Tagged With "peer led"
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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ACEs screening in CA — a Q and A with Dr. Dayna Long
Last year, the California Department of Health Care Services rolled out its plans for universal screening for trauma among its pediatric and adult Medicaid population. Beginning January 1, 2020, California physicians were able to receive an incentive payment of $29 for each pediatric patient screened for ACEs using the PEARLs ( Pediatrics Adverse Childhood and Resilience Study) tool. Dr. Dayna Long talked with ACEs Connection staff reporter Laurie Udesky about ACEs science, what led to the...
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Assemblymember Bonta hosts Raising of America's "Wounded Places" screening in Oakland, CA, Dec. 14, 2014
Assemblymember Rob Bonta sent out this email: As Chair of the Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color, I invite you to join Chair Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer and me for a screening and discussion of the moving documentary "Wounded Places" at the Elihu Harris State Building in Oakland on Monday, December 14th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. " Wounded Places" describes how structural racism has ravaged communities and exposed children and families to multiple adversities...
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Building A Resilient Berkeley: Gathering and a Conversation
Communities across the country have launched cross sector collaboratives to create resilient, trauma informed communities. Join us, ACEs Connection Network (acesconnection.com) on December 11 as we discuss the potential to launch a similar collaborative in Berkeley. North Branch Berkeley Library, 12/11 4-5:30 pm. RSVP required due to room capacity: dprince@acesconnection.com
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Coalition Conducts Human Trafficking Prevention Campaign on 23 St. [richmondstandard.com]
By The Richmond Standard, September 28, 2019 A group of Richmond residents are partnering with local law enforcement agencies today to walk 23rd Street and offer free LED and solar-powered lights and other security devices as part of a human trafficking prevention campaign. Richmond police reported that over 100 houses along the corridor were visited by me. Home Depot provided support with free security lights, cameras, and fence repair to residents along the 23rd Street Corridor to improve...
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Dozens of stakeholders representing thousands of practitioners send public comments on Calif. ACEs-screening plan
Update: We posted this story on Tuesday evening and received a response from the Department of Health Care Services Wednesday that clarifies additional information. DHCS information Officer Katharine Weir said that subject to budget approval by the legislature and the governor: The reimbursement rate will be $29. Federally Qualified Health Centers will also be reimbursed for screening pediatric patients for trauma through Prop 56 funds and federal matching funds. In response to a question...
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Dr. Nadine Burke Harris Presents at SCVMC-Pediatric Grand Rounds
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris presented today at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center during Pediatric Grand Rounds to a full room (standing room only) of pediatricians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, public health professionals and allied medical staff. With the show of hands, many of us in the room were familiar with ACEs science and the health impacts of toxic stress. With ease, Dr. Burke Harris dove into great detail of our bodies response to toxic stress and the multitude of...
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During COVID-19, how does a trauma-informed school pivot to distance learning?
All photos courtesy of Antioch Middle School staff Antioch Middle School seventh-grader Alyssia Garcia was accustomed to scanning the cafeteria during lunch for kids who might need her assistance. “I’d look for kids who looked sad, kids who were sitting alone, kids who looked angry,” says Garcia, a peer advocate at her school. Alyssia Garcia When she’d spot students sitting alone or looking sad, she’d approach them and ease into conversation. “If it’s a sad person, I’ll try to cheer them up...
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How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children
Dr. Elizabeth Grady is a pediatrician at the South San Francisco Clinic, a community clinic of San Mateo Medical Center. She and Susana Flores , a senior public health nurse with San Mateo County Health, spoke with me about how the clinic and other health agencies in San Mateo have been able to craft ways to work together to prevent and heal toxic stress in children. Grady also talked about how she and Flores have been working with the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), a group of...
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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Immigrant teens, parents explore ACEs, resilience in 5-week course with family doc
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family doctor in San Jose, Calif., was determined to find a way to teach ACEs science to her patients. Teens would come to the Washington Neighborhood Clinic clearly depressed by a range of problems at home that were contributing to risky sexual behavior and marijuana use, as well as preventable health problems like extreme obesity.
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Interactive training on nature and health for health care providers, Oakland, Ca
October 27, 2018 8:45 AM 5:00 PM PDT Calling all health care providers! Save the date! Saturday October 27th, 2018 Join The Center for Nature and Health and Primary Care Clinic, UCSF Benioff's Children's Hospital: When: Saturday, October 27th, 2018, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (Outdoor time included!) Where: CHORI Library, 5700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, Ca Register now: www.bitly.com/ucsf- nature2018 Featured speakers: Daphne Miller, MD, Physician and author Jose Gonzalez, Founder, Latino...
