Tagged With "Child Care Bridge Program"
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Sponsorship Opportunity to Help Community Resilience Initiative
CRI is seeking various levels of sponsors for our Fourth Annual Beyond Paper Tigers conference. We would love if you would consider partnering with us to assist our community's education, best practices, and treatment strategies. Sponsorships will help pay for speakers, meals, supplies, and conference activities. To partner with us at our highest gift level- as a lead sponsor- would bring profound impact to our conference. We would be grateful for the honor of calling you our lead sponsor,...
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Strategies 2.0 Trauma-informed Care Free Webinars
Creating Trauma-Informed Early Learning Environments Wednesday, February 21, 10 am to 11:30 am - FREE Lori Chelius and Regan Overholt will discuss a caregiver’s role in a trauma-informed strategy. They will address the harmful effects of exclusionary discipline practices on racial, ethnic, and gender disparities, and other children with high ACE scores. They will offer strategies on how to create a resilience building/trauma-informed early learning environment. Intended Audience : childcare...
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Strengthening Families Framework TRAINERS
Thirty more individuals in the states of California, Indiana, and Alabama were just trained to be a trainer of the Strengthening Families Framework from the National Alliance of Children's Trust and Prevention Funds. This is HUGE! That makes slightly over 1,000 total from the 50 states. But what happens now? We have newly trained trainers trying to reach out and converse with everyone and anyone, with local Health and Human Services Agencies, with local schools, fire departments and police...
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Strengthening Families: Increasing positive outcomes for children and families [www.cssp.org]
We engage families, programs, and communities in building key protective factors. Children are more likely to thrive when their families have the support they need. By focusing on the five universal family strengths identified in the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework , community leaders and service providers can better engage, support, and partner with parents in order to achieve the best outcomes for kids. How We Do It The Strengthening Families framework is a...
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Study Examines Links Between Early ACEs and Outcomes in Middle Childhood
"Adverse experiences in infancy and toddlerhood: Relations to adaptive behavior and academic status in middle childhood", will be published in the August issue of the journal Child Abuse and Neglect . The study, conducted by University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researchers Lorraine McKelvey, Nikki Edge, Glenn R. Mesman, and Leanne Whiteside-Mansell, along with Arizona State University researcher Robert H. Bradley, collected and analyzed interview data from a sample of low-income...
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Supporters Cheer Focus on Child Health and Wellbeing in Newsom’s Budget [calhealthreport.org]
Efforts to improve the health and education of California’s children would get a giant funding boost under Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget, a prospect that’s generating a swell of excitement among child advocacy groups. The governor’s first budget proposal, released Jan. 10, offers numerous supports aimed directly at bolstering childhood health, including $105 million to pay for developmental and mental health screenings for low-income children, almost $110 million to expand home visiting...
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Temporary Free Access to Paediatrics & Child Health (PCH) articles (Oxford Academic)
Temporary free access to highly cited articles making an impact in Paediatrics & Child Health ( PCH ) has just been opened up by Oxford Academic. If you're a research hoarder like me, you'll want to check this out. https://academic.oup.com/pch/pages/highly_cited_articles
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The Brain Architects Podcast: Laying the Foundation [developingchild.harvard.edu]
By Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, January 15, 2020 Why are the early years of a child’s life so important for brain development? How are connections built in the brain, and how can early brain development affect a child’s future health? This episode of The Brain Architects dives into all these questions and more. First, Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child, explains more about the science behind how brains are built—their architecture—and...
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The Developing Brain & Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...
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The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected [nytimes.com]
The parents in Overland Park, Kan., were fed up. They wanted their children off screens, but they needed strength in numbers. First, because no one wants their kid to be the lone weird one without a phone. And second, because taking the phone away from a middle schooler is actually very, very tough. “We start the meetings by saying, ‘This is hard, we’re in a new frontier, but who is going to help us?’” said Krista Boan, who is leading a Kansas City-based program called START, which stands...
