Blog

This story occurred in the early part of the AIDS epidemic. In 1991, I was part of a coalition working to develop local home care options for AIDS patients. This was before the first AIDS treatment drugs became available, so the prognosis for someone with AIDS was not good. They got sick. If they recovered, they were likely to get sick again soon. Back then, HIV disease was still an unfamiliar and frightening illness, even for medical personnel. The general public was concerned about...

Bryan Clement, Dovetail Learning, gave a compelling presentation to the ACEs Connection community coalition in late January. He began with a video showing how kids are putting social and emotional skills into action in their school settings (there's a version with Spanish subtitles here ): TOOLBOX clearly offers great tools for strengthening relationships between folks of all ages. It also provides the language and framework creating a strong relationship-based foundation for schools seeking...

Press Democrat Reporter Martin Espinoza's article " Sonoma County’s group homes for kids adapting to state changes " highlights one local agency's journey to become trauma-informed. Espinoza writes: Nick Honey, director of the county’s Family, Youth and Children’s Services, said group homes like Valley of the Moon are trying to make it “the best 10-day shelter in the state...we’re changing our mindset on how we work with children at Valley of the Moon.” To achieve that goal, the county...

The MHSA Community Input Survey was created for community members to help direct where mental health services funding should be allocated. The optional responses do not include ACEs prevention or Trauma Informed Care. If you believe these topics to be important, you might consider utilizing the "other section" at the end of each question to write in this topic. Below is the link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ACEsConnection

With conflict all around us, where do you turn? AVP sees conflict in our country, schools, communities and even homes as fertile ground for creativity, peaceful cooperation and personal growth. And now you can too! AVP’s community workshops allow everyone to grow when it comes to their interpersonal skills, while having a good time. Get ready for focus on integrity, respect and shared humanity through interactive exercises, stimulating games and role-playing. You’ve got everything to gain,...

At our January meeting, we moved forward with the list of committees adopted previously, and asked interested persons to sign up. We will probably begin organizing committee meetings shortly, so please let us know if there is a committee that you want to join. You may indicate your preference in the comment section if you wish. Here is the sign up list as of January 25, 2017. Committee Purpose Sign Up Community Education Educate the general community about ACES Grace Harris, Alison Berk,...

We are organizing a conference on March 4 at UC Berkeley called: Contextualizing and Understanding Youth Trauma and Cultivating Resilience. It's aimed at bringing together people who don't usually get to share knowledge: community practitioners, researchers, students, scientists and educators. We want to understand the biology and the social-contextual factors of trauma and its impact on youth.

Okay, we’ve got it: Not “what’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?” That explosive outburst? The child who cannot concentrate at school? The domestic violence survivor who is in a constant state of hyper-vigilance? Yes, most of us in family services are now able to recognize trauma-symptoms and respond with empathy… most of the time. But what does it mean to be truly trauma-informed? For a start, it means that we have patience with others and ourselves as we seek to acquire the...

This month the Sonoma County Office of Education dedicated their January Bulletin to raising awareness on Trauma-Informed Teaching Knowing Our Students’ Stories and Fostering Resilience. "Recent social and scientific research calls upon educators to provide student with not only academic learning, but also the social and emotional tools needed to be successful in life. We once though subjects like math and history to be disconnected from basic social skills and emotional resilience. Now,...

Love Our Neighbors Training: Bystander Intervention for Hate & Bias Incidents Tuesday, February 14, 2017 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM (PST) 300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 520 Oakland, CA 94612 This Valentine’s Day, BARHII’s Structural Racism and Social Determinants of Health Committee would like to invite you to a training that addresses what we can do as individuals to protect and support the members of our community who are vulnerable to racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic attacks and...

The Adolescent Health Working Group (AHWG) has put together a Trauma and Resilience Toolkit for Adolescent Providers! The Toolkit is designed for busy providers, each module addresses a complexity of issues through accessible, user-friendly resources including screening and assessment tools, evidence base best practices and promising approached, and health education handouts for youth/ young adults and parents/caregivers. The toolkit series, developed locally, has been distributed and...

I was sent a very interesting study entitled, Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. The study was conducted by Brian G Dias & Kerry J Ressler in 2013. The study examined inheritance of parental traumatic exposure using olfactory molecular specificity in mice. They subjected mice to olfactory fear conditioning before the mice conceived and found that the next 2 generations of mice had an increased behavioral sensitivity to the...