Blog

Back in 2014, Rep. Paul Ryan sponsored a hearing entitled “War on Poverty: A Progress Report” and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee requested that Chairman Ryan allow Tianna Gaines-Turner — a mother and anti-poverty activist who has struggled with poverty and homelessness — to testify. Ryan refused to change the witness list, but he did allow her written remarks to be entered into the record . In this letter, Gaines-Turner follows up on her original statement in advance of Rep. Ryan’s...

Imagine how an infant, looking out from her crib or her father’s arms, might see the world. Does she experience a kaleidoscope of shadowy figures looming in and out of focus, and a melange of sounds wafting in and out of hearing? In his Principles of Psychology (1890), William James imagined the infant’s world as ‘one great blooming, buzzing confusion’. But today, we know that even very young infants have already begun to make sense of their world. They integrate sights and sounds ,...

Note: What Makes the Stanford Case So Unusual is a great article, though I'd argue, that it's also totally typical. The actions of offenders are minimized. The actions of victims are scrutinized. The legal process itself re-traumatizes - which is not exactly just. The privilege of being white, wealthy and male is undeniable. The results, for the victim, despite the physical evidence, witnesses and minimum sentencing requirements show why so few women come forward to prosecute. The statement,...

This headline is by a blog writer, Charles Pulliam-Moore, that summarizes a research study demonstrating this dreadful statistic.

Just before 6 p.m., a prison transport van pulled up to a state mental hospital in central Maryland. Inside were two deputies and James Geeter, a 77-year-old man arrested for trespassing at a library in Prince George’s County — and so mentally incompetent that a judge ordered treatment before he could face the charges. Four hospital staffers, including the clinical director, met the deputies at the door that night last month and turned them away. The psychiatric facility was full. The...

On June 8, purple-gowned seniors at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, will line up to accept their diplomas as their families look on with pride. But 19-year-old Wildin David Guillen Acosta won’t be among them. Acosta won’t be absent because he doesn’t care enough, or because he didn’t make the cut. Acosta will miss graduation because he has been locked up in a Georgia jail since January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him on his way to school. (In...

Austin startup Aunt Bertha has landed $5 million to continue building out its database of social services. The company's website lets people find and apply for social services across the United States. That means people in need, case managers and social workers can access government and charitable services by topic and zip code in seconds. The basic service, which is free, provides information including the location, hours and reviews of the services, as well as tools to connect with the...

The city of Chicago, in partnership and with input from hundreds of key stakeholders, unveiled their strategic plan, Healthy Chicago 2.0 which will guide it's work through 2020. One key outcome is to become a trauma-informed city. Our collaborative has been working closely with the health department and will continue to collaborate and maximize resources to make this vision a reality. We are grateful for the support of all our partners and the department in particular for naming this...

Susan Green, LCSW, of the School of Social Work (University of Buffalo) has conducted an informative and cogent interview about secondary trauma and resilience in the workplace with documentarians, Rodney Whittenberg and Vic Compher, who co-produced Portraits of Professional CAREgivers: Their Passion. Their Pain. You can hear the interview at: http://www.insocialwork.org/episode.asp?ep=193 and additional information about the film itself is at: www.caregiversfilm.com

One of my best friends, Heidi Aylward, is a high ACE scoring mother of two. She's also a feisty, funny and has a full life balancing work, parenting, friends and all the responsibilities of tending to home and loved ones. And she is a woman who used WIC . WIC defines itself as "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant,...

The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale is one of the first psychometrically valid measure of TIC published in the peer reviewed literature. It was developed collaboratively by the Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers and Dr. Courtney Baker at Tulane University. The ARTIC Scale measures service providers' attitudes favorable or unfavorable toward TIC. It is based on the premise that staff attitudes are an important driver of staff behavior -- and the...

Unemployed and fighting to stay clean, Jayne Fuentes had few options when a judge offered her a particularly unappealing choice – go to jail or spend her days on a work crew. Her crime? Being too poor to pay the fines and court costs that came with a drug conviction and several theft charges. “But when I was done with the work crew, I still owed $2,700 on another debt,” says Fuentes, 48. “I could have ended up in jail again.” Instead, the threat of being back behind bars or assigned to...