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The First Five Years Matters: Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health
Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health The first relationship—usually this is between the mother and her infant—has an enduring impact on all later stages of human development. This relationship which occurs has been described by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which at its core, is about how the mother helps the infant regulate emotion. The mother-infant attachment communications are essential because they directly affect the development of the brain. Dr. Allan Schore, the...
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kristina Brinkerhoff: Educational Consultant
Dr. Kristina Brinkerhoff, a consultant, keynote speaker, presenter and trainer, leverages over 20 years of experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent and adoptive mom of five foster children, to help educators gain an understanding of the effects Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and the importance of trauma informed practice in schools.
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The Importance of Positive Emotional Communication Starting From Infancy
“Why do some children become sad, withdrawn, insecure, or angry, whereas others become happy, curious, affectionate, and self-confident?” It has something to do with emotions and emotional communication.
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The Mindful Child [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
It’s long been known that meditation helps children feel calmer, but new research is helping quantify its benefits for elementary school-age children. A 2015 study found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who participated in a four-month meditation program showed improvements in executive functions like cognitive control, working memory, cognitive flexibility — and better math grades. A study published recently in the journal Mindfulness found similar improvements in mathematics in fifth...
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The people taking care of American children live in poverty [LATimes.com]
The people paid to watch America's children tend to live in poverty. Nearly half receive some kind of government assistance: food stamps, welfare checks, Medicaid. Their median hourly wage is $9.77 — about $3 below the average janitor's. In a new report , researchers at UC Berkeley say that child care is too vital to the country's future to offer such meager wages. Those tasked with supporting kids, they say, are shaping much of tomorrow's workforce. "Economic insecurity, linked to low...
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The ‘Problem Child’ Is a Child, Not a Problem [nytimes.com]
Matt Hannon was in preschool when he started getting into trouble. Teachers quickly labeled his mischievous behavior — like cutting his hair under the table — problematic. His kindergarten teacher warned that if Matt didn’t stop using “potty words,” she would make him do his work in the bathroom. His first-grade teacher forced Matt to copy the phrase “I will not blurt out in circle” 100 times. Matt began to dread school and developed serious separation anxiety. His acting-out got worse. “I...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Scotland as an ACE Aware Nation - Going on a Bear Hunt
My venture into the #Twittersphere has taken me across the ocean to the lovely country of Scotland. While I have not yet had the privilege of visiting, I have connected with a pioneering group of people who have a collective goal to make the entire country ACEs aware. And guess what...they are succeeding in ways that America should take note and follow in their able footsteps. Imagine an entire nation of 5 million people becoming aware of childhood adversity and the impact on our health and...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Sesame Street in Communities & the Circle of Care
Two years ago, Sesame Workshop, the educational arm of Sesame Street, launched Sesame Street in Communities to offer support, guidance, and tools to those working with our most vulnerable population, our children. In the “About Us” description on their website Sesame Street in Communities they share their intention: “ Every day, you make a difference by helping kids and families grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. Organizations like yours unite communities, foster families’ and kids’...
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The Relentless School Nurse: When the Health Office Pass Includes Emotions
The collaboration between school counselors and school nurses creates safe spaces for students at school. Building a coalition between school counselors and school nurses creates a safety net for our most complex and challenging students while benefiting the whole school community. Promoting connections through intentional relationship building, and ensuring a school environment that is physically, emotionally and psychologically safe changes the culture and climate. Read about an amazing...
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The scientific effort to protect babies from trauma before it happens [qz.com]
By Jenny Anderson, Quartz, June 22, 2019. For nearly 30 years, Javier Aceves worked as a pediatrician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, focusing primarily on disadvantaged families. His approach was holistic: along with treating children, he did outreach with teens, and helped children’s parents with everything from addiction to learning how to be a supportive caregiver. For all the programs he helped develop, the patterns he kept seeing haunted him. He could treat young kids’ medical problems,...
