Tagged With "World Day of the Boy Child"
File
ACEs_Toolkit.pdf
Blog Post
When Acknowledgeing Our Family's Failures Is Not Betrayal.
As a child to Caribbean parents, growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, it was rare to see families which did not raise their children with physical and verbal abuse on a regular basis. The conversations we children engaged in with our "best friends" often revealed the dark secrets lurking behind the facades of our picture-perfect family lives. Even in the seeming "best" families, the children faced private, if not public shaming. Some lived in fear of parental outbursts to their childish...
Blog Post
Trading Sex as a Minor is Sex Trafficking
Okay, so I want to share this article with you about the link between ACEs and sex trafficking in the USA. It is titled, " Youth Arrested for Trading Sex Have the Highest Rates of Childhood Adversity: A Statewide Study of Juvenile Offenders ". However, I need to explain something to you (i.e. vent) first... The researchers and article publishers use the term "arrested for trading sex" because in the early part of the century (c. 2014) that was the unfortunate state of the law in the USA...
Blog Post
ACEs and Human Trafficking Research
Ten years ago today the Trafficking In Persons Bill of Trinidad and Tobago was laid in the country's Parliament. It was eventually passed, assented to, and became law as the Trafficking In Persons Act, Chapter 12:10. (The Act itself took effect in January 2013.) So to commemorate the anniversary of the introduction of the Bill, we will share one of the first of what we hope will be many resources on the link between childhood trauma and human trafficking. The report, titled " Domestic Sex...
Blog Post
Question of the Month - Is Child Adversity Linked to Ethnicity?
Hi Community! Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we are probably more diverse in terms of ethnicity than many of our Caribbean neighbours - a callaloo of sorts (Remember the national anthem proclaims: "...Here every creed and race find an equal place..." ) Well, research overseas shows that there is a difference in how children experience adversity based on their ethnicity. In the USA in particular, there are neighbourhoods that are predominantly white and others where the majority of persons are...
Blog Post
#ChooseToChallenge - What leads to a man assaulting a woman or a child?
Hey Community! We just observed International Women's Day (#IWD2021) yesterday and we hope the ladies in our community had a terrific day. Against the backdrop of all the intimate partner violence and family-related abuse being perpetrated in the region, here is a question many are asking - " What leads to a (big, hard-back) man assaulting a woman or a child? " There is a recent thread on Aces Connection where a man in Canada posed the question. The responses are interesting. Before you head...
Comment
Re: #ChooseToChallenge - What leads to a man assaulting a woman or a child?
Yes, this phrasing, versions of which are used in Jamaica too, assumes/suggests that the woman is always 'the victim’. And when we speak of GBV here, in the region, we rarely talk about emotional/verbal abuse. Put that into the equation and we’ll have a much clearer picture of the scale of women’s violence against men and boys in the Caribbean. In many ways, emotional verbal/abuse is just as egregious and harmful as physical abuse by men. In some cases, it is worse. I had a conversation...
Blog Post
Young Black Men's Mental Health During Covid-19
Research from the UK suggests that men from racialised backgrounds are reporting higher levels of mental distress during the pandemic compared to white men (Proto et al., 2021). Contributing factors include bereavement, loneliness and worries about coronavirus and misinformation.
Blog Post
Building a Multi-System Trauma-Informed Collaborative.
Since the effects of childhood trauma do not play out in isolation, an effective response to child trauma should benefit not only children but the communities in which they live. This feeds into what we know from studies about factors that impact a child's growth - they occur within the family, community and also are climate-related. Multiple studies reveal the extremely high percentage of youth in contact with the law and under the care of social services who have been exposed to violence...
Blog Post
UK 'Punishing Abuse' Report Finds Many Justice-Involved Youth have Trauma Histories.
A published study from West Midlands in the United Kingdom, titled "Punishing Abuse", has confirmed what many have long suspected - many youth are being punished in the criminal justice system for acting out in the aftermath of childhood trauma. It looked at 80 youth, 67 of whom were male, and many of whom were of Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage. They included White and Black Caribbean youth, some of whome were born in and others whose parents came from the Caribbean island...
Blog Post
How Trauma Affects the Body.
In a post on the website, Aces Aware, California paediatrician, Dr. Eric Bell shares how he and his family experienced Trauma after the death of a pet, which was a close member of their family. As a doctor, he was aware of his physical, emotional and other symptoms and is able to clearly articulate these as well as the benefits he and his family derived from implementing protective factors, stress-busting strategies and using other resilience building tools. We love how he is able to use his...
