Blog

By Bryce Covert, The New York Times, July 20, 2021 With more than half of American adults fully vaccinated against Covid , employers and employees alike have turned their eyes back to the office. They’re locked in a conflict over when they’ll return and, when they do, what the return will look like. But we shouldn’t just be talking about the parameters of how we get work done in a postpandemic world. We should be pushing to do less of it. In truth, the debate over the return to the office is...

From UMass Medical School Communications, July 15, 2021 The American Academy of Pediatrics has published Childhood Trauma & Resilience: A Practical Guide , written by UMass Medical School child trauma and treatment experts Heather Forkey, MD, and Jessica Griffin, PsyD, along with co-author Moira Szilagyi, MD, PhD, president-elect of the AAP. The new resource for clinicians and caregivers provides guidance on trauma-informed care and the protective power of resilience. It details the ways...

A newly developed document titled “Utilizing Data to Improve Child Wellbeing Through Community Action” has just been released and can be found attached to this blog post. The purpose of this document is to identify best practices in utilizing data to monitor and evaluate child adversity, health, development, and wellbeing in order to build community support and create policy, systems, and environmental change. This resource was created in partnership by All Children Thrive - California and...

Join us for an upcoming webinar, Beyond Employee Assistance Programs: How Organizations Can Take Care of Those, Taking Care of Others. The webinar is free to all and scheduled for July 15, 5-6pm CT and made possible through collaboration with Trilogy Behavioral Healthcare . Registration and more information is available below. The world has lived through a shared trauma. For over a year we have been thrust into grief, isolation, and fear for our health and the health of others. This free...

Over the past year since leaving an administrative position in healthcare as a Trauma Informed Administrator to launch as a full time consultant and advocate, I've been educating professionals around the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Positive Childhood Experiences, and in using a Trauma Informed Approach to service delivery. In my journey, I've encountered two wonderful surprises. Along with the joys of training professionals such as childcare leaders in two states; police...

The past year taught us valuable lessons about work and well-being. With the abrupt shift to remote work, many of us found ourselves juggling the demands of work, school, and home life in new ways. The pandemic highlighted and magnified the connection between work and overall well-being. It exposed all of us to new sources of stress and different kinds of fatigue. On the plus side, it taught us valuable lessons about how we can reorganize our lives, our work, and our workplaces so that they...

Burnout is endemic to the nonprofit sector, especially in human services-centered organizations. Nonprofit executives in particular face a high risk of burning out, and this is even more true for leaders of color. I have experienced this personally, as a woman of color leader. So let me begin with two offerings to those who are burned out or at risk of burnout, shared in the spirit of love and care: You are not a failure. Being burnt out does not mean that you have failed. It’s not you. It’s...

By Paulina Villegas and Hannah Knowles, The Washington Post, July 7, 2021 Several large-scale trials of a four-day workweek in Iceland were an “overwhelming success,” with many workers shifting to shorter hours without affecting their productivity, and in some cases improving it, in what researchers called “groundbreaking evidence for the efficacy of working time reduction.” Some of the trials’ key findings showed that a shorter week translated into increased well-being of employees among a...

By Soo Youn, The Washington Post, June 29, 2021 Meg Trowbridge’s plans for the week are pretty simple. She’ll take long, meandering walks and explore some new parks and visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the first time since 2019 — all on company time. “I’m so excited to take a morning or afternoon walk when I’m not in the crowd of after-work people,” said Trowbridge, a copywriter for Mozilla, which produces the Firefox Web browser. “I’m definitely going to hit SF MOMA and just...

The future of the workplace, as many have noted, is going to be hybrid — with most companies opting for some combination of in-person and remote work. Knowing what this hybrid workplace will look like is, in a sense, the easy part. But more important, and more complicated, is the how: How are we going to work together effectively in this hybrid world? How can companies set people up for success and create environments that foster creativity, belonging and a sense of purpose when their...

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2021 http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2021-06-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_June_2021.pdf Hi folks, June is NATIONAL PTSD AWARENESS MONTH I thought I would share a few of the resources that have...

La Maida Project is thrilled to share videos from our recent webinar series “Exploring the Role of Culture in Healing”. We had an great audience turn out and robust dialogue with our panel of guest speakers including Ken Epstein, PhD LCSW , leader in trauma-informed systems transformation, Anil Vadaparty , CEO of child-welfare agency McKinley, and Omid Naim, MD , integrative psychiatrist and founder of La Maida Project. In these webinars we discuss the role of leadership in trauma-informed...