Blog

Accomplishments start with dreams, and dreams start with inspiration. When it comes to inspiring children to dream big, it all starts with parents. That was the message heard by more than 500 people who attended the sixth annual Merced County Parent Institute Conference, a turnout that helped make Saturday’s event the most successful yet in its six-year history. The free event, organized by the Merced County Office of Education, the Merced Union High School District and the state Child Care...

Imagine identifying a toxin so potent it could rewire a child’s brain and erode his immune system. A substance that, in high doses, tripled the risk of heart disease and lung cancer and reduced life expectancy by 20 years. And then realizing that tens of millions of American children had been exposed. Dr. @Nadine Burke Harris, California’s newly appointed surgeon general, will tell you this is not a hypothetical scenario. She is a leading voice in a movement trying to transform our...

Child and family demographic trends help project potential needs for education, child care, health care, and other services. Demographic projections point to an overall shortage of children relative to older populations, which will lead to workforce and taxpayer shortages in the coming decades (1, 2) . This means each child is more important to the future of California and the U.S. than ever before (1) . It also means that leaders need to invest in programs and policies that nurture children...

Hoping for a friendlier response from Gov. Gavin Newsom than she got from Jerry Brown, state Sen. Nancy Skinner is again proposing legislation that would ban out-of-school suspensions in all grades for student behavior deemed “defiant and disruptive” by school authorities. If Skinner’s bill, SB 419 , passes the Legislature, it will mark the third time this decade that a ban on these suspensions — which data show are disproportionately meted out to students of color, LGBT students and those...

In a report that treats Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis as a symptom of racism, city and county officials this week pointed to the high number of black people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles and the need to address the disparity in order to address the crisis. Black people have long been overrepresented among Los Angeles County’s homeless population. In a 2017 survey, black people made up one in 10 people in the county, but were 40 percent of the homeless population, according to...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has been on a mission to raise awareness about the impact toxic stress and trauma can have on children. About seven years ago, the UC Davis School of Medicine-trained pediatrician founded the Center for Youth Wellness, which advocates for screening and early intervention to head off adverse childhood experiences. She now has a much bigger megaphone, having been named California’s first surgeon general last month. Harris, the author of The Deepest Well: Healing the...

More than 85,000 of California’s most vulnerable low-income residents, including those who are homeless and have been recently incarcerated, are now enrolled in a pilot project designed to link health care to social services. Twenty-five counties and the city of Sacramento are participating in the Whole Person Care project, a $3 billion initiative funded by the state and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The five-year project, which began in late 2016, is an...

Rosa Franco, a farm worker living in the rural community of Huron, suffers from many conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. To Franco, one of her gloomiest moments was when her doctor told her she had cancerous cysts. Due to her immigration status and lack of health coverage, Rosa has not been able to undergo surgery. She is one of the 1.1 million undocumented immigrants who do not have Medi-Cal, not even for emergency care. According to data from UC Berkeley, there are...

You've maybe heard of EMDR, neurofeedback, EFT (tapping) or practiced yoga. Maybe you've taken part in traditional healing ceremonies or religious rituals that are part of your culture. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Do these things really heal the hurts that we acquire during life and can we trust our recovery to something other than pharmaceuticals or the therapists' couch? There are plenty of communities that say yes .

Register and join our next 4CA webinar on March 20

Please join ACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) for a free webinar to learn how to drive public-policy change without violating the restrictions on non-profit organizations or the requirements of funders. It will beheld on Thursday, March 14 (9:00-10:30 am PT/noon-1:30 pm ET). The featured speaker of the webinar, “Strategic Advocacy: Winning Policy Change without Crossing the Lobbying Line,” is attorney Allen Mattison, an expert at helping...

We're back!! Join us for Policymaker Education Day 2019 on MAY 1!