Tagged With "HEAL SF"
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Building Bridges to Resilience in Santa Barbara County
The full moon was setting and the sun was rising as organizers from KIDS Network, Children & Family Resource Services, Casa Pacifica, and the Department of Behavioral Wellness began setting up the 2019 BRIDGES TO RESILIENCE Conference on October 14 th at the beautiful Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. The stately halls and ballrooms were a flurry of activity as staff prepared to receive over 350 community members who work with children, youth and families in Santa Barbara County.
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ACEs Champion Julie Kurtz Gives Every Child (and Adult) a Voice
Julie Kurtz hasn’t stopped creating ways to build and promote resilience in herself and others who have experienced trauma since she left her family home for college at age 18. Although she experienced four types of adversity during her childhood, the CEO of the Center for Optimal Brain Integration has traveled a complex journey to mitigate those adversities by recognizing her own internal resilience, building skills to buffer her toxic and traumatic stress, uncovering her voice through...
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ACEs Connection Network seeks qualified applicants for SF Bay Area Regional Facilitator position
ACEs Connection Network is looking for a qualified person to work with communities, organizations and individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area to prevent, address and heal the trauma of ACEs and build resilience. This position will focus on working with existing efforts, avoiding duplication and re-enforcing cooperative, coordinated efforts to channel the diversity and richness of ACEs science and trauma work in the Bay Area. For the job posting and application instructions, see ACEs...
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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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Adversity and resiliency: The case for integrating ACEs and Strengthening Families approaches
Attached is the PowerPoint that was presented by Diane Kellegrew, Jane Stevens and Katie Albright in a webinar April 16. And below is the slide that ID's the presenters.
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SF Board of Supervisors introduces legislation to eliminate criminal justice fees (abc7.news)
The City of San Francisco is looking to eliminate criminal justice fees ranging from probation fees to electronic monitoring fees and booking fees. The fees, Breed said, create barriers for people attempting to turn their lives around, and the city only collects between 9 and 15 percent of the fees. The proposal, which Breed called a "collaboration," also has the support of the San Francisco Public Defender's Office and San Francisco District Attorney. "From a fiscal standpoint, a social...
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SF Giants promote "Audrie and Daisy" on Netflix tomorrow (Friday, Sept, 23)
This Friday, September 23 , don’t miss the premiere of a compelling new documentary called Audrie and Daisy on Netflix. To kick-off the upcoming launch, we staged an unconventional but inspiring send-off with the help of the San Francisco Giants this past Sunday . It was our 19th Annual Strike Out Violence Day at AT&T Park, and this year, the Giants hosted the courageous families of Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman, the two young women who are featured in the new film about two teenagers...
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SF Plans to Close Juvenile Hall, but a New Proposal Would Put More Youths There [sfchronicle.com]
By Jill Tucker and Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 2019 Even as San Francisco moves toward the unprecedented closure of its juvenile hall to end the jailing of young people, a new proposal by probation officials could significantly increase the number of youths held there. The idea to create a “detention-based therapeutic program” shocked many city officials, who criticized the plan as an unvetted move by juvenile probation officials to fill empty cells and save the...
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SF Police Commission head Suzy Loftus resigns for sheriff’s job [SFGate.com]
San Francisco Police Commission President Suzy Loftus resigned Tuesday, leaving the oversight board without a powerful voice amid a sustained push for reforms in the police force. Loftus is joining the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as assistant chief legal counsel for the law and policy team, and Sheriff Vicki Hennessy determined the role could create conflicts of interest with the duties of a police commissioner. Wednesday will be Loftus’ final meeting after almost five years on the...
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SF’s juvenile hall would shut down within 3 years under proposal [SF Chronicle]
San Francisco’s juvenile hall would close within three years under a proposal heading to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday with a majority of elected officials on board, backed by prominent supporters. Six of the 11 supervisors, the district attorney, public defender and other local officials have thrown their support behind the measure requiring the youth detention facility to close by the end of 2021. It would also create a working group to oversee the process and come up with...
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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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The Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma is coming!
Maybe you have heard about this initiative on one of the social networks or you followed the tour last year. If not, The Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma is a grassroots partnership between Calo Programs and three leading, national attachment, trauma and adoption nonprofits; The Attachment and Trauma Network (ATN), The American Adoption Congress (AAC) and Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh). The purpose of this collaboration is to increase compassion and...
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The Challenges and Blessings of My Dissociative Disorder
A remarkable coping mechanism helped me survive parts of my childhood, and I find I need to give a heads-up about it to anyone who treats me in a medical setting. While chatting about it at last year’s ACEs Conference in San Francisco, Dr. Vince Felitti asked me to write an article for The Permanente Journal about my experiences with the medical community, as a person with a childhood-trauma-related, but mostly invisible, mental health disorder. And, of course, who can say “No” to Dr.
