Tagged With "The Chronicle of Social Change"
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ACEs Connection Parent Handouts
Great resources to accompany ACEs screening efforts, presentations, and community awareness building. Please share how you plan to use the handouts in the comments section below!
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Advancing a Plan for Addressing Trauma and Building Resilience within L.A. County Systems [prnewswire.com]
LOS ANGELES , Oct. 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- First 5 LA, the California Community Foundation, The California Endowment, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation along with other local, state and nationally-recognized expert organizations today released a report to advance a comprehensive trauma and resiliency-informed approach in Los Angeles County . Building on research and the experience of experts from Los Angeles , the report defines trauma as the effects of a...
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Advancing a Plan for Addressing Trauma and Building Resilience within L.A. County Systems (prnewswire.com)
Center for Collective Wisdom Releases Extensive Report Outlining Research and Recommendations First 5 LA, the California Community Foundation, The California Endowment, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation along with other local, state and nationally-recognized expert organizations today released a report to advance a comprehensive trauma and resiliency-informed approach in Los Angeles County . "Trauma is a serious health concern affecting many children and...
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Aiming to Help Homeless, UCLA Residents Practice ‘Street Psychiatry’ (californiahealthreport.org)
New programs begun in the last two years at UCLA include a resident-faculty group focused on community psychiatry, as well as health-system and community mentorships. There are also new clinical electives for psychiatry residents at the Los Angeles County Jail and the county’s Office of Diversion and Reentry . The Diversion office was created by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 2015 to develop and implement alternatives to the criminal justice system for people with mental illness and...
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Amazing Professional Development Opportunity for Teachers!
July 28th and 29th | 9 am - 5 pm Two days of practical support for K-12 teachers with key information about the brain, trauma, and social and emotional development. Course Description: Echo Parenting & Education is offering two days of practical classroom managementsupport for K-12 teachers. The training includes: Information aboutthe brain and nervous system Effect of trauma on the brain and nervous system Understandingclassroom...
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Andi Fetzner joins the ACEs Connection Network as the Los Angeles Community Manager
Andi Fetzner MA, LAC joins the ACEs Connection Network as the Los Angeles Community Manager. A recent transplant to California from Arizona, Andi brings with her passion and expertise in training and social connecting. Her experience and education in Political Science and Psychology gives her a unique perspective on how ACEs Science will unfold as a social movement worldwide. Andi studied at Arizona State University (B.A.), University of Phoenix (M.A.), and is earning her PsyD through...
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At "Healing our Communities” conference in LA, youth, parents work with social service providers to impact change!
More than 300 people gathered for the 4th Annual Public Safety/Re-Entry, “Healing our Communities” conference in Los Angeles. The first three conferences were for USC students in the School of Social Work and people who provide social services in the LA area. This year the conference included youth and parents served by those providers. The community safety conference highlighted re-entry initiatives and programs in Los Angeles County organized by agencies such as Homeboy Industries, Project...
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“BECOMING MS. BURTON: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women” by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn
I met Susan Burton in 2010, but I had learned her name years before. I was doing research about the challenges of re-entry for people incarcerated due to our nation's cruel and biased drug war. At the time, I was in the process of writing The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - a book that aimed to expose the ways the War on Drugs had not only decimated impoverished communities of color but had also helped to birth a new system of racial and social control eerily...
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Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG) Blogging Tips and Talking about Trauma
Berkeley Media Studies Group facilitated a southern and northern California Strategic Communications Workshop in October 2015. Attached, please find their powerpoint, created by co-facilitators Julieta Kusnir and Pamela Mejia, titled "Talking about Trauma: Tips & Tools for Communicating Effectively" and "Blogging Tips for Media Advocates" articulating tips on content, headlines, length and tone of blogs.
