Blog

Sharing as a trauma survivor, parent (via adoption), writer, and advocate, I'm going to detail what I find crucial in any program or perspective geared towards those currently parenting with ACEs. Most important, is that any program be survivor and peer-led (or co-led). If that's the only change done, it's a good one. Who shares content, and how, is as important as the content being shared. So often, programs to parents are patronizing, punitive, and can come across as "edupuking" all over...

By Xenia Shi Bion, California Health Care Foundation, August 19, 2019 The camera pans to the therapist as she finishes scribbling a note and sets down her pen. “You’re a perfect candidate for buprenorphine,” she says to her patient. “Let’s get you to a doctor who can prescribe it.” As far as we know, this is not a scene in a real TV show or movie, but it’s one that freelance journalist Zachary Siegel would like to see. Siegel, a journalism fellow at Northeastern University’s Health in...

By Ben Chandler, Betty "B.J." Adkins, and David Finke, Advocate-Messenger, August 13, 2019 Semple Elementary first-grade teacher Christina Carter read a story to her class about a child who faced stressful events every day, making it hard to focus at school. After the story, she gave her students a prompt — if Ms. Carter only knew. Some of the responses were eye-opening. “If Ms. Carter only knew … I get my sister ready in the morning and that’s why we are always late.” “If Ms. Carter only...

By Ben Chandler, Betty "B.J." Adkins, and David Finke, Advocate-Messenger, August 13, 2019 Semple Elementary first-grade teacher Christina Carter read a story to her class about a child who faced stressful events every day, making it hard to focus at school. After the story, she gave her students a prompt — if Ms. Carter only knew. Some of the responses were eye-opening. “If Ms. Carter only knew … I get my sister ready in the morning and that’s why we are always late.” “If Ms. Carter only...

By Chloe Demrovsky, Forbes, August 10, 2019 One week ago, America yet again faced tragedy as gunmen in two unrelated incidents shot into crowds at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas and an active nightlife area in Dayton, Ohio. The combined death toll stands at 31. The nation is in near perpetual mourning and grim about the prospect of facing more mass shootings. Terrorism, whether domestic or international, has a broad effect on our collective wellbeing that extends far beyond the immediate...

By Julie Bosman, Kate Taylor, and Tim Arango, The New York Times, August 10, 2019 The man who shot nine people to death last weekend in Dayton, Ohio, seethed at female classmates and threatened them with violence. The man who massacred 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 beat his wife while she was pregnant, she told authorities. The man who killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., in 2017 had been convicted of domestic violence. His ex-wife said he once told her that...

By Kim Eckart, UW News, June 4, 2019 Experiences such as poverty, residential instability, or parental divorce or substance abuse, also can lead to changes in a child’s brain chemistry, muting the effects of stress hormones. These hormones rise to help us face challenges, stress or to simply “get up and go.” Together, these impacts to executive function and stress hormones create a snowball effect, adding to social and emotional challenges that can continue through childhood. A new...

By Alex Leeds Matthews, Center for Health Journalism, August 13, 2019 When reporters talk about socioeconomic status, it’s rarely defined. Usually, we’re thinking of a broad category of measures related to this nebulous idea: income, education, percent of federal poverty level, housing status and others. But all these little pieces that we stitch together into the broader notion of socioeconomic status are not equivalent. For example, while there is a relationship between income and...

By John Kelly, The Chronicle of Social Change, July 25, 2019 Earlier this year, we reported on the case made by current and former foster youths to use existing authority at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to connect youth aging out of care with housing supports. The Chronicle of Social Change has learned that, after a thorough review of the policy by HUD’s general counsel, the agency is set this week to approve this and notify thousands of public housing authorities.

In the year since President Trump officially ended family separations at the southern border, immigration authorities have removed more than 900 migrant children from their families, sometimes for reasons as minor as a parent not changing a baby’s diaper or having a traffic citation for driving without a license, according to new documents filed Tuesday in federal court. To read the full article, please visit https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/migrant-family-separations.html Picture: A...

Riveting and emotional: The full, first-ever Congressional hearing on “Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Childhood Trauma” by the Oversight Committee chaired by Representative Elijah Cummings. Across the hearing, the story of developmental trauma is well-conveyed and powerful.

Recent media attention has been given to connection between sports and its powerful effect on youth, particularly the power of sport to help youth heal from trauma. A recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics by Molly Easterline has caught national media attention including the recent article in the New York Times “ Team Sports May Help Children Deal With Trauma ” (by Perri Klass) and NPR’s “Playing Teen Sports May Protect from Some Damages of Childhood Trauma ” by Susie Neilson. These...