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The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of California
While the impact of maltreatment on a child and their family is devastating, child maltreatment also has serious effects far beyond those for the victim. Maltreatment results in ongoing costs to taxpayers, institutions, businesses, and society at large. Local communities bear the brunt of these costs in the form of medical, educational, and judicial costs, though more tragic signs are seen in homelessness, addiction, and teen pregnancy. To create a concrete understanding of the widespread...
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Trauma Transformed launches regional effort in San Francisco Bay Area
Nearly 300 impassioned and committed people crowded into the Green Room at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center last week to launch Trauma Transformed. Known as T2, the regional effort representing the San Francisco...
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Dr. Ken Epstein Speaks About Trauma-Informed Work
In recognition of Child Abuse Prevention Month, the California Departments of Public Health, Health Care Services and Social Services, and multiple community partners welcomed Dr. Kenneth Epstein to speak about his work highlighting trauma and resilience-informed practices. The event was also co-sponsored by ACEs Connection Network, Kaiser Permanente, and UC Davis Medical Center. Dr. Epstein leads the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s (SFDPH) Trauma-Informed Systems Initiative,...
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From Convict to College Student (theatlantic.com)
California’s public universities are starting to embrace a program that helps transition people from prison to campus. A program at San Francisco State University has quietly been helping former prisoners earn college degrees for decades. Now, it’s gaining wider attention as schools around the state begin to look for ways to help formerly incarcerated men and women gain access to higher education. In 1967, John Irwin, who had been incarcerated before becoming a sociology professor at SF...
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Just one year of child abuse costs San Francisco, CA, $300 million….but it doesn’t have to
In 2015, 5,545 children in San Francisco, CA, were reported to have experienced abuse. Of those, the reports of 753 children were substantiated. The expense to San Francisco for not preventing that abuse will cost $400,533 per child over his or her lifetime. That adds up to $301.6 million for just that one year, according to “ The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of San Francisco.” And, because child abuse is profoundly underreported, the costs are likely to be as much as $5.6 billion/year,...
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KQED and the SF Homeless Project [KQED.org]
This is from Holly Kernan, executive director of KQED News: KQED will be part of a remarkable media collaboration highlighting the issue of homelessness in the Bay Area. More than 70 news organizations have come together to ask some crucial questions: Why do we seem to be seeing so many more individuals living in tents on our streets? What is being done to address the growing housing affordability and availability crisis? You can read the SF Homeless Project's letter of intent here . KQED...
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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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Oakland homelessness surges 47% — per-capita number now higher than SF and Berkeley [sfchronicle.com]
By Sarah Ravani, San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2019. Oakland’s homeless population rose 47% between 2017 and 2019, one of the biggest two-year increases of any California city, according to a one-night street count released Monday by county officials. The jump means Oakland’s per capita homeless rate now surpasses the same figure in San Francisco and Berkeley, at a time when cities around the Bay Area and the country are struggling with a crisis driven by drug addiction, mental illness...
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Racism as Trauma: Clinical Perspectives from Social Work and Psychology
Last Friday, February 26, 800 people filled the Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in the beautiful Twin Peaks area of San Francisco. They were there for a Black History Month event coordinated by the San Francisco Health Network. The event featured presentations from two outstanding clinicians: Dr. Joy DeGruy, researcher, educator, and author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome : America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing; and Dr. Ken Hardy, professor at Drexel University...
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Children's Defense Fund Releases Report on Child Trauma Policy at RYSE Youth Center policy forum in Richmond, CA
Report and event materials attached below... On September 18, 2015, RYSE Youth Center, CA Children's Defense Fund, and ACEs Connection hosted the event for 60 participants from local and state wide direct service and policy programs to come...
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Clinical Guidelines for COVID-19 Response [healsanfrancisco.org]
From Heal SF, April 2020 (See attached file for guidelines.) On behalf of Mayor Breed, Our Children Our Families Council, and all those most impacted by our COVID 19 response, I’d like to take a moment to thank you for your time, expertise, commitment and passion that you brought to the Heal SF Clinical Advisory Body. Without your gracious contributions, we would not have guidelines to support our first responders and those most impacted by this unprecedented circumstance. The guidelines...
