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US Olympics Gymnastics Team: Laurie Hernandez, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and Madison Kocain Right: Judge Rosemarie Aquiline __________________________ I pledge my allegiance to over 150 women who stood up in Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s courtroom, found their voices, stepped into the national floodlights of attention and gave themselves an experience in courage; a sparkling courage that is rippling out to us all. What grit! What moxie! What lightning bolts of inspiration is...

Cissy's note: There are so many wonderful writers here at ACEs Connection that I'm sharing this post. There are great links to reporting about trauma and a link to how to submit a story or two. What's wonderful though is that among the judging team of mostly journalists there is also a victim advocate (only one, but it's a start). In addition, there are some simple and common sense (but not always done) guidelines about what makes for excellent writing about trauma.

While the Beltway argues over whether President Donald Trump called Haiti a " shithole " or a "shithouse"—or whether the outburst is question is simply more Fake News —the global refugee crisis continues more or less unabated. In 2017, the number of forcibly displaced persons around the world soared past 65 million, a figure that includes both refugees—those living outside their home countries—and the internally displaced. Every day, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for...

At this month’s Golden Globe awards, women seized the #MeToo moment in a big way. Nearly every actress in attendance wore black to signify support of sexual assault survivors and some spoke about their commitment to ending harassment and assault. Oprah Winfrey gave a barn-burning speech celebrating women’s dignity that led to some loose talk about her running for president. This backdrop of female solidarity made men’s silence suddenly visible. “Standing by like accessories,” wrote Claire...

Published in PLOS ONE, the study analysed questionnaire and interview data from the Determinants of young Adult Social well-being and Health (DASH) study, one of the UK's largest longitudinal studies of ethnically diverse young people. Information about smoking and experiences of racism was collected from over 6500 pupils at 51 London schools. Surveys were completed when pupils were aged 11-13 and then again with 4785 of the pupils at age 14-16. Over 600 participants were then followed up...

When Chinyere Oteh welcomed her first child in 2009, she found herself in a predicament familiar to many new stay-at-home mothers: Stress was high, but money and time were short. “I thought to myself, I can’t be the only person trying to figure out how to have a healthy family life as well as make ends meet,” Oteh said. That’s when she remembered an article she had read on time-banking. Time-banking is a model for trading skills, goods, and labor instead of money—a sort of barter system...

In 2013, ProPublica published an investigation of the subprime lender World Finance . World was charging annual interest rates that could exceed 200 percent, often trapping customers in cycles of debt by enticing them to renew the loans over and over. In states where laws barred such high rates, the installment lender loaded many loans with nearly useless insurance products that bloated the cost. The company boasted over 800,000 customers, part of an installment loan industry that claimed to...

Philadelphia is a step closer to opening what could be the nation's first supervised site for safe drug injection. But turning the idea into reality won't be easy. City officials gave the proposition the green light Tuesday. They were armed with feasibility studies , harrowing overdose statistics and the backing of key leaders, including the mayor and a newly elected district attorney. "There are many people who are hesitant to go into treatment, despite their addiction, and we don't want...

Making sure that children don’t enter the adult jails and prisons should be a critical part of how the country thinks about ending mass incarceration, according to leading criminal-defense lawyer Bryan Stevenson. “We’ve allowed our most vulnerable children to be thrown away, to be traumatized and to be locked up in these jails and prisons, and we’ve got to change this narrative that some children aren’t children,” Stevenson said. Stevenson, the founder and CEO of the Equal Justice...

A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe. That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.

OhioMHAS and the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) are still accepting proposals for the Fifth Annual Trauma-Informed Care Summit, “Creating Environments of Resiliency and Hope in Ohio,” scheduled for May 22-23 at the Residence Inn by Marriott Columbus-University Area. The purpose of the summit is to move our systems beyond trauma informed to trauma competent. The deadline to submit a proposal is Feb. 2. Click HERE for more information and to access the online submission form.

We speak with Yance Ford, who on Tuesday became the first trans director to be nominated for an Academy Award. His film “Strong Island” is up for best documentary. Ford, who is African-American, chronicles what happened to his own family after his brother, William Ford Jr., was shot dead by a white mechanic in Long Island, New York, in 1992. The killer was questioned by police but never charged. “My brother’s case, 25 years ago, simply affirms what we are seeing now,” Ford says. “It doesn’t...