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The soaring cost of US child care, in 5 charts [The Conversation]
The cost of having children in the U.S. has climbed exponentially since the 1960s. So it’s no wonder the growing crop of Democratic presidential candidates have been proposing ways to address or bring down the costs tied to raising a family. Most recently, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she wants to provide universal access to child care. According to her proposal, the U.S. would partner with local governments and other organizations to provide various child care options, paying...
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The State of the Evidence for Intervention and Prevention Programs for Child Welfare-Involved Populations [CEBC]
As of May 2019, the California Evidence-Based Clearing House (CEBC) has reviewed and rated over 450 programs. These programs are organized across 47 unique topic area s and each topic area varies in the number of programs with published peer-reviewed research evidence. The topic areas with the smallest number of research-supported programs are listed in the first table below in order to illustrate where gaps in effective services exist for child welfare-involved populations. The second table...
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The Trauma-Sensitive Parenting Summit & Commentary
"Having a history of trauma or loss does not by itself predispose you to have a child with disorganization. It is the lack of resolution that is the essential risk factor. It is never too late to move toward making sense of your experiences and healing your past. Not only you but also your child will benefit." That's a quote from the book Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, which was published fifteen freaking years ago. It's...
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They May Be in Demand, But Child Care Workers Still Struggle to Make Ends Meet [kqed.org]
By Katie Orr, KQED, June 25, 2019. There’s an overwhelming demand for child care in California but not enough people who provide it. The industry is notorious for offering low pay and long hours. Several bills pending in the Legislature seek to address these problems, including one that would let in-home providers unionize. It's a measure that longtime in-home provider Pat Alexander is passionate about. Alexander runs Alexander Preschool and Child Care out of her home in Elk Grove...
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This is what work-life balance looks like at a company with 100% retention of moms [Quartz]
For 33 years Patagonia has had an on-site child care center that bears little resemblance to what anyone might imagine corporate on-site child care looks like. It is run by teachers, some of whom are bilingual and trained in child development. Learning takes place outdoors as much as in. Parents often eat lunch with their kids, take them to the farmer’s market or pick vegetables with them in the “secret” garden . Patagonia buses school-aged kids back to the company’s headquarters, allowing...
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TIC: News and Notes for the Week of October 21, 2019 [dhs.wisconsin.gov]
ACEs, Adversity's Impact There is only one boat: The myth of normalcy by Dr. Gabor Mate Understanding historical trauma to strengthen community Childhood trauma linked to early, premarital childbirth and poor health for women Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become 'forgotten' victims. It's time they were given a voice Children's language skills may be harmed by social hardship Does racism...
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Toxic Schools Worsening Toxic Stress: The Destructive Reign of Universal Standards, Pathology, Medication and Behaviorism
This post is the first chapter of a book. The names HAVE NOT been changed, as each individual profoundly impacted the author's growth and development. She wants their identities to remain intact. I did not realize that my first years in public education would profoundly shape my trauma-informed journey and what I would do nearly twenty years later. But I clearly remember the late fall of 2001. I was completing my second year in a master’s program for school counseling at the University of...
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Toxic Stress: Issue Brief on Family Separation and Child Detention [immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu]
By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...
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Toxic Stress: Issue Brief on Family Separation and Child Detention [immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu]
By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...
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Trauma-Informed Care as a Universal Precaution: Beyond the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire [jamanetwork.com]
By Nicole Racine, Teresa Killam, and Sheri Madigan, JAMA Pediatrics, November 4, 2019 Experiences of childhood adversity are common, with more than 50% of adults reporting having experienced at least 1 adversity as children and more than 6% exposed to 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). There is currently a controversial debate in the medical field as to whether the ACEs questionnaire, which asks about abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18 years, should be...
