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Throughout the pandemic, many people have experienced poor mental health , with over 30% of adults in the U.S. reporting symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder, up from 11% of adults prior to the pandemic. Negative mental health outcomes have also affected children and adolescents ; over 20% of school-aged children have experienced worsened mental or emotional health since the pandemic began. This increase in mental health conditions comes at a time when mental health resources are...

Note: This notice was sent out today, Tuesday, June 22, from Dave Ellis, Executive Director, Office of Resilience, New Jersey. Since it may be of interest to others outside New Jersey, I'm sending it along. There will be a post about the event in PACEs Connection. Dear Colleagues and Friends, I am excited to share that the Actions 4 ACEs campaign will launch tomorrow! Actions 4 ACEs will raise public awareness about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the simple - yet powerful - actions...

By Stuart M. Butler and Nehath Sheriff, Brookings, June 22, 2021 L ast November, we co-authored a Brookings report on alternatives to police as first responders when dealing with people experiencing a mental health crisis. In the report, we drew attention to pathbreaking examples and innovative strategies from around the country that are using specially trained crisis intervention teams rather than armed police. We also highlighted a range of steps needed for such teams to become the...

We appreciate everyone who joined the June CTIPP CAN call and a special thank you to Donna Manuelito from the San Carlos Apache Unified Public School District, Ann Mahi and Jason Roberts from the Nanakuli-Waianae School Complex, Godwin Higa from the Cherokee Point Elementary School, Guy Stephens from the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, and Melissa McGinn from the Virginia Trauma-Informed Community Networks. The link to the call recording is here , which we encourage you to watch...

By Michael Fitzgerald, The Imprint, June 11, 2021 Upending laws on the books since at least 1909, the New York Legislature passed a historic justice reform this week that bars the arrest and prosecution of children who are 11 years old and as young as 7. More than a hundred young children are arrested and prosecuted in New York each year, overwhelmingly Black and Latino children who face off with law enforcement in their earliest years of life. If signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D),...

The early summer has seen a slew of high-impact state legislation on child welfare and youth justice. Last week, New York lawmakers moved several landmark bills while punting a few to next year’s legislative session. Among the biggest moves: The state will now give parents whose rights have been terminated a path to court-ordered contact with their children, even those who have been adopted from foster care. Children below the age of 12 can no longer be arrested and processed in New York’s...

By Mike DeBonis, The Washington Post, June 16, 2021 Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday, elevating the day marking the end of slavery in Texas to a national commemoration of emancipation amid a larger reckoning about America’s turbulent history with racism. It is the first new federal holiday created by Congress since 1983, when lawmakers voted to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day after a 15-year fight to commemorate the assassinated...

For anyone who thinks Oregon — long regarded as a liberal, progressive state — was a welcoming place for Blacks and other minorities in the past, a recent webinar sponsored by Oregon health care organizations was a chilling wake-up call. In June 1844, Oregon’s provisional government passed its first Black Exclusionary Act , with language stating that any Black person who set foot in Oregon “would be publicly whipped 39 lashes.” From that time forward, Oregon, like most states, amassed its...

A few months ago, an adult survivor of childhood sexual assault called me from under a table, where she had been huddled for the last hour and a half. Her story, which she will tell herself, and in her own words, is one of almost unimaginable trauma: she was abused by her own father and then trafficked internationally to pedophiles. Investigators – lawyers and former officers from all branches of law enforcement and the military – have been interviewing the survivor for the past year. They...

New Jersey plans to spend a staggering $445,504 per incarcerated youth in 2022 to house them in facilities that are almost 80% empty. The time is now for New Jersey to close its youth prisons and invest in community-based alternatives. The current system, with its focus wholly on punishment rather than rehabilitation, the current system leaves whole communities — as well as the families of both victims and offenders — with unresolved trauma that continues to reverberate long after the...

There may have been attendees with more questions than answers following a recent webinar on federal funding coming as the result of the American Rescue Plan Act. But much was made clear in the webinar sponsored by PACEs Connection and the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP). For star ters, said Marlo Nash, “ The pandemic is continuing to impact physical, mental, social, and economic health, and pretty much every public system and the people who are in those systems. It...

(l-r) Judge Andrew Heath, Chief Justice Paul Newby, District Attorney Ben David Plans to integrate practices and policies based on the science of adverse childhood experiences in North Carolina’s 6,500-person,100-county statewide judiciary were announced today by Chief Justice Paul Newby. The announcement featured a presentation by Ben David, district attorney for North Carolina’s 13th District, that focused on building community health, the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),...