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Black Youth In Los Angeles County Face An ‘Accumulation Of Disadvantage’ [scienceblog.com]
By Science Blog, October 14, 2019 Black youth in Los Angeles County face an accumulation of disadvantage, undermining their academic, social and economic success and placing them at greater risk of structural disenfranchisement — not in school, not working and ensnared in the criminal justice system, according to a new study Beyond the Schoolhouse: Overcoming Challenges & Expanding Opportunity for Black Youth in Los Angeles County, released today by researchers at the UCLA Graduate...
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Broadening Your Network and Identifying Partners for More Resilient, Healthier Communities
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...
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Building an ACEs, Trauma-Informed, and Resilience-Building Community: Draft MOU from Walla Walla WA
Working document, 3/20/15 Walla Walla, Washington MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING Between the Children’s Resilience Initiative and Community Partners PREAMBLE VISION: All young people thrive and parents raise their children with...
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California issues update on state residents' ACE scores from 2011 & 2013 surveys
The latest adverse childhood experiences survey from the California Department of Public Health shows that 42% of the population has an ACE score of 3 or higher; 16% have an ACE score of 4 or higher. Those with an ACE score of 4 or higher are: 3x more likely to be current smokers 4x more likely to have a depressive disorder 2x more likely to have asthma 2x more likely to be obese 4x more likely to have COPD 3x more likely to have a stroke Here are a few other highlights from the six-page...
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California Schools Will Not Reopen This Year Due to Coronavirus, Superintendent Says [sfchronicle.com]
By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2020 California schools will be unable to reopen this year given current safety concerns and ongoing social distancing, the state superintendent told county officials Tuesday. The letter, obtained by The Chronicle, was not a directive, but rather an acknowledgment that the still growing coronvirus crisis will mean schools must stay shuttered. While classrooms will remain closed, education will continue, Superintendent of Public Instruction...
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Child Trauma Advocates Grapple with Historical Trauma (socialjusticesolutions.org)
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...
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Community Benefit Grant Application Request for Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles and West Los Angeles
Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills (serving the West San Fernando Valley and Ventura County) is requesting proposals for our 3 Year Community Benefit Grant Funding Cycle (2017 - 2020). The online application will open on February 15th and can be accessed at https://www.GrantRequest.com/SID_946?SA=SNA&FID=35288 The deadline for submitting your complete grant application is March 15th at 2:00 pm . Grant awards range from $24,000 to $60,000 under the following 4 funding priorities: Access to...
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County Supes Create Financial Safety Net for Millions of Low Income and Struggling Angelenos (citywatchla.org)
GUEST WORDS-- Since joining the LA County Board of Supervisors 18 months ago, I, along with my colleagues on the Board, have taken a series of steps to build prosperity and economic security for residents by raising the minimum wage and establishing programs to promote social enterprises, help small businesses thrive and prevent people from falling into homelessness when they encounter short-term financial crises, like the loss of a job or a catastrophic medical condition. Last week, the...
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Cultivating Leaderful Ecosystems (nonprofitquarterly.org)
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...
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CYW releases "Children Can Thrive: A Vision for California's Response to ACEs"
The Center for Youth Wellness released a new report “Children Can Thrive: A Vision for California’s Response to ACEs”. This report is a follow up to last November’s Children Can Thrive Summit. ...
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Documentary Gives Insight into How "Caregivers" Deal With Trauma (kcvnews.org)
A new documentary called “Portraits of Professional Caregivers” explores the secondary traumatic stress that caregivers such as doctors, therapists, and first responders experience on a daily basis. It’s a look into the people whose line of work gives them what’s called secondary traumatic stress – the kind of toxic stress you experience from caring for people with PTSD. That includes social workers, police officers, doctors, therapists – anyone who is a professional caregiver to traumatized...
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Documentary, "Portraits of Professional CAREgivers" Airing on Public Television
CAREgivers film will be airing on most public television stations around the US beginning this month in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, Cleveland, Spokane, Boise, Springfield-Holyoke, Youngstown, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, Fairbanks, ETC. Please check your local public TV stations for future dates and times. Broadcast times will also be posted in advance whenever possible at: http://caregiversfilm.com/screenings/see-the-film/ This documentary addresses secondary trauma (aka...