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Trauma Informed Care from the Baby's Perspective
The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is pioneering a model of care that includes the baby starting at conception. Our model also includes transgenerational and intergenerational trauma, prenatal experiences, birth and attachment and bonding. We have a conference on this topic October 5-7, 2018, in Denver, CO. See: https://birthpsychology.com/2018-conference/welcome I will be a the Zero to Three conference representing our programs for a poster session. If you are...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Educator Self-Care
Working in a school is hard. It doesn’t matter if you work in a suburban, urban, or rural area. It doesn’t matter if you work with 5 year-olds on building empathy, teach 11 year-olds about symbiosis, coach teachers in aligning curriculum, or help high school seniors choose their postsecondary pathways. It is hard work. From the cacophony of lockers closing at dismissal, to the challenge of getting 25 sets of 8 year-old eyes looking at you in synchrony, schools are a special kind of organized...
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Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
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Universal free lunch is linked to better test scores in New York City, new report finds [chalkbeat.org]
Offering all students free lunch helps boost academic performance, a new report, which looked at meal programs in New York City middle schools, shows. The study, out of Syracuse University’s Center for Policy Research, assessed the impact of universal free lunch on students who previously didn’t have access to such a meals program. Researchers found “statistically significant” bumps in reading and math state test scores once students attended schools with universal free lunch. One way to...
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We Have to Better Understand What Foster Parents Need [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Ross Hunter, The Chronicle of Social Change, October 11, 2019 As a new leader in the child welfare space, I thought it would be worth my while to do some listening before I made any big changes. So I went on a tour all over the state of Washington. I talked to caseworkers, foster parents, birth families, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and anyone else I could find who had an opinion. I got an earful. “Everything is broken.” “I had a great experience.” “The caseworker never called...
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We Need a Healing Movement
What if you had developed a cure for the most painful and costly public health problem in America, you had proven that it worked, and you were offering it for free, but could not reach those who need it most because no one wants to talk about the problem? Tragically, this is my reality and the truth about human nature. It is easier to suffer in silence than acknowledge the painful things that happen to us. Over 20 years ago, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser...
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WEBINAR: Amplify Impact from National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation on 8/29
High-quality early childhood education (ECE) has an enormous positive impact on lifelong health, serving as a protective factor against adult disease and disability. Children who receive high-quality ECE stay in school longer and earn more income as adults, helping to close the income inequality gap. Yet parents sometimes struggle to access or pay for available programs, and only about 16% of children who were eligible for federal childcare subsidies in 2015 received them. Given the high...
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(webinar) Creating Trauma-Informed Early Childhood Learning Environments
Lori Chelius from Origins Training & Consulting and Regan Overholt presented the webinar in partnership with Lead4 Tomorrow /Family Hui and ACEs Connection Network. Origins offers a number of training and consulting services for both organizations and individuals, including its Resilience Champion program, a 6-week online course for leaders who want who want to lead their organizations and communities on the path to resilience. Click HERE for the prezi webinar. For more information on...
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Webinar: Leveraging Advances in Science to Achieve Breakthrough Impacts at Scale for Young Children Facing Adversity
DATE: Thursday, February 21, 2019 TIME: 11:00-11:45am Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, will address how new science is changing how we think about early childhood adversity and resilience – and how early experiences affect lifelong health and development. He will emphasize the need to address (and measure) individual differences in response to adversity and to intervention in very young children. He will also show how we can move...
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What do preschool teachers need to do a better job? (hechingerreport.org)
One city’s attempt to professionalize early education could be a model for the nation. “We believe that preschool is an integral part of the public school system and public school should be universally available because every child can benefit from it,” said Josh Wallack, Deputy Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education. “Therefore, preschool should be universal.” The changes have come with new money and support to ensure that the city is not only offering preschool to all, but...