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Coronavirus: SF teachers pledge stimulus checks to undocumented immigrants left out of federal aid [sfchronicle.com]
By Tatiana Sanchez, San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 2020 Hundreds of educators in San Francisco are pledging to donate part of their stimulus checks to undocumented immigrants who make up a vital part of the U.S. and regional workforce but do not qualify for federal aid under the government’s stimulus bill. United Educators of San Francisco, which represents more than 6,200 San Francisco Unified School District employees, including teachers, nurses, counselors, and psychologists, said it...
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Homelessness is a regional problem, and Bay Area has to start treating it like one, report argues [ SF Business Times]
Homelessness in the Bay Area can be conquered with regional cooperation, policy changes and public incentives for private investment, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The far-reaching report outlines initiatives that are working — including efforts in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose — but also highlights how the nine-county region continues to fail to deliver housing and homeless services, even...
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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 to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
By Stacy Steinberg, The New York Times, May 7, 2020 Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , a pediatrician and surgeon general...
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In historic move, SF supervisors vote to close juvenile hall by end of 2021 [SF Chronicle]
By Jill Tucker and Joaquin Palomino June 4, 2019 San Francisco will close its juvenile hall by the end of 2021, a nearly unanimous decision made by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that ends the longtime practice of holding children in cells while they await their judicial fate. The extraordinary action makes San Francisco the first major city in the country to shut down juvenile hall in an effort to eliminate the jailing of children, supervisors said. “For me this is about history,” said...
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INVITE: Mental Wellness Micro Healing Pop-up -- Mental Health Awareness Day - May 10
In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Day , please stop by our Trauma Transformed Healing Pop-up at the T2 Center in Oakland, CA. WHEN: Thursday, May 10th TIME: 12:00pm – 4:00pm WHERE: Trauma Transformed Center, 1035 22nd Avenue, #14, Oakland, CA. Please consider carpooling as parking is limited at times. WHAT: Healing and wellness activities DIY crafting "Spa" inspired snacks and drinks And more! Drop in and stay as long as you like between 12-4pm. RSVP: ...
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ITRC calls for Universal Resilience Education and Skills Training for Climate Trauma
Sneak Preview for ITRC ACEs Connection Members! Next Tuesday, Jan. 8, the ITRC will release a major report Preparing People on the West Coast for Climate Change. The media release about the report is below (and attached). It includes a link to the webpage for the report, where people can download the full report, and find a link to the webpage with examples of resilience programs across the west coast. You can connect with the ITRC CA and PNW Facebook page:...
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Re: Trauma Transformed launches regional effort in San Francisco Bay Area
As are you and your folks in DC! We will be launching a SF County group shortly which I'm hoping will be a great sister site with DC. More SF Bay Area County groups also in the works...
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Re: SF’s juvenile hall would shut down within 3 years under proposal [SF Chronicle]
The comments following the article are racist on the Sf chronicle website. Some comments blame minorities for crimes,immigrants as gang members,and called our kids rapists and murderers.Clearly they have no understanding about the juvenile justice system or the rehabilitation of minors.You have to subscribe to make a comment on their site by buying a subscription,but you can "report"comments for free.
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Re: Prepped to Change: Towards Healing Organizations - Ken Epstein and Community Panel with Special Guests!
Here is a link to his presentation (which i uploaded into the video resources) and I also attach his slides.
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Re: How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
Yes! This is necessary information right now. Thank you
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Re: How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
I really wish you would put some kind of warning or stop sharing articles that need a subscription. I get interested in an article, click to see the rest of it and I can't because I don't have a subscription to the New York Times or SF Chronicle. It wastes my time. Julie Hatzell Trauma Specialist/Educator Domestic Violence Advocate Plumas Rural Services 711 Main Street Quincy, CA 95971 530 927-5873 On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 8:16 AM ACEsConnection < communitymanager@acesconnection.com> wrote:
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Re: How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
Hi, Julie: Since the NYTimes allows five free articles a month (in addition to the free COVID-19 coverage), it's impossible to know where any one person is in their monthly free article allocation. And every publication is different. It is beyond our capacity to track that. Our aim is to provide enough information in the headline and summary so that if the article is important to you, that at least you're notified of it and may be able to find a way to obtain it. All best, Jane
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Re: The Support that is Helping Make College Graduation a New Reality for Foster Youth (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
More needs to be done to support youth who are seeking higher education! This policy brief provides ideas on viable next steps!
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Re: 4CA Policymaker Education Day is Back!
I can't make the meeting on May 1 but the attached chapter has information starting in p211 that shows the profound effect that skillful asking about ACEs has on subsequent medical care. The implications for the MediCal budget are in the multi-billion dollar range.