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Kaiser family medicine clinic launches 4-question ACE survey pilot for adults
In July, medical residents in family medicine at Kaiser Permanente in San Jose, CA, began screening adult patients for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). But it’s an ACE survey with a twist: it’s shorter, not the 10-question survey of the original CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , according to Dr. Kathryn Ridout who is leading the pilot along with Dr. Francis Chu and Dr. Alec Uy . Why a shorter ACE survey? Dr. Kathryn Ridout “When we were doing our initial discussions with stakeholders in...
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KQED CA Report asks: "Should Police Violence Be Viewed as a Public Health Issue?"
Framed by the story of Mario Woods' grieving mother, this California Report article includes perspectives from Palo Alto pediatrician Rhea Boyd and community leaders in San Francisco and Alameda counties, on how police violence contributes to traumatization. What is the public health solution?
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Leaders in SF public housing deal with their own and community trauma head on
Sengthong Sithounnolat, Jeris Woodson, Donald Greene, Ashley Blanco On a recent Saturday, 10 people gather around a table at the offices of Trauma Transformed in Oakland, Calif., where quotes from figures like Frederick Douglas, Nelson Mandela, and Coretta Scott King grace one wall as light streams in from a skylight above. The group is known as the Resident Warriors, which meets weekly. One participant talks of her recovery from addiction and her mother’s murder. Another mentions being...
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Lesson learned integrating ACEs science into health clinics: Staff first, THEN patients
Nearly two years ago, a team of colleagues at LifeLong Medical Clinics jumped at the opportunity to integrate practices based on ACEs science to prevent and heal trauma in their patients when it joined a two-year learning collaborative known as the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC). A few months after training began, the staff realized they had to put on the brakes.
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Oakland, CA, trying out model used in Baltimore to reduce trauma, increase resilience
Oakland BSC activity: Photo/ Courtesy of Trauma Transformed/East Bay Agency for Children When a group of community organizations in Baltimore came together in 2015, they already knew trauma figured large in many lives. There was violence in the community, in schools, and in community members’ homes. Police brutality occurred. Many suffered the loss of loved ones to incarceration or death. There were house fires and homelessness. Much of the dysfunction was systemic and rooted in racism,...
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Oakland Promise Brilliant Baby is giving families a Resilient Start
Program Provider Sadie Williams works with financial coach Judit Trinidad as they practice family engagement for Oakland Promise Brilliant Baby Program enrollees.
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Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
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Rage, Reflection and Restoration: Healing Circle with Trauma Transformed
Join Oakland's Trauma Transformed Center for a youth led healing circle to promote wellness in a challenging political climate. Limited space still available! Contact gianna.annino@ebac.org to RSVP.
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Register now: Free ACEs Connection Webinar on the Human Impact of Climate Change
A year after 85 people died in the wildfire that swept through Paradise, CA, and nearby towns, one of the town’s survivors will talk about how she and others are using resilience practices in their recovery from the trauma. On Wednesday, Nov. 13, Paradise resident Kelly Doty will have a conversation with Elaine Miller-Karas, who developed the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). Doty, who lost her home in the fire, and Miller-Karas will discuss resilience education skills designed to help...
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Report reveals how foster care, juvenile and adult justice systems traumatize youth, calls for policy shifts
YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...
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"Resilience" Comes to Santa Clara
In the first of a series of planned screenings of the film Resilience , the Santa Clara ACEs Connection community offered a panel led discussion about how to bring trauma informed practice and resilience building to the entire county. Rhoda Blankenship, Director of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health for County Public Health Department, emceed the event, along with Andrew Cain, both of whom sit on the Santa Clara community collaborative steering committee. Following opening remarks by...
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RYSE gathering: To promote healing from trauma, institutions need to stop seeing youth as the problem
A young man told clinical therapist Marissa Snoddy recently that when she calls him a leader, she got it all wrong. “He said, ‘I just came from Juvenile Hall,’ I’m not a leader.” But, she said, “We just kept giving him love. And we said, ‘You’re courageous for showing up and being here,’” The very fact that he was there, she explained, showed he was a leader. Snoddy related the anecdote recently for 80 people attending the Trauma and Learning Series launch led by Rising Youth for Social...
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San Bruno, CA, police reduce stress, burn-out with mindfulness
When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...
