Blog

April is National Child Abuse Prevention month. For the entire month of April, co-hosts Ingrid Cockhren, CEO of PACEs Connection, and Mathew Portell, PACEs Connection director of communities, will examine America's history of child abuse and neglect and outline how this history connects to our current child abuse crisis. In part two of this series of episodes dedicated to the systemic nature of child abuse and neglect in America, Cockhren and Portell will discuss the different layers of...

By Laura Gallant, 4/12/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Over the next year, we will be using the 2022 HOPE Summit event website for table-based networking events. On April 20th at 4 p.m. ET, HOPE will host its second free HOPEful Connections networking event on the website. The event will be a great time to discuss how the practice of HOPE interacts across sectors. You will network with people from health care, education, community engagement, and other organizations.

Recently, I've noticed a plethora of articles written about vulnerability in leadership, empathetic leadership, coaching leadership and on and on. Don't get me wrong, I think there is value in each and everyone of them. In a later blog, I'm going to dive into the rabbit hole about why before we implement a new leadership strategy, what we first need to do is ensure we have the safety to carry it out. But alas, that's for another time. For now, I want to talk about what you should focus on...

By Kaylee Poche, Photo: Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune, Gambit, April 4, 2022 Amanda Schroeder saw a lot during her time as a school counselor in New Orleans. Schroeder, who now works as the president of the nonprofit Communities in Schools, recalls the time a decade ago when she worked in a public school in New Orleans East. A kindergartener at the school would abruptly bolt from their desk, running out of the classroom without warning. Sometimes, he’d run out of the school building...

I am so excited about the panel and day! It’s for all who want to attend, and CEUs for LCSW, LADC, CADC, LPC, LMFT, CM, CDSVRP. Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrf-6przwjHNSJHhnmgnB-jT5iVTFmMqNz

Climate Science for the World’s Worry: a 12-month Series Do you make efforts to comprehend the uncountable impacts of the climate crisis on our beloved earth, and does your mind boggle? Do you worry about the future? Do you struggle with helplessness and overwhelm? Do you sometimes feel so much tenderness for the world that you think you might burst? You are not alone. This collection of feelings is often called climate anxiety, and it’s happening to people all over the world as we face...

Becky Haas (L) receives the "Friend of Children" award from Jill Stott of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. Becky Haas, whose work in child safety led to her learning about the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study in 2014 – and her ultimately embracing and teaching the science as a career – was recently honored by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth (TCCY) with the “Friend of Children” award. In giving the award to Haas, Jill Stott, Northeast Regional...

By Maurice Chammah, Photo: Filmrise, The Marshall Project, February 24, 2022 The detective handed Melissa Lucio a plastic doll and asked her to spank it. “Do it real hard,” he said. Lucio had already spent five hours that night, in February 2007, answering questions about the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez. She initially said Mariah had fallen down a staircase outside the family’s apartment in Harlingen, Texas, a small city near the Mexico border. But Mariah had bruises,...

By Henry Gass, Photo: Melanie Stetson/Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 2022 I rene Bennalley steps out into the fierce afternoon sunlight wearing jeans and a maroon sweater, her long gray hair knotted in a braid. Brandishing a long white stick as her crook, she picks her way across her parched desert farm toward the sheep pen. Answering their bleats with firm instructions in Navajo, she shepherds them out onto the dry, dusty range. She doesn’t know exactly how...

By Talya Meyers, Photo: Friends of Refugees, Direct Relief, April 6, 2022 T he women began arriving from Afghanistan in October of 2021, spending time sequestered on a military base before being resettled in Clarkston, Georgia. “It was scary for those who were there…and then they evacuated, and they were in camps for months,” said Muzhda Oriakhil, a community liaison and new community engagement manager at Friends of Refugees, a Clarkston-based NGO that offers support to refugees resettling...

In response to the current war in Ukraine, the Trauma-informed Design Society and Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership are pleased to announce a new resource for responding to collective trauma. Grounded in the knowledge that we can interrupt the possible negative effects of trauma, the pamphlet is available in three languages and provides an overview of resilience and how we can help develop a sense of safety that will lower the stress levels of survivors.

The disturbing neural imprints from adverse childhood experiences need not be a life sentence. Imagery is an extremely helpful tool to modify the circuitry of the brain, utilizing the principle of neuroplasticity. Imagery strengthens and stabilizes the brain, while laying down alternative neural pathways.