Tagged With "child welfare"

Self-directed free play is vital for the healthy development of children. Here we see 43 science-backed benefits it brings.

June 20, 12-3pm: Building Community Trust for Programs Learning Community participants will share with speakers promising programs and best practices to help mitigate the increased fear and anxiety among immigrant families. The Learning Community Session will begin with a panel of speakers involved in better understanding the growing issue and impacts of anti-immigrant climate in our communities. June 24, 1-4pm: County Collaborations to End Child Abuse Prevention and child welfare leaders...

By Sacramento County, SacCounty News, January 9, 2020 To recruit more loving families for children in foster care, Sacramento County is making it easier to find and afford childcare services for resource families. The Emergency Child Care Bridge Program’s goal is to increase the number of resource families for children in foster care by helping families find the right child care provider, connecting families to long-term child care subsidies, and by providing vouchers to pay for childcare...

“When a child displays a behavior problem, the first place to look for the cause and for the solution is to the child’s environment.” Maria Montessori We cannot truly separate the child from the community. In our efforts to “fix” child behavior or heal the child from the traumatic impact of adverse childhood experiences, we need to relate to the community as an extension of the child’s physical and psychological constitution. An organic unity operates here. There is more than just a...

Second in the Building Resiliency Series: Build Resilient Communities by Fostering Trust and Finding Champions. Explore how innovative Child Abuse Prevention Month activities can promote resilience. Learn self-care strategies to stay motivated! Thursday, November 8, 2018, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm Locations: Amador Child Abuse Prevention Council in Jackson, on-line and remote sites in Loyalton, Markleeville, and South Lake Tahoe Network in the Sierra Nevada Region to learn about innovative Child...

How does epigenetics relate to child development? New resource from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child explains. Science tells us that the interactions between genes and environment shape human development. “Epigenetics” is an emerging area of scientific research that shows how environmental influences—including the experiences we provide for children—actually affect the expression of their genes. This means that the old idea that genes are "set in stone" has been disproven. Nature...

By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...

In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.

DATE: Thursday, February 21, 2019 TIME: 11:00-11:45am Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, will address how new science is changing how we think about early childhood adversity and resilience – and how early experiences affect lifelong health and development. He will emphasize the need to address (and measure) individual differences in response to adversity and to intervention in very young children. He will also show how we can move...

OVERVIEW Child care is a critical support for working families that allows parents to pursue opportunities for employment and economic mobility. 1,2 Child care’s vital role in the lives of families and in the overall economy is reflected in federal and state programs such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) that aim to improve low-income families’ access to care options that support parents’ work efforts. 3 A key premise of these programs is that families should have access...

This brief offers guidance on positioning and explaining the issue of childhood adversity, as well as the need for promoting upstream approaches. The guidance has implications for a wide variety of communications goals and contexts, but it is most relevant for efforts designed to educate the public about strategies that work at the community and policy levels. Please click here to check out this wonderful article from Alliance for Strong Families and Communities!

By: David Schonfeld, MD, FAAP After any disaster or crisis, families struggle with what they should say to children and how to help them cope. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents, teachers, child care providers, and others who work closely with children to filter information about the event and present it in a way that their child can understand, adjust to and handle in a healthy way. Where to start No matter what age or developmental stage your child is, you can...

Consider taking Halloween off. For many children, Halloween is an exciting and fun time of year. For children who have experienced trauma, it may look a little different. Images and decorations portraying death or blood can be frightening for children who may have been physically harmed, seen someone be seriously injured, or in some other way had their life threatened. On top of this, not being able to identify safe people because their appearance has been altered for the holiday can be...