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Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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Survey: Healthcare providers, community organizations weigh in on California's ACEs screening program
In January, California took a historic leap forward to promote universal ACEs screening of the state’s 13 million adults and children in the Medi-Cal program. The eventual goal is to promote ACEs screening for all patients, but this is a first step in dealing with a major issue that ACEs science has identified: that many children will develop serious health problems later in life because the healthcare system is not currently set up to detect the roots of those problems. The term ACEs, which...
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‘The Butterfly Effect’ Is a Youth-Led Movement Bringing Attention to the Thousands of Kids in Detention Centers (dailygood.org)
Thousands of paper-made butterflies have been spotted around the San Francisco Bay Area, in libraries, schools and city halls. Created out of everything from coffee filters to scraps of construction paper, the colorful winged insects collectively make up The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful , a youth-led art and activism project raising awareness about the 15,000 children who have been and are currently being held in U.S. immigration detention centers. “We want [migrant youth] to...
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Toxic Stress, Behavioral Health, and the Next Major Era in Public Health by Mental Health America
To view the document, click on the following link: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/toxic-stress-behavioral-health-and-next-major-era-public-health
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Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
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Youth court banishes blame; leads with ACEs science
YMCA Marin County Youth Court in San Rafael, California In her opening statement, 17-year-old youth advocate Eva advises jurors how to proceed and summarizes her “client’s” good qualities. “As you will see, Julian is genuine, well-spoken and friendly. I recommend asking him about his friends and family, his future plans and his activities outside of school.” (First names only of all minors are used to protect their privacy.) Welcome to the YMCA Marin County (CA) Youth Court, one of 1,400...
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Youth-led community organizing as a tool for building resilience
It started as an answer to a youth-led campaign. Young people in arts programs in San Francisco Bay Area schools had produced spoken word videos about inequities in their communities that helped put them at risk for type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jean Junior The response by their peers was enormous, according to Dr. Jean Junior, who volunteered for the project as a pediatric resident at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). “Young people would say ‘You’ve actually gotten me interested.
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A Better Normal Friday, June 19th at Noon PDT: LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma
Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of A Better Normal, our ongoing series in which we envision the future as trauma-informed. LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma With Panelists Rev. Dr. D. Mark Wilson and Alexander Cho, Ph.D., Moderated by ACEs Connection staff members Jenna Quinn and Alison Cebulla Friday, June 19th, 2020 Noon to 1pm, PT (3pm to 4pm ET) >>Click here to register<< Please join us...
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Trauma to Trust uses ACEs science to heal wounds between community members, police
photo courtesy of EJUSA/Ron Holtz Studio Forty-seven-year-old Al-Tariq Best, founder and executive director of the HUBB , an arts and healing organization for youth, recalls the rage, humiliation and fear he felt as a 17-year-old when he and three other Black friends were pulled over by police in Newark, N.J. Al-Tariq Best “[There were] all these people around us. They search the car. They strip the car down. They make us pull our pants down in broad daylight. And I'm, I'm upset. And I'm...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything.
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Child Life specialists empower kids in hospitals, disasters and now the pandemic
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...
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Greater Richmond Trauma Informed Community Network, first to join ACEs Cooperative of Communities, shows what it means to ROCK!
In 2012, Greater Richmond SCAN and five other community partners hatched a one-year plan to educate the Richmond, Virginia, community about ACEs science and to embed trauma-informed practices. Eight years later, the original group has evolved into the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (GRTICN) with 495 people and 170 organizations. And they're just scratching the surface.
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COVID-19 Black initiative delivers call to action in San Francisco Bay Area
As the COVID-19 pandemic began its devastating sweep through African American communities in April, Andre Chapman, CEO of the San Jose, California-based Unity Care , saw a glaring need for developing a COVID-19 prevention campaign that spoke directly to African Americans. “Many of our young folks and families really didn't understand the impact of this virus, nor did they believe much of the information that was coming through the media,” says Chapman. His organization provides housing and...
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Want to empower youth in communities of color during COVID? Let them lead.
Widespread reporting has revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated many poor communities of color. Less widely known is how the pandemic has affected young people in those communities. “COVID-19 has had a particularly harsh impact on youth of color,” further traumatizing [juvenile-justice] system-impacted youth and their families already struggling with disproportionately high rates of disease, death, job loss and housing insecurity,” said Jim Keddy of Youth Forward . Keddy was...
