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Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) is a vibrant learning collaborative of fourteen sites actively engaged in building the movement for a just, healthy and resilient world. Using the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and resiliency as their organizing framework, these communities have built strong cross-sector networks to help heal and prevent early childhood adversity. From October 2016 through May 2017, we were privileged to travel to all fourteen MARC...

While other students in Auburn Junior High School have been bound to their desks Tuesday afternoons this school year, Kristi Newton's health class has been doing yoga. The yoga provides physical exercise but the purpose of the class goes beyond that. Newton began using yoga as a way to cope with the unexpected death of her brother-in-law, Peter Thomson, around four years ago. She eventually thought that since yoga helped her get through her loss, it might be able to help her students deal...

M ost states have laws mandating health education in primary and secondary schools, but New York will be the first to emphasize mental health instruction for all grades. The move follows legislation signed into law in 2016 and slated to take effect in July 2018, in time for the new school year. The first signs of mental health problems begin, on average, at about 14 years old, yet the average age that individuals seek help is 24. School-age children are particularly vulnerable, with 8...

Eunju Lee, assistant professor at the University at Albany, is a leading contributor to a body of research focusing on kinship care. Kinship care occurs when children cannot safely stay in the care of their parents due to child maltreatment, parental substance abuse, parental mental health issues or other reasons. In these cases, relatives, or family friends in some jurisdictions, take over the care of the children. Kinship care is often utilized by child welfare services as a diversion from...

The monthly New York State Board of Regents meeting Monday Nov. 13, 2017 in Albany, N.Y. (Photo: Skip Dickstein/ Times Union) _____________________________ ALBANY — Over a year ago, Schenectady schoolteachers and administrators began trying something new. When a student acted out, instead of asking "What is wrong with you?" they started asking "What has happened to you?" As soon as educators started to consider that trauma — a parent's death, a father in prison, physical or sexual abuse,...

To see the conference agenda, list of all-star speakers, and to register go to: http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/california-2018-conference/

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently released a national survey of children's health that shows almost half of American kids experience traumatic experiences. The study was produced by CAHMI, the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative . Martha Davis is Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is disturbed by the compendium in the 2016 edition of the National Survey of Children's Health and an analysis conducted by CAHMI. "What it shows is a state...

We are swimming against the tide of taboo. All we brave and battling souls deciding it is time to stop abuse from happening to the children. I’m watching so, so many hearty hearts step up to microphones, web sites, and audiences filled with curious faces, open faces, even welcoming faces. I remember a day in 1998 – I had been invited by someone in Boston to lead a workshop for survivors. I had a most simple agenda – form a circle, say our names, tell each other why we’re here, look at a...

John Schmid of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in his piece “A Time to Heal” , explores generational trauma in Milwaukee, the nation’s third most impoverished big city. The article consolidates information from local, state, and national data on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), interviews, U.S. Census data, and statistical consultation. In 1970, Milwaukee was an upcoming industrial city with a low poverty rate. However, industrial decline and a population decrease increased the poverty...

When Allison Sampson-Jackson talks to kids who have experienced abuse or witnessed violence she is all energy and encouragement and in-your-face praise, like she was at the LaSalle School Thursday, as she helps them understand what trauma does to their brains. If she works with them a while, they learn to recognize stress responses in each other: "His amygdala's on fire!" they'll say when someone explodes or gets aggressive, referring to the brain's flight-or-fight center. And then: "Send...

They began with a song and ended with a poem. In-between, there were photographs and giant graphic renderings, movement exercises and a “human pulse” formed when 90 people stood in a circle and squeezed each other’s hands. At a June summit in Whatcom County, Washington, titled “Our Resilient Community: A Community Conversation on Resilience and Equity,” the arts played a starring role. Kristi Slette, executive director of the Whatcom Family and Community Network, one of two Washington sites...

I am excited to announce that ACEs Connection Network has partnered with the producers of the film, Portraits of Professional CAREgivers: Their Passion. Their Pain . to host a FREE SCREENING of the film for our members. If you have been t hinking of hosting a screening of CAREgivers in your community or are interested in learning more about secondary traumatic stress and what to do about it, join our ACEs Connection Network for a FREE screening of this film and a virtual chat with the...