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Early childhood educators learn new ways to spot trauma triggers, build resilience in preschoolers
A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe.
That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.
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Echo Conference 2017 Highlights
When Echo first announced the theme for this year’s conference – Social & Historical Trauma – some were worried about whether we could pull off an event built around such a difficult and sensitive topic. Yet we felt we had to tackle this subject since every year at our childhood trauma conference participants always raise the questions, “What about racism? What about community trauma and poverty? How do these things contribute to Adverse Childhood Experiences?” Kanwarpal Dhaliwal from...
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Echo Upcoming Trauma-Informed Professional Development Trainings
Trauma -Informed Nonviolent Parenting Classes Parenting is one of the most creative and exhausting jobs you’ll ever have. Discover how to communicate in ways that deepen your relationship with your child and begin to model the skills that are proven to help your child succeed at school, have more rewarding relationships and enjoy a longer, healthier life. Yoga for Trauma Recovery This training combines physical practice with the latest science on trauma and recovery. You will learn basic...
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An Upstream Approach: Using Data-Driven Home Visiting to Prevent Child Abuse (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
(Image Credit: pixgood.com) Today, Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors will vote on a motion to move 103 public health nurses from the Department of Children and Family Services to the Department of Public Health. While largely administrative, the development sets the nation’s largest child welfare system up for a much broader discussion about how public health strategies can help break the intergenerational cycles of abuse that result in preventable child maltreatment. If Los...
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Facing Rising Homelessness, Los Angeles Adds Hundreds of Beds for Older Foster Youths [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Jeremy Loudenback, The Chronicle of Social Change, November 15, 2019 The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to boost housing options for transition-age foster youth at its meeting on Tuesday. Two separate investments totaling nearly $9.4 million will open up 237 transitional beds for foster youth at the greatest risk of homelessness over the next year. “Youth transitioning out of foster care have often experienced significant trauma throughout their young lives,” said...
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First Phase of L.A. County’s Homeless Initiative to Start June 30 (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
Almost 47,000 individuals and families are homeless in Los Angeles County, according to the 2016 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, which was conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and released on May 4. That count shows a 6 percent rise in the county’s homeless population from 2015. The total in 2015 – 44,359 – showed a 12 percent surge from just two years prior. The 2015 results played a major role in pushing Los Angeles County to create a plan to address the...
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Foster care system takes its knocks, but it works for many: Dennis McCarthy (dailynews.com)
(Image: Moises Lopez with Danny Treyo) The 2016 graduating class from the school of hard knocks stood on stage at the Disney Concert Hall last week to be honored with college scholarships for completing the first leg of a long, tough journey they’ve been on. They are 175 foster care kids who have beaten every obstacle put in their path and succeeded beyond all expectations. They have shown the courage and they have the dreams. Now, it’s time to pursue them. They’ve all graduated from...
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Foster kids need face time with parents, but in LA County that's not easy (scpr.org)
According to a recent Los Angeles County report, nearly 10,000 children in the county's foster care system are receiving "reunification services" designed to help repair their families and return them to their parents — and visitation is a core, legally required component. "It's one of the most essential services we can provide," said Diane Iglesias, senior deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Visits help keep children connected with their...
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Free screening of "Resilience" at the Santa Barbara Int'l Film Festival Feb. 4
Yes, that's at 2 p.m. this Thursday at the Lobero Theater , California's oldest, continuously operating theatre! James Redford, who directed Resilience , will be doing a Q-and-A following the screening on Thursday. (He will not attend the Friday screening.) Resilience premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 22 , followed by several more screenings last week. Here's the description from the Resilience page on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival web...
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Gage Middle School pilots transcendental meditation as model of ‘self-care’ (lausd.org)
L.A. Unified mental health experts say that self-care is the key to not simply surviving but thriving during the holidays and other times of stress. This means slowing down and taking time for yourself. Stretch your muscles before you get up in the morning, stick to your exercise routine and take time to take a deep breath and slow down. Through a grant from the California Endowment , funded by the David Lynch Foundation , students and staff at Gage Middle School are practicing...