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Speakers at children & youth conference call for systems change based in love, liberation
California can support children and youth by tackling the state’s — and the country’s — legacy of White supremacy and replacing it with a trauma-informed approach of love, empathy, and support.
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Youth Detention Facility finds culture of kindness more effective than punishment
A corner of the Multi-Sensory De-escalation Room, All MSDR photos courtesy of Valerie Clark When a young person enters the de-escalation room in the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility , they’ll find dimmed lights, bottles of lavender, orange and other essential oils, an audio menu featuring the rush of ocean waves and other calming sounds, along with squeeze balls, TheraPutty, jigsaw puzzles, and an exercise ball to bounce on. TheraPutty, squeeze balls and more Sometimes, with a...
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CALIFORNIA ACES ACADEMY - Session 8 with Robert Sege, MD, PhD | April 22
CALIFORNIA ACES ACADEMY LIVE WEBINAR with FREE CME/CE Educate, Inspire, Connect HOPE: Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences presented by Dr. Robert Sege Thursday, April 22, 2021 | 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm (PT) This interactive session will describe how ACEs screening can be enhanced by also considering HOPE: Healthy Outcomes from Positive Childhood Experiences. Children’s brains develop in response to their experiences, both adverse and beneficial. Just as adverse childhood experiences can...
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HOPE Summit speakers show how positive childhood experiences offset adversity
The Rev. Darrell Armstrong, pastor of the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey, is an accomplished man. He graduated from Stanford University in public policy and went on to get his master’s degree in divinity studies at Princeton. As a former director in the New Jersey Department of Human Services, he was responsible for New Jersey’s statewide strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. Armstrong has also worked as an entrepreneur, workshop facilitator, and radio host.
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To solve the Black maternal mortality crisis, start with upending racist practices
It’s been all over the news for months: Black women in the United States are dying from complications during their pregnancies or in childbirth at alarming rates, and those deaths are preventable. Less well explored is how systemic racism and historical trauma have been at the core of what’s driven up these rates over several decades. A March 20 conference entitled The Impact of ACEs on Black Maternal Health took an in-depth look into why Black maternal mortality and complications during...
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Childcare providers use two- generational approach to help preschoolers from being expelled
It’s shocking: Preschoolers are three times more likely to be expelled than children in elementary, middle and high school, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Boys are four times more likely than girls to be kicked out, and African American children are twice as likely as Latinx and White children. One organization with childcare centers and mental health providers in Kentucky and Ohio began a long journey 15 years ago, when they began hearing about...
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California advocates press for expansion of visiting rights to incarcerated loved ones
In a recent nightmare, 8-year-old Jovina dreamt that her father got COVID-19. He was getting sicker, but she and her mother weren’t able to get there in time. “There,” in her father’s case, is a cell at the California Correctional Center (CCC) in Susanville, California, nearly 300 miles from where she lives in San Jose. In Jovina’s mind are a swarm of worries about her father’s welfare, her mother Benee Vejar reports. If an earthquake shakes the Bay Area, Jovina says, “What if the building...
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Bruce Perry, Melissa Merrick discuss "What Happened to You?"
Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey have known each other for more than 30 years. Both are deeply interested in childhood trauma and healing. But it was following a 60 Minutes segment Winfrey did in 2018 on childhood trauma, for which she interviewed Perry, that the two decided to take their work together to the next level. They tapped Oprah’s star power and worldwide reach and Perry’s deep expertise in brain science to collaborate on a book project, the recently released,...
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Peer-led organization offers San Francisco's unhoused food, work, dignity and more
He is sprawled out on the sidewalk, motionless, flushed cheeks framed by high cheekbones. He’s slender, probably in his mid-20s, his straight, coal black hair pulled back, and his orange t-shirt twisted up over his stomach. “He’s OD’ing on fentanyl!” shouts a guy holding a skateboard.
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Dan Press traces how legal work for Native Americans led to advocacy to uproot trauma
L-R Dr. Mary Cwik, Dr. Tami DeCoteau, Dan Press, Dr. Zach Kaminsky, photo courtesy of Elizabeth Prewitt In 1964, Dan Press was in his first year of law school and was not liking it; he wanted a way out. He applied for a volunteer spot with AmeriCorps VISTA, the domestic version of the Peace Corps, and was intrigued by a position on an Indian reservation. Dan Press “I knew nothing about Indians, but it sounded like a good opportunity,” says Press, who was raised in Flushing, in the Queens...