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Another request for our parenting tips bumper stickers and another apology because we haven't the funds to print them. This one came from someone who attended today's Zoom. Hi David, I saw your chat on the ACES zoom call today. I would love to get the bumper stickers to put in our lobby for parents. My information including address are below. Please let me know if you need additional information. Thank you, Tami -- Tami ------------------, LCSW Pronouns: she/her Licensed Clinical Therapist...

Positive opposites are a concept you can discuss, model or praise in well-child visits. Every unwanted behavior has a positive opposite ! By replacing "don't" with "please do," you can think of yourself as helping a child learn how to behave - not just tell them what not to do. And, you are giving them the opportunity to practice following directions and self-regulation skills. So, next time you feel like saying, "Don't play with the otoscope," you can try out, "Please put the otoscope back...

Election day is full of shock, awe, and surprise. One of the many surprises this year comes out of the state of Oregon where Oregonians voted to decriminalize the possession of street drugs including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and more. Measure 110 in Oregon passed by a wide margin as the votes are continuing to come in. While selling and manufacturing these substances remains illegal, the possession of small amounts of these drugs will now only result in a fine, like a traffic...

The deaths of several New Mexico children in recent years—a 13-year-old whose father was accused of fatally torturing him; an eight-year-old who was kicked to death by her mother; a girl raped, strangled and stabbed by her mother’s boyfriend the night before her 10th birthday—drew horror, outrage and scrutiny of the state’s child welfare system. Those incidents drove child welfare and public health specialists Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello to examine the data. Cappello and...

TRACEs’ work group on youth and children in foster care spent a good portion of the last year’s monthly meetings examining holes in the system: How would foster families be affected by changes in funding from the Oregon Department of Human Services? What would it mean for kids if Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) positions were cut? Most important, what did foster children and youth, their families of origin and their foster families need in order to thrive? “We put together a...

Before the pandemic, Sara Buckley, an 8 th grade science teacher at Park Middle School in Antioch, California, could handle students who were acting out during class. Understanding that trauma lies beneath disruptive behavior, she didn’t send kids to the principal for punishment. Instead, she’d talk with them to find out what was going on at home or outside of school—and then work out a plan for how to respond differently the next time they were triggered. They could visit the school’s...

This training series for primary care, acute care, and behavioral health providers focuses on “Advancing Trauma-Informed Communities” and improving knowledge and capacity for utilizing community resources in the referral process. The goals of these trainings are to: a) increase provider insight into ACEs prevalence, b) develop screening capacity, c) explore tools to assess your local communities who experience ACEs, and d) identify strategies to facilitate a warm handoff by utilizing...

I heard one trauma survivor after another share horror stories about retraumatization from counseling experiences with clinicians that were not trauma-competent. This workbook, entitled, Preparing for Trauma Work in Clinical Mental Health: A Workbook to Enhance Self-Awareness and Promote Safe, Competent Practice. It was written to address the education and training gap in lack of preparedness for trauma (especially complex trauma) work. It is uniquely designed to focus on the professional...

For people who were abused and neglected in childhood, one of the cruelest ways the damage shows up is in romantic relationships. Too many of us go through life either alone, or in relationships where we’re not loved, not safe, and not happy. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you have Childhood PTSD and you’re wondering why you keep attracting people who are either dysfunctional, unavailable or abusive -- you’re going to want to read this... READ FULL BLOG POST or.. WATCH THE VIDEO ON...

The number of child sexual abuse cases reported in Pakistan everyday shot up in first half of 2020, child protection NGOs indicated in its latest report. More than six kids on average were subjected to sexual abuse in the period in Pakistan, The NGO said most of the cases were in Punjab — at 57%. Of the rest, 32% were reported in Sindh and 6% in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It further noted that more than 35 cases were reported in Islamabad, 22 in Balochistan, 10 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and one in...

By Erin Winstanley, November 1, 2020. Rural women with substance use disorders may have experienced significantly more childhood trauma than their male counterparts, according to new research from the West Virginia University School of Medicine. The study — led by Erin Winstanley, an associate professor in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and Department of Neuroscience—explored the incidence of childhood trauma in the lives of people with substance use disorders. The...

By Sarah Posner, November 1, 2020, Mother Jones. How taxpayer money might end up supporting “facilities that compromise the safety of children.” Last year, in the wake of a surge of asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America, the United States government held a record 69,550 immigrant children in government facilities. The vast majority of them arrived at the border without parents or guardians, though some were taken from their families during the Trump administration’s brutal...