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Grief, Healing and Meditation for Los Angeles Foster Youth [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
For children in foster care, struggling with grief and loss can go hand in hand with experiencing trauma. Grief and loss are unfortunately a common, and sometimes pervasive emotional state. What's worse, is the effects of grief and loss - be that internalizing or externalizing, are oftentimes missed as being connected to the grief and loss. This results in many foster youth never understanding their own grief or never mourning their own loss. The Gift of Compassion fellowship is a program...
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'How do you explain love?' Finding community, friends and more at L.A.'s Braille Institute (latimes.com)
Tania and Jose Amaya are both a little shy, but ask them how they met and they'll light up. She'll blush. He'll grin. She was a computer teacher at the Braille Institute in East Hollywood, soft-spoken and sweet. He was a volunteer, deaf and legally blind, unable to speak. She was enrolled in deaf studies at Cal State Northridge . He'd help with her sign language homework. They'd speak in a language for the deaf-blind, called tactile sign language. She'd sign, and he'd hold his hands over...
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How Social Workers Improve Relationships Between Police and Communities
by MSW@USC Staff In 1955 , the Los Angeles Police Department adopted the motto “To Protect and Serve,” and over the last seven decades, many other American law enforcement departments followed suit. But in the Black Lives Matter era, those words may not resonate with some members of the communities police are tasked with protecting and serving. Community members may feel law enforcement officials exercise more authority than necessary. How can both sides work to create a more positive...
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How to Navigate Amidst Overwhelming Times by The Trauma Stewardship Institute
How to Navigate Amidst Overwhelming Times Whether because of trauma, crises, or extremely rough days. Please join us for a day of raising awareness of trauma, vicarious trauma, and systematic oppression. This workshop will address how we’re being impacted by current and past overwhelm, crises, toll, or trauma and establish concrete means for how to keep on keeping on both individually and collectively. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky will offer a compelling mix of personal insight, cutting-edge...
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In L.A., Nine in Ten Incarcerated Youth Have a Documented Mental Health Issue [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Jeremy Loudenback, The Chronicle of Social Change, June 12, 2019. After a new report found that more than 90 percent of youth in the county’s juvenile halls had an open mental health case, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors pledged to improve mental health care to justice-involved youth in county. That includes both more services for youth detained in the county’s juvenile detention facilities and more options to divert youth away from incarceration and into less restrictive...
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Inside the New Skid Row Sobering Center (ladowntownnews.com)
The facility at 640 S. Maple Ave. is open 24 hours a day. It is staffed with medical practitioners, social workers and sober coaches, people who have cleaned up and can offer life advice. Patients, most of them from Skid Row, are given beds, medical treatment when required, food and snacks, and a chance to connect with social services. The average patient will stay in the facility somewhere between a few hours and overnight. The center works with a number of Skid Row outreach teams that have...
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Is There A Foster-Care-To-Prison Pipeline? If So, This New LA-Based Program Aims To Break It (witnessla.com)
“Everyone talks about the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy. “But doing this work you see that there’s a group-home-to-prison. Kennedy is the Director of Loyola’s respected Center for Juvenile Law and Policy (CJLP), which was founded in 2004 to “tackle the injustices of the Los Angeles County juvenile court system” by providing pro bono advocacy for youth who find themselves caught up in that system. Thanks to a highly competitive $1 million grant from...
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It’s About Results at Scale, Not Collective Impact [SSIR.org]
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...
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'It's not supposed to be this way': Why it's getting more difficult for foster families (latimes.com)
Foster care asks caregivers to perform an almost impossible task: Love the child as your own, but relinquish the youth without delay or protest when social workers say the time has come. The anguish sometimes associated with such removals came into sharp focus last week when social workers removed a 6-year-old Santa Clarita girl who is part Choctaw, from her longtime foster parents. Across the nation, newspapers and television broadcasts displayed images of her distressed caregivers saying...
