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Have You Completed the ACEs Aware Training? Eligible Medi-Cal providers : It’s not too late to self-attest to completing the ACEs Aware training. As a reminder, eligible Medi-Cal providers must self-attest to completing the certified ACE training to receive payment for ACE screenings conducted after July 1, 2020. Don't Forget to Self-Attest ACEs Aware has answers to your attestation questions at ACEsAware.org/FAQ . After finishing your training at Training.ACEsAware.org , you can find the...

By Dani McClain, July 21, 2020, NYT. Dee Ray doesn’t learn how children feel by listening to their words. Ray, a researcher and counselor in Texas, learns by watching them play. She directs the Center for Play Therapy at the University of North Texas and often works in schools, where she sections off a 10 feet by 10 feet area in a classroom and fills the space with toys — a child sized kitchenette, puppets, a bop bag that a child who needs to work out some aggression can punch. [ Please...

By Joseph Hayes and Heather Harris, Public Policy Institute of California, July 21, 2020 The state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has sent Californians back into their homes . Yet for Californians living with an abusive partner, “home” is not safe—and sheltering in place can make reporting domestic violence and getting help harder. Although incidents reported by police do not seem to have increased since shelter-in-place began, data from hotlines and service providers suggest a...

In late May, Betsy Andersen’s 7-year-old son, Ezra, had a serious meltdown. He and his six-year-old sister Abby had been enjoying an online Zoom interaction with “Miss Eileen,” “Miss Savannah,” a couple of their colleagues, and a puppet. Betsy Andersen “I could see him trailing off and then he started crying,” says Andersen, who lives in Mundelein, Illinois. But before she swooped in, she heard Miss Eileen talking to him: “She was saying ‘Hey, I see you’re having some big emotions.” Speaking...

Now that the July 4 th congressional recess has ended, negotiations around the fourth major COVID relief bill are underway between the Congress and the Administration. How the chasm between Congress and the White House will be bridged is a path uncertain, with massive differences between the House and Senate complicating the work. As the pandemic rages across the U.S., there is now at least a consensus that action is needed. But no agreement exists on a payroll tax cut, unemployment...

By John Woodrow Cox, The Washington Post, July 20, 2020 She was tired of wearing black, but the teenager knew she had to, at least for one more day. So after Nadeen Ismael swept the floors and arranged the couch pillows just the way her parents liked them, she returned to their bedroom. Behind the door, Nadeen, 18, reached up for her mother’s favorite sweater, still hanging next to the leather jacket and Levi’s jeans her father left there after his last day at work three months earlier.

Trauma and Childhood Obesity – LIVE WEBINAR CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Presented by: Leah N. Owen, MC, LAC Friday, October 2, 2020 8:30am – 4:30pm (Arizona Time) $50.00 Feel confident working with clients with obesity issues Gain resources to share with clients and their families See childhood obesity in a new way Be more effective in assessing clients and addressing the entire person Training Description The session titled Trauma and Childhood Obesity will begin with an overview of childhood...

Skills and wisdom for creating the best possible experience of life. This program is designed to give you skills and understanding that you can use now AND that will continue to deepen and unfold over time. The curriculum is resilience-focused. What that means in a practical sense is that the starting place is of acknowledgment of the traumas potentially being held by yourself and your students. This allows for these amazing practices to be applied in a way that is most supportive of the...

I’m excited to announce the publication of my 4 th book Healing with Heart Rate Variability: Using Biometrics to Improve OUtcomes in Trauma-Informed Organizations ! In this time of stress, trauma, and burnout, HRV provides a critical tool to help clients, patients, students, and our workers regain and maintain their health. To assist in the fight, I am giving away free digital copies at optimalhrv.com !

By Guest Author, positiveexperience.org/blog, 7/21/20 From the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black Americans throughout history, whose lives were taken by police brutality and systemic racism, we have seen how dismantling all forms of racism is critical to the central mission of HOPE: ensuring healthy, equitable child development for all, regardless of race. Systemic solutions, structures of accountability, and addressing individual biases are all...

I have written an adult book titled (sadly but aptly): Trauma Doesn't Stop at the School Door: Strategies and Solutions for Educators, PreK-12. It is available at Teachers College Press and Amazon as an ebook and paperback. What I have now created, by popular demand, is a set of items that animate the trauma responsive suggestions within the book. There are many concrete suggestions already within the book that are transportable to a reader's home institution and adjusted for culture and...

BY Michael Hill , Correspondent | June 17, 2020, 4PM EST on NJ TV News New Jersey’s children have been another particularly vulnerable population during this health crisis and experts are wading through the psychological effects on kids caused by toxic stress. Both from ongoing trauma due to the coronavirus and historic, caused by systemic racism and discrimination. It’s a lot to tackle. So the state is appointing a national expert on ACES – adverse childhood experiences– to head up a new...