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Last month, a group of girls at a juvenile detention center in the Bronx sat in a discussion circle with a teaching artist and a social worker. After a series of circle meetings, the girls at Horizon Juvenile Center in New York City had created vision boards, collages in which they envisioned their life five years from now. The group was initiated by S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective , a nonprofit that works to empower black girls who are “most impacted by oppression.” The organization...

No matter where you are, be sure to follow the events of the day on twitter: Follow @acestoohigh and #4CAKidsDay17 to get live updates all day.

Partnering For Excellence is excited to join ACEs Connection! Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence (PFE) is an initiative in North Carolina which aims to align the Mental/Behavioral Health System and Child Welfare System to create better outcomes for children and families whom have experienced trauma and are now involved with the Department of Social Services. The Partnering for Excellence Model is able to assists these systems and others in collaborating to form trauma-informed...

As a social work professional, I was involved in the trauma field twenty years ago. But I became a charismatic nondenominational church pastor, starting a college campus prayer movement. With my cultural heritage and training at an evangelical seminary, the focus of my ministry has been intercession, multi-ethnic discipleship and servant leadership. However, the development of community service involvement with the ministry brought me back to the engagement in my previous professional field.

More kids are experiencing trauma now than the current generation of adults did when they were kids — does that set Hancock County up for health problems down the line? Research has found that those who have had more “adverse childhood experiences,” as they’re known, are at risk of both physical and mental health issues even years later, into adulthood. The Community Health Assessment released last year found that 17 percent of Hancock County adults reported three or more adverse childhood...

After helping a donor unload a box of pots and pans in the reception area, Mary Poole settles in behind her desk in a cramped office. “I used to make jewelry,” she laughs, referring to her life more than a year and a half ago, before she became executive director of Soft Landing in Missoula, Montana. Today, Poole runs the small nonprofit, which helped persuade the International Rescue Committee to establish a refugee resettlement office here last year. At a time when resettlement is...

In a darkened room at CHOP Primary Care, Cobbs Creek, physician Chris Renjilian set up a projector and debriefed doctors, nurses, and other staff on a new intervention that the office will begin offering to patients in its care. The medical breakthrough in question? Prescription-strength outdoor play. “As primary-care pediatricians, one of our goals is to help children get more active. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 60 minutes a day of outside play,” he said. “This is...

You probably know the New Zealand All Blacks – one of greatest and most successful of all sporting team identities – for their impressive on-pitch skills, or their practice of performing the traditional war cry, the haka , before each rugby match. The team of bulky, imposing men stamping their feet and slapping their arms is one that few would forget. What you may not know is that the team is as strong in mental health as they are in physical: a culture of acknowledgement, disclosure and...

Only hours after the ambush that killed five Dallas law enforcement officers, mental health experts began thinking ahead, searching for ways to ease the long-term effects of the attack on the men and women who patrol the nation's ninth-largest city. Police psychologists in Dallas were quickly joined by counselors from the Houston and Los Angeles police departments, the FBI and the federal air marshals service. As she watched the July 7, 2016, assault unfold on the news, Dallas philanthropist...

ebate all you want whether Donald Trump is bad for women, but there's no disputing this: He is great for the women's movement. The election of a president whom detractors view as misogynistic and backward-thinking has done nothing less than spark a wholesale resurgence of feminism. His defeat of the first woman who might have been president -- coupled with his incendiary comments about women and his divisive policies on reproductive rights and other issues -- lit a fire under a movement that...

The idea that emotional trauma can be passed from generation to generation has intrigued me for years. Undoubtedly, being the daughter of two Holocaust survivors played a huge role in my lifetime work of helping adults heal from childhood trauma. My parents’ generation was a stoic one; They were neither driven nor inclined to explore (let alone discuss) the painful experiences of their own early lives. A colleague of mine once suggested that a good portion of my professional journey has been...

NEA President Lily Eskelsen García and Robert Hull, member of the Maryland NEA delegation _____________________________ Delegations to the National Education Association (NEA) Repres entative Assembly s ummer meeting from California and Maryland combined forces to secure approval last week of a new business item on educating traumatized students. Approximately 7,000 delegates participated in the Boston meeting. Robert Hull from Maryland and a group from California put the new business item...