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ITRC 2018 California Conference: Preparing People for Climate Change in California
To See the Conference Agenda, List of All-Star Speakers, and To Register Click Here Why Should Californians Attend This Unique Conference ? From high levels of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), to job and financial struggles, racism and other forms of inequity and injustice, traumatic stress is epidemic today. Climate change will aggravate all of these existing adversities, and add many new ones as well. Yet, California is leading the U.S. in finding innovative new ways to address...
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Job Posting: Assistant Director/Lead Coach Trauma-Informed Schools Initiative, Deadline to apply 4/13/17
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...
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Jobs and work support could curtail L.A.'s stubborn homeless crisis, study says (latimes.com)
Providing jobs and other aid to Los Angeles County residents soon after they land in the streets could help prevent 2,600 to 5,200 people a year from falling into persistent homelessness, according to a new study from a liberal think tank. The "Escape Routes" study from the nonprofit Economic Roundtable zeroes in on a key dilemma in Los Angeles' homelessness crisis: Even as officials have moved 33,000 homeless people into permanent housing since 2013 and launched a $1.2-billion construction...
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Join us on May 17, 2019 for the SoCal Learning Community! Achieving Impact through Evaluation and Data for Family Strengthening Programs
Achieving Impact through Evaluation and Data for Family Strengthening Programs Know Your Audience: Program Participants, Potential Clients and Community Members Enroll Here! Date: Friday May 17, 2019 Time: Check in at 9:30am, begin at 10am, conclude at 12:30pm Enroll to join in person or remotely through one of the options below: Otis Booth Campus, Los Angeles Remote sites in Atascadero, Ventura, Lancaster, San Bernardino, Moreno Valley and San Diego LIVE online from your computer...
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Judge orders changes to L.A. County jail inmate discharge policy (DailyNews.com)
This April 14, 2015 staff file photo shows the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Mental Health Unit at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Hans Gutknecht/Los Angeles Daily News/File Los Angeles County jails have frequently been referred to as the largest de facto ental health facility in the country. On any given day, the region’s jails house and treat an average of 3,500 to 4,000 mentally ill inmates -- more than the number of patients managed in the entire...
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L.A. County Plans Juvenile Diversion Push (chronicalofsocialchange.org)
On Tuesday, the supervisors will vote on a proposal that would launch an action plan for creating a comprehensive plan for youth diversion across the county. “Keeping young people out of the traditional justice system whenever possible through diversion programs is a promising strategy for improving the social, academic, economic and health outcomes of young people and ultimately reducing recidivism and improving public safety,” according to a motion from Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and...
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L.A. County to consider overhaul of defense system for juveniles accused of crimes [Los Angeles Times]
Los Angeles County elected officials are preparing to consider an overhaul of the county's system for defending minors accused of crimes, following the release of a report that found attorneys contracted by the county to represent juveniles get fewer resources and less oversight than those in other counties. Youths whose families can't afford a lawyer and who can't be represented by the public defender's office because of a conflict of interest are represented by county-contracted private...
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LA County adopts Age-Friendly Action Plan to help seniors keep homes, deal with health issues and more (dailynews.com)
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a set of recommendations aimed at helping older adults keep their homes, deal with health problems and find ways to engage with other community members, as part of a broad initiative to improve their lives. The county’s Age-Friendly Action Plan offers ideas ranging from assistance with rent and repairs to mobile technology labs to train seniors. It suggests turning parks and libraries into age-and dementia-friendly centers where...
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LA County Demographics of Homelessness Continuum of Care (lacounty.gov)
A Dynamic and Deepening Crisis That Demands Our Attention By Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas The Board of Supervisors’ most recent initiative set aside $4 million for teams of social workers and health professionals to go out into the streets of Skid Row and connect homeless single adults to housing and supportive services. Los Angeles County has half a million more very low-income households than available apartments so the typical monthly rent has skyrocketed 27 percent since...