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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to approve a motion Tuesday that would help foster children avoid having to switch schools when they move to a new home. The motion would create a pilot program to provide transportation for the students to the schools they were attending before being moved. “Changing schools, along with changing homes, creates further upheaval for foster kids who have already experienced trauma and loss,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who introduced...

Perhaps the largest group of mentally ill inmates in the U.S. resides in Los Angeles in one of the world's largest jail complexes. Over the past seven years, the jail's population has spiked almost 50 percent — with nearly every inmate having both mental illness and substance abuse problems — and officials suspect the rise is due to methamphetamine use. Sheriff's officials say they've started training deputies specifically in dealing with mental illness and focusing on treatment instead of...

Oakland Unite, the organization I work for, came to be through a collaboration of violence prevention programs funded by Measure Y resources. Our programming focuses on our highest risk community members and neighborhoods and emphasizes interrupting violence now and preventing it in the future. OJJDP supported Measure Y with a 3-year, $2.2 million Community-Based Violence Prevention (CBVP) progam grant. The CBVP program provides funding for localities to replicate proven strategies, such as...

Who should you partner with to create lasting change through resilience in your community? The Building Community Resilience (BCR) initiative aims to address, prevent, and reduce the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adverse community environments (ACEs) on children’s health and wellbeing ( The “Pair of ACEs” ). An essential element of the successes of BCR’s five test sites around the country has been strategic collaborations. In your work to build resilience, identifying...

The Management Assistance Group (MAG) is one of NPQ ’s go-to sources of information about social justice movements. MAG works with a number of the networks that are moving some of this nation’s most difficult issues. MAG has come to believe there are five elements that are critical to advancing a thriving justice ecosystem. This is the second in a special five-part series, in which MAG and NPQ invite you to contribute to the evolution of what these elements mean in practice. A critical shift...

A scan done in March by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) through StateNet of bills introduced in 2017 that specifically include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the text produced a surprising volume of bills (close of 40) in a large number of states (18). A scan done a year ago produced less than a handful. NCSL is a bipartisan organization that serves both state legislators and their staffs. The shear volume of bills in so many states represents a promising...

L.A. Care, the county's largest MediCal health plan, announced Thursday it will donate $20 million over the next five years to a program that houses homeless people who have medical issues. The money is expected to help the nonprofit Brilliant Corners house about 300 people through L.A. County's Housing for Health program. That program, started in 2013, identifies homeless persons who are frequent users of county emergency rooms and other high-cost medical services, and through nonprofits...

The Assistant Director position is a two-year grant funded position, with the potential for extension, with Los Angeles Education Partnership. This project is designed to support and implement a trauma-informed school environment in selected K-12 schools both within and outside of California through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente. A central component of this project’s approach to a trauma-informed school environment is to embed practices at each school that prioritize the wellness of...

In recent years, the idea of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has gained traction in child-serving organizations as a way to understand behavioral issues and poor health outcomes faced by children with traumatic life experiences, such as abuse, neglect or household dysfunction, like having an incarcerated parent. The growth of trauma-informed services is part of a continuing push to help children overcome these experiences. But some advocates say that until communities and individuals...

t’s easy to see why collective impact —the commitment of a group of important cross-sector actors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem—caught fire in 2010. During an economic downturn, when few new resources were available, a voice said there was a way to do more with what we already had. The concept offered hope for achieving results at the scale we desired, even though we were feeling constrained. And thank goodness. Collective impact both validated work that had been...

The Strong, Prosperous, And Resilient Communities Challenge – or SPARCC – is a three-year, $90 million initiative that will empower communities and bolster local groups to ensure that major new infrastructure investments lead to better opportunities for all. SPARCC is excited to announce its initial cohort of six sites, empowering communities to advance initiatives that lead to more equitable outcomes. SPARCC’s initial six sites are: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Memphis, and the...

Last week, at a strategy session in the offices of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, the advocates passed around an outline calling for those who “refuse to accept the status quo” to stipulate, among other things, that “treatment is a right,” and that “to withhold treatment is cruel.” They’re aware, though, that they need to tread carefully. Celina Alvarez, executive director of the nonprofit Housing Works, said the group needs to make clear that it has no intention of abusing the rights of...