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What do we invest in the country’s youngest? Little to nothing (hechingerreport.org)
Research has shown that unrelenting stress at a young age, known as toxic stress, causes long-lasting brain damage . The worse the damage, the harder it is for children to pay attention, absorb new information or trust adults — all skills critical for success in school — as they get older. The U.S. has even provided universal public preschool before , for a few years during World War II. That program ended in 1946. Since then, a growing body of research has demonstrated the value of...
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What Happens When Old and Young Connect (dailygood.org)
This year, for the first time ever, the U.S. has more people over 60 than under 18. That milestone has brought with it little celebration. Indeed, there are abundant concerns that America will soon be awash in a gray wave, spelling increased health care costs for an aging population, greater housing and transportation needs, and fewer young workers contributing to Social Security. Some fear a generational conflict over shrinking resources, a looming tension between kids and “canes.” As I...
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What If We Could Reach Families Before the Crisis? There Would Be Fewer Kids in Foster Care [chronicleofsocialchange.com]
It’s no secret that our foster care system is overburdened. More than 250,000 children enter foster care each year. We don’t have enough foster families to meet this demand, and we don’t have enough adoptive families either. At the end of 2017, 123,000 kids around the country were still waiting to be adopted into a family. But what if the only answer isn’t recruiting more foster and adoptive parents? Are there other things we can do? What if the answer is recruiting more communities to get...
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What ‘Lucky’ Looks Like for Many Parents: A Patchwork Childcare Arrangement [PSMag.com]
Twelve million children under the age of five rely on childcare each day while their parent(s) work. Two of them are mine. New America’s groundbreaking Care Report illuminated the myriad challenges parents face in securing childcare, among them that demand is too high to meet the staggeringly low supply of high-quality centers. And when high demand meets low supply, as any Econ 101 student can tell you, the price skyrockets. For those of us making it work, there is usually an asterisk hidden...
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What Makes For Quality Child Care? It Depends Whom You Ask [NPR.org]
When Jolie Ritzo was looking for day care for her son Cannon in Falmouth, Maine, she checked out as many centers as she could. She was looking for a place with the right feel. "Most importantly, the people who are providing the care are loving and kind, nurturing and interested in developing these little beings," she says. There was one center in town that had a great reputation, but it was so pricey, Ritzo says, "It would break the bank." She enrolled Cannon in a family child care based in...
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When Parents Fear "It's All My Fault"
Many of my colleagues in the field of early childhood mental health work with what are termed "high risk" populations. Children of drug addicted parents, victims of child abuse, and families in abject poverty. While the challenges these families face are daunting, I find myself feeling some envy for my colleagues whose clients are in such obvious distress that the need for intensive treatment of parent and infant is not in question. In my rural, small-town population things are not so clear.
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Where Childcare Is an Economic Engine [TheAtlantic.com]
At the end of a long day of work at a small sports-marketing firm in Atlanta, a very pregnant Micki Velmer is driving to pick up her 3-year-old son, Burke, from childcare when her car overheats and breaks down. Velmer’s husband, Jason, soon swings by to get her and then get both of them to the Frazer Center before it closes and starts charging late fees. Still, Velmer is uneasy. In just a few short weeks, once their second child is born, the Velmers will be paying more than $2,800 a...
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Why Do So Few Americans Take Maternity Leave? [PSMag.com]
You probably already know the United States has some of the worst parental leave laws in the world. Among the 41 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. is the only one with no guaranteed paid time off to care for a new baby. But it’s hard to say how these laws actually affect new parents, since no federal agency collects data on how many workers take parental leave. A few recent analyses, however, might offer some clues. It turns out that...
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Why Does America Hate Its Children? [nytimes.com]
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times, January 16, 2020 The other day a correspondent asked me a good question: What important issue aren’t we talking about? My answer, after some reflection, is the state of America’s children. Now, it’s not entirely fair to say that we’re ignoring the plight of our children. Elizabeth Warren, characteristically, has laid out a comprehensive, fully financed plan for universal child care. Bernie Sanders, also characteristically, says he’s for it but hasn’t...