUSSION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE policy inevitably includes the word “recidivism.” Usually more than once. Recidivism is the reoccurrence of crime among people known to have committed crimes before. At all levels of justice, from local probation offices to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, if we judge the impact of interventions at all, we do so in part by measuring recidivism. In a report we published today with the Harvard Kennedy School, we conclude that recidivism is often the wrong measure.

Female prisoners - often anguished at being parted from their children - are more likely to commit acts of self-harm than their male counterparts. A University of Huddersfield researcher has been researching the issue for more than a decade and is now co-author of an award-winning book that sets out strategies to tackle the problem. Dr Tammi Walker, who has joined the University as Reader in Forensic Psychology, wrote Preventing Self-Injury and Suicide in Women's Prisons alongside her...

County supervisors are looking to change the way L.A. County responds to gun violence, by treating it as a public health issue. A unanimously approved motion introduced by 3rd District Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, and Mark Ridley-Thomas of the 2nd District, adds more control on guns in the county and starts a plan to create an Office of Violence Prevention. The Department of Public Health and the county’s CEO Sachi Hamai have 90 days to create the plan that outlines staffing and resources need...

Something big happened last Sunday evening – big for countless individuals who are struggling in their lives, but also big for our society. Thanks to Oprah Winfrey , the world was introduced to the concept of developmental trauma ( on CBS 60 Minutes ). Oprah calls this a “game changer”. As she writes: “This is one of the most life changing stories I’ve ever done. I hope it starts a Revolution in helping people.” A similar game changer occurred in the early 1980s when Post-Traumatic Stress...

I was 31 when I became a mother. Many years after what I thought was enough time to get away from my abusive childhood. My life was turned upside down after my first child was born. I breast fee him, Not knowing what to expect from my body. The physical feeling of milk letting down and vaginal blood rushes was something I had ignored since my childhood. Then I did not have control of my body as my step father sexually abused me. It was the first of having memories flood my mind of my...