Blog Post
Kids Need More Time with Grandparents
In the article linked to below, there is an evidence-based solution being out forward to raise emotionally healthy children. In a 2011 Brigham Young University study, children in both two-parent and single-parent homes who felt close to at least one grandparent exhibited "higher pro-social behavior." (Pro-social behaviors tend to benefit others: helping, sharing, donating, volunteering, cooperating, etc.) "The bottom line," the researchers say, "is that grandparents have a positive influence...
Blog Post
Interesting Weekend Tweet.
For us in the Caribbean, there is a tendency to cover up sex crimes committed against children by their relatives. When the offence is made known, the first call is seldom to the police but to other relatives. This is often done to strategize how to preserve the family's reputation (albeit at the expense of the child's mental and physical health), may be motivated by a false sense of protection to spare the child the shame of the offence being made public, or to confer some benefits upon the...
Blog Post
Is Parenting Post-Covid A Catch-22?
Harvard Business Review published an article 3 years ago examining how parents' careers impact their children's development. Post-2020 - when many parents were forced to work from home and homeschool their offspring while trying to be productive and attend innumerable Zoom meetings - one wonders what the authors would think of the way forward. The truth remains that quality time for our children is indispensable to their healthy upbringing. Yet 2020 also brought financial difficulty to many...
Blog Post
The Power of a Hug
The past year has taken a heavy toll on millions of us around the Caribbean. In order to stem the spread of covid-19 we were asked by our regional governments to essentially change who we are. We forsook the beach and river limes, bar scene and house parties in an effort to play our part to keep everyone safe. Even with our relatives and in our Faith practices, we had to abide by strict protocols and refrain from hugging, kissing and showing affection in the way we as Caribbean people...
Blog Post
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - A Season of Diverse ACEs
Hi everyone. While it is rare that we post on a weekend, we want to highlight that for the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, life has been challenging recently. Yesterday, what has been feared became a reality as the La Soufriere volcano began to slowly release ash, smoke and lava and eventually erupted, after months of seismic activity. This comes after a year of dealing with Covid-19 and the economic fallout from lockdowns and loss of employment. Thankfully, the death toll from...
Blog Post
Sex Offenders and High ACE Scores
In the Caribbean and elsewhere, sex offenders tend to be considered the worst of all offenders. If their crime was against a child, then they themselves become targets for violence from other inmates in prison. So it requires a mental adjustment and an objective stance to write about this research. Done by Barry University's Jill Levenson, the title is " Incorporating Principles of Trauma-Informed Care Into Evidence-Based Sex Offending Treatment ". She cites previous research to establish...
Blog Post
Changing Our Response to Childhood Adversity.
"For generations, we have trained practitioners to consider childhood suffering only through the institutional lens of child protection. Through research on the prevalence of ACEs in our most vulnerable children, it has become clear this approach is not enough." This is the introduction to an online event, "Changing Our Response to Childhood Adversity", to be hosted by The Learning Institute (https://www.learninginstitute.co.uk/) of the UK on 30th June 2021 where they will unveil their...
Blog Post
Are ACEs Overplayed?
Hello everyone! It's Friday again. To send you into the weekend, we want to ask you to put your thinking caps on. In reading the literature, it is clear that there is no unanimity with respect to the role that the Adverse Childhood Experiences study should have in guiding public health. One nation in which there has been much thought given to the issue is Scotland. In 2019 two advocates squared off to share their respective points of view as to the value of the ACEs research and how best it...
Blog Post
Florida Study Reveals Link Between ACEs and Sex Trafficking of Minors
Hi everyone! We trust you are doing well and enjoying the Community and benefiting from the resources being shared by our members. It is the 25th day of the month and you know what that means - we are looking at the issue of ACEs in the context of human trafficking. Today we have another resource to show the link between childhood adversity and the vulnerability of persons with high ACE scores to human trafficking. In this 2016 study, " Human Trafficking of Minors and Childhood Adversity in...
Blog Post
Still I Rise - A Documentary Highlighting Sex Trafficking (with ACEs Lurking in the Background).
Hey everyone! We hope the weekend has been a blast so far. As you know, we rarely post on the weekend. However, although it is Sunday, the date is the 25th of April, so we are sharing this post in fulfilment of our promise to highlight the issue of ACEs and Human Trafficking on the 25th day of every month. We did submit a post on the topic on 1st April to observe the 10th Anniversary of the laying in Parliament of the Trafficking In Persons Bill in Trinidad and Tobago. If you missed it,...
Blog Post
Can We Talk About George Floyd? [Al Jazeera article]
Hi everyone. As everyone knows, the year 2020 was defined by a series of events, many of which linger to this day. Covid-19, as devastating as it and government efforts to curb it have been, may have been eclipsed for a time by the reporting and riots which ensued after the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in the USA. Last week, the tension of a 3-week trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd ended with a guilty...
Member
Isabella Paz
Member
