Tagged With "Policy"

A PGW worker is killed by an explosion in 2016 and his coworkers are still dealing with the emotional toll more than two years later. A longtime school nurse calls it quits when the school police officer who broke up fights between students has a heart attack and dies. A parole officer tries to deal with the personal emotional toll when one of his parolees commits a rape and a murder. These are a few of the tales of secondary traumatic stress — the stress that results from indirect exposure...

New legislation in New Jersey will now require police officers to get sexual assault training every 3 years. Efforts to enact this legislation were spearheaded by the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NJCASA) and based on applying a trauma informed lens to sexual assault. In an interview about the legislation, Patricia Teffenhart, Executive Director of NJCASA explains: Sexual assault is highly traumatic thing that happens to people. It’s actually recognized as the second most...

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...

The American Academy of Pediatricians has made a bold statement about the proposed DHS policy to separate children from their parents and the use of detention - clearly linking these policies to their potential to traumatize children. To that end, children should never be separated from a parent unless it is for the child's safety, and the Department of Homeland Security should discontinue the use of family detention and use community-based alternatives to detention to treat immigrant...

In an effort to become more educated about adverse childhood experiences , trauma , and resilience and what is happening surrounding those topics in current events, I registered for Google Alerts for each of the aforementioned headings.  As a...

On November 13, 2014 the ACEs Connection community managers held a casual ACEs Meet-Up to discuss with interested individuals: “ How do we build a trauma-informed city? “  The group of participants had a discussion around starting in...

It has been a busy and productive year for the Philadelphia ACE Task Force culminating in a big win for our Policy work group. Last week, on December 10, 2019, the Philadelphia City Council approved Resolution No. 19098900 , "Calling upon the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to recognize Secondary Traumatic Stress as a workplace hazard, recommend steps to address mental health injury as a psychological hazard in the workplace as they do with physical injury, and create a...

The Special Committee on Gun Violence will be holding a hearing jointly with City Council’s Committee on Public Safety on Monday, March 18 th , 1-4PM, in Council Chambers (Room 400, City Hall). This will be an opportunity for the Office of Violence Prevention to provide some detail on the recently released plan, The Philadelphia Roadmap to Safer Communities.

Legislation to implement trauma-informed education in Pennsylvania schools has been signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf, largely thanks to a bill authored by state Rep. Christina Sappey, D-158th Dist. Earlier this year H.B. 1415 and S.B. 200, which would implement approaches to student learning that recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma and integrates that knowledge into education-based policies, learning, procedures and practices, was introduced by state Reps. Christina Sappey,...

WEST CHESTER — State Rep. Christina Sappey, D-Chester, and Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh/Berks, will be introducing legislation aimed at creating trauma-informed school environments in Pennsylvania. “House Bill 1415 seeks to ensure that adverse childhood experiences are recognized in the school setting, where children arguably spend the most time, so they get the support they need to reach their full potential,” Sappey said. Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs include all forms of abuse,...

This is a very exciting project! Thank you for tackling such an important process and opening it up to all members! A question that is coming up in our city/county ACEs Connection groups is how to effectively engage local Board of Supervisors through awareness building, advocacy, and funding for trauma-informed systems change, with the additional intent of advancing to statewide policy change. Since your project addresses many issues of system/organizational change, I also wanted to make...

Thought you all might be interested in this awesome report from WA state! http://extension.wsu.edu/ahec/...Blodgett%20Final.pdf

Thank you for sharing Alicia. Very interesting and I am looking forward to diving deeper in to it all.

I'm praying Cheri Honkala won -- poverty and homelessness is an ACE. I was a homeless adolescent and in couch surfing, I was raped. Homelessness is an ACE.

Excellent!

As a nurse for 30 years , I have felt the affects of secondary stress. I am very thankful that this area is being studied and hopeful that all professionals who encounter secondary stress will be understood, embraced and assisted to deal with the effects.

This is amazing work! Great newsletter.

This has such a powerful action. I wish this were true today, across the US. Thank you. Karen Copied from the resolution - RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That this Council calls upon the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to recognize Secondary Traumatic Stress as a workplace hazard, recommend steps to address mental health injury as a psychological hazard in the workplace as they do with physical injury , and create a standard for Secondary Traumatic...

Hi, thank you for all the fabulous work you do! Is the task force open to considering new members, I'm quite interested in joining. Thank you! With love, gratitude and heart, Leslie Peters RN

Hi Leslie, yes the PATF is open to all. I will ask Carolyn Smith-Brown to get in touch with you to learn more about how you'd like to be involved. Leslie

Quoting: "This bill would instill trauma-informed and focused policies, procedures and practices inside the classroom, such as requiring newly elected school board members, educators and other school staff members who have direct contact with children to complete training on trauma-informed approaches to education." Hmmm, great start towards the goal ! Meanwhile, we must all realize that State "requirements" imply a large cascade of change at ground level. We all need to acknowledge, up...

Daun, Your comments are very important. While we would all like to see our schools move towards being trauma-informed and sensitive environments for children, as well as for the adults who are with them each day, it is no simple task to accomplish. It can be done poorly and incompletely with limited and temporary results if not approached with the right attitudes, resources, and implementation strategies. Indeed, "training" is likely to be a small part of the solution, since being "informed"...