One plump, juicy, dusty purple Concord grape. That’s all it took for a sudden, overwhelming mix of rage, loss, sadness, and panicky fear to flood over me, leaving me sitting in my kitchen, shaking, heart pounding, with tears streaming down my face. Then, blind-sided, I wondered, What the hell just happened? The short answer: That one tiny grape was a trauma trigger, though I’d had no idea before popping it into my mouth that it would be. It turns out that the smell (and taste) of that one...

Pennsylvania’s Executive Deputy Attorney General, Rob Reed, came to Lancaster on August 22nd to meet with a group of local non-profit and community coalition leaders who have been working to make their respective organizations and coalitions “trauma-informed”. Representatives from many sectors of the Lancaster County community attended, including professionals working in education, healthcare, mental health/behavioral health, criminal justice, housing, city and county government, family and...

Here are links to some good self-care resources & resources for developing/strengthening resilience: Body work/techniques: www.Capacitar.org - go to "Research" then "Emergency Kit" download BrainPickings.org https://www.brainpickings.org/ Dealing with the Effects of Trauma: A Self-Help Guide (SAMHSA): http://store.samhsa.gov/product/Dealing-with-the-Effects-of-Trauma-A-Self-Help-Guide/SMA-3717 Family violence prevention resources (The Amazing Brain Institute for Safe Families):...

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...

Like the thousands of miles of mountain roads I drove on my 3-week trip in 2017 to visit trauma-informed communities in the Pacific Northwest and Canada (I drove a total of 3,011 miles, to be exact!), the road to develop a trauma-informed community has loops, twists and turns. And as with any journey, there are bound to be wrong turns, dead ends, roadblocks, detours, and days when you just plain get lost. Thankfully, there are increasing numbers of tour guides and roadmaps to help...

Here's a second post from my visit to Walla Walla to learn all I could from them about how they've developed a trauma-informed community. ( ICYMI: here's my first post mapping out Walla Walla's step-by-step approach to building a trauma-informed community ) Integrating the knowledge about ACEs, brain science, and resilience into practice has been a cornerstone of Walla Walla's trauma-informed community initiative. At every monthly meeting of their Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) team,...

Like the sweet onions for which Walla Walla is famous, the story of this community's 10+ years of investment in becoming a Trauma-Informed Community has many layers. Teri Barila is the person widely recognized as the initial champion and catalyst for Walla Walla's trauma informed approach, after she attended a conference in 2007 where Rob Anda, one of the original authors of the ACEs study, challenged attendees to take the information he had presented about ACEs and "get something started in...

What is a trauma-informed community? One definition, from The Wilson Foundation, in Rochester, NY, is: “A strategic approach that links all community sectors together around the effects of trauma, while preventing gaps in services for clients.” But I like this description from an article about Tarpon Springs, Florida, one of the first communities in the US to declare itself a trauma-informed community: "Being a trauma-informed community means that Tarpon Spring has made a commitment to...

FOCUS Pittsburgh knew it was onto something when it piloted its model for strengthening communities — starting with the knowledge that social service help will not stick unless trauma is confronted. In 2015, FOCUS chose the 2900 block of Webster Avenue in the Hill District to start a block-by-block approach of bringing people together toward healing. The group is only into its second area — the 900 block of Bryn Mawr — but people around the country are validating that it is onto something. A...

1000. That’s the number of people in Lancaster County who have now completed one of the trauma trainings offered through the Community Action Partnership's #RMOforReturningCitizens and partners over the past 18 months. This is a pretty significant milestone in the collective community effort toward making Lancaster County a trauma-informed community. We’ve trained people from many parts of the criminal justice system, including about 400 corrections officers, parole officers, police...

We hope you’ll join us for a small forum on trauma-informed care at our office on Wednesday, May 2nd from 8:00 am – 10:00 am. Our intention is to create a space for you, our current and past grant partners, to foster a discussion on trauma-informed care * and assess our capacity to become a trauma-informed community, with a particular focus on children’s behavioral health. We’ll share some updates on current county-wide work that is being done on trauma-informed care and look forward to...

https://lohf.org/ending-racism-to-improve-childrens-mental-health/ I joined 10 colleagues from Lancaster organizations last week to learn how to apply racial justice in our work. For me, this was helpful to explore how racism can discourage children and families’ mental health, and how racial justice can improve it. YWCA Lancaster and the Lancaster Theological Seminary hosted the racial justice training. The 3-day workshop was a follow-up to one I attended last summer. We asked ourselves...