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Healing your PAST - Santa Rosa If you faced abuse as a child, you’ll be interested to hear that there is new help for your healing in Sonoma County. It’s a brand new non-profit 12 Step Program called Adults Abused as Children Anonymous. Ongoing meetings for the group are held every Thursday Evening, from 6:15-7:15pm. Meetings are Free & welcome anyone wanting a safe & confidential place to heal. First United Methodist Church 1551 Montgomery Dr., Santa Rosa

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has approved a grant allocating $630,000 to three different non-profits to help with the homeless situation. Supervisors signed off on the grant Tuesday, also continuing the safe parking program, which designated sites around Santa Rosa for people to sleep in their cars overnight. According to a 2015 report conducted by Applied Survey Research, Sonoma County has a homeless population over 3,000, with 67 percent living unsheltered. Unsheltered is...

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Issues New Guidelines to Encourage Secure Sharing of Information Between Schools and Child Welfare Agencies to Better Serve Foster Youth Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced that the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Children’s Justice (BCJ), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have jointly developed statewide guidelines for school districts, county offices of...

Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child shared a provocative report: Early Experiences Can Alter Gene Expression and Affect Long-Term Development . "New scientific research shows that environmental influences can actually affect whether and how genes are expressed. Thus, the old ideas that genes are “set in stone” or that they alone determine development have been disproven. In fact, scientists have discovered that early experiences can determine how genes are turned on and off...

Eric Jaffe of City Lab wrote a compelling article in June 2015 showcasing how new research reveals a strong connection between income and the surface area of several key neural regions. "At the lowest end of the income spectrum, little increases in family earnings could mean larger differences in the brain. At the middle and upper income levels, though, the money-brain curve flattened. In other words, wealth can’t necessarily buy a better brain, but deprivation can result in a weakened one.

From the organizers of the 2016 ACEs Conference , San Francisco, CA, October 19th -21st, 2016. Please consider submitting your project today! We know building connections and learning across fields is the best way to advance practices that support children. That’s why we’re very excited to invite you to submit your work to the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences Project Showcase . We’re looking to highlight research, programs, tools or other initiatives that: Highlight the role...

As someone who has worked with several new immigrant groups, I know that mental health services are often the most needed, yet most under-utilized service for such populations. Stigma about mental illness, the need to conform to two (or more) sets of cultural expectations and unfamiliarity with western talk therapy are just some of the barriers. It's exciting to have multicultural staff like Maria Hess and Claudia Avalos involved in this effort. They are well known to, and respected by, both...

This is an accessible, practical article. After a brief definition and explanation of resilience, it gives 20 easy, realistic strategies for building resilience in children. Share this with everyone you know! http://www.heysigmund.com/building-resilience-children/

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...

ACEs & Resiliency Fellowship Master Trainer Program Sonoma County ACEs Connection received a grant from the Health Federation of Philadelphia to establish the Master Trainer program. Program This Master Trainer Program is designed to build a group of local experts on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and resilience science. Learn to promote understanding and how to apply the science to improve health and well being across the lifespan. Application Click here for your application (PDF)...

National Wellness Week is September 11-17 this year. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) offers free resources to support Wellness Week and promote Wellness. Here is a link to a 3-minute video on the 8 Dimensions of Wellness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDzQdRvLAfM&feature=youtu.be. And a pdf is attached. Enjoy!

Mateo Swaim-Brouwer, 21, shoveled gravel in the hot sun Tuesday at a home under construction on a Cotati cul-de-sac. It was manual labor, without pay, rewarded only by a pizza lunch break with his co-workers. Swaim-Brouwer, wearing a neon green Habitat for Humanity T-shirt, was happy to be there. A simple matter of payback, he said, recalling the six months he and his mother were homeless, living in a shelter and on the streets of Santa Rosa. The two-bedroom wood-frame home, beige with white...