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While many organizations are trauma-informed, becoming trauma-responsive means looking at every aspect of an organization’s programming, environment, language, and values and involving all staff in better serving clients who have experienced trauma. Moving from Trauma-Informed to Trauma-Responsive: A Training Program for Organizational Change provides program administrators and clinical directors with key resources needed to train staff and make organizational changes to become...

The Blind Willie Johnson blues song “Motherless Children” highlights the maternal bonds that we all know are critical to emotional and cognitive development. Authors of previous work looking at infant stress response have found that these bonds begin in utero and can be influenced by both maternal and paternal influences and across multiple generations. 1 The observations of Barker et al 2 on the Dutch famine birth cohort of World War II were perhaps the first published observations of this...

Life expectancy is highly correlated with ACE scores and complex childhood trauma. Enter your address or zip code to know what the health outcomes are in your neighborhoods and communities. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Life Expectancy Calculator

Here are four great YouTube videos highlighting some of the work happening on the ground in Shasta County. They are motivated and mobilized. According to one of the providers speaking towards the end of one video - patients/clients had positively "profound" responses to learning about their ACEs - and they felt empowered to do what they could do to not have their children have the same experience. More videos available here .

Webinar: Key findings from the Listening to Mothers in California Survey. For more information and to register, please see below. Webinar is Thursday, September 20 , from 12-1:00 PM In 2017, a team led by the National Partnership for Women & Families surveyed more than 2,500 women in California about their views and experiences with childbirth. The results, which will be released September 12, reveal what is and isn't working with maternity care in the Golden State. Join us Thursday,...

Want the best results out of your employees? Then be nice to them. New research from Binghamton University, State University at New York finds that showing compassion to subordinates almost always pays off, especially when combined with the enforcement of clear goals and benchmarks. "Being benevolent is important because it can change the perception your followers have of you," said Chou-Yu Tsai, an assistant professor of management at Binghamton University's School of Management. "If you...

Candida Rodriguez is my mentor, while she may disagree with that statement and say it is the opposite, it is the absolute truth. My respect, admiration, and amazement at the depth of her knowledge, talent, and compassion astound me every time we work together. Candida serves her complex and ever-changing community with dedication, skill and a relentless pursuit of coordinating care for her students and families. We are partners in the Community Cafe Initiative that began in 2015 after I...

If a pair of powerful Pennsylvania state senators get their way, a burgeoning approach to managing student behavior could become a mandate. State Sens. Pat Browne, R-Lehigh, and Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, announced a proposal last week to create a “trauma-informed system of education.” The central plank of their proposal is a requirement that all teachers, school board members, and school employees “with direct contact with students” receive trauma-informed training. The details don’t...

Hi ACEs community! The Wrestling Ghosts team is building a list of trauma-informed resources for those looking for anything from therapy, to parenting classes, to groups with like-minded people. If you are a therapist or counselor, or you know of an organization or other resource that may fit the bill, please fill out this form on the Wrestling Ghosts website. We are looking to create an extensive document that can be of help to anyone who doesn’t know where to start! This list will be...

In the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , Dr. Stephen Covey tells the story of being on a train one day. While on the train, there were two very noisy kids causing a disturbance to everyone around them. Covey noticed that the father was doing nothing about it, and after a period of restraint, he approached the father. Here’s Covey’s account of the situation: Living more compassionately If you treat every person you meet like they are dealing with a serious challenge, you’ll be...

Many of us probably don’t associate “happiness” with “work.” But maybe we should: Studies suggest that happy people are actually more productive and successful, and less likely to leave their jobs. This quiz measures how happy you are when you’re on the clock. It’s based on research that has identified key factors to happiness at work. [For more on this story, go to https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/take_quiz/happiness_at_work ]

In June, a group of Crawford County residents who are active participants in local work to create a trauma-informed community had the opportunity to attend a six-day workshop in Pittsburgh led by Reverend Paul Abernathy. Reverend Abernathy is the Director of FOCUS Pittsburgh and is part of a coalition that is leading the way in trauma-informed community development ( TICD ). We were joined by other groups from across the country including folks from Petersburg , Virginia , Richmond ,...