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Re: OPEN for Public Comment: Prop 56 - Trauma Screenings
It is not clear to me what the $29. is for and who will be billed by whom. Having done this with 440,000 adults over a multi-year period, I would like to suggest that the State create a truly comprehensive medical history questionnaire posted on the Internet and that includes the ACE Questions. This would be free and people would list their names after disconnecting, ensuring their privacy. The output printed at home would consist of an iteration of all Yes answers, organized by body system.
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Domestic violence shelters in SF, elsewhere see rise in calls, severity of violence [sfchronicle.com]
By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 2020 One result of shelter-in-place orders during the coronavirus pandemic is to confine some household members with others who abuse them. By most indications, domestic violence has become more frequent and more violent. Police chiefs nationwide reported increases of 10% to 30% in domestic assaults in the first two weeks after a national emergency was declared in March, according to a USA Today survey. On April 6, United Nations Secretary...
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Nearly half of SF police use-of-force cases last year involved black people [sfchronicle.com]
By Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2020 Phelicia Jones was devastated five years ago as she watched a video of five police officers shooting a young black man more than 20 times in San Francisco’s Bayview district after he refused to drop a knife. The 2015 killing of Mario Woods sparked protests across the Bay Area and reforms within the Police Department. Jones and others hoped to see real shifts in police conduct in San Francisco, but by at least one important measure,...
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ACEs Champion Dana Kwitnicki — An ACEs Tale of Two Counties
Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Dana Kwitnicki, a physician assistant, says she always wanted to be in health care. Her dad is a dentist, her mother a teacher, and she grew up with several other family members also in medicine. Kwitnicki learned about becoming a PA while attending Northeastern University in Boston, MA, where she earned a degree in health sciences. After undergraduate school, she earned a Master’s in Physician Assistant Studies at Philadelphia University through a vigorous...
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County Wins $6M Grant To Create Campus Wellness Centers (SF Gate)
By Bay City News, July 23, 2020. The Santa Clara County Office of Education was awarded a $6 million grant from California's Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission on Thursday to create wellness centers on school campuses. The development of the wellness centers will provide mental and behavioral health services to students. [ Please click here to read more. ]
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These SF teens built a school supplies pipeline for low-income families [sfgate.com]
By Grant Marek, SF Gate, July 29, 2020 Lana Nguyen sits in a closet in her parents’ studio apartment in the Tenderloin. She has a Zoom background of the Bay Bridge, but every time she adjusts her body, the background flickers to reveal the tight confines of the surrounding clothes on hangers. “It sounds sad, but I had to take my AP exams in my bathroom,” she says. “It was the only place with a large flat surface.” [ Please click here to read more .]
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Baby courts: A proven approach to stop the multigenerational transmission of ACES in child welfare; new efforts to establish courts nationwide
The organization Zero To Three estimates that in the U.S., a child is taken into the child welfare system every six seconds. “Many of society’s most intractable problems can be traced back to childhood adversity. Being in the child welfare system increases the likelihood of more adversity and criminality. Baby court is a proven approach to healing the trauma of both child and parent, and breaking the cycle of maltreatment,” says Mimi Graham, Ed.D ., director of the Florida State University...
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The Resilient Beginnings Network Is Taking Grant Applications - Due Date September 18th
Interested SF Bay Area safety net organizations can apply for funding to participate in this three-year program on resilience and trauma-informed care.
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SF announces pilot program to provide basic income to pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women [sfgate.com]
By Tessa McLean , SFGATE Updated 3:30 pm PDT, Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Mayor London Breed announced today the launch of a new pilot program that will provide a basic income to Black and Pacific Islander women during pregnancy and after giving birth. The 150 women chosen will receive a monthly income supplement of $1,000 for the duration of their pregnancy and for the first six months of their baby’s life, with the goal of eventually providing a supplement for up to two years...
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Think beyond ACEs screening, advises California funders workgroup in new report
Californians have experienced an alarming epidemic of adverse childhood experiences. Between 2011 and 2017, 60 percent of Californians reported experiencing at least one type of childhood adversity; about 16 percent experienced four or more. People who experience four or more ACEs are 1.5 times as likely to have heart disease, 1.9 times as likely to have a stroke, and 3.2 times as likely to have asthma as people who have experienced no ACEs. (For more information about ACEs and ACEs science,...
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It's all of us; we are the cure
The heart of medicine is healing. Ultimately, the goal of working with patients (and their families) is to support, encourage and move toward healing, together. Just as in all professions, as we become more aware of new information we have to adapt, continuing to keep the larger mission at the forefront of practice. “A consensus of scientific research demonstrates that cumulative adversity, especially when experienced during critical and sensitive periods of development, is a root cause to...