November 2020

Resiliency can help us overcome the life-altering effects of adverse childhood experiences or repeated trauma in adulthood. It can also speed up healing and give us the strength to conquer our traumatic histories. In this article, we shall explore together the definitions of complex trauma, resiliency, and how resiliency can help treat complex traumatic stress disorder.

By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, November 2, 2020 For the past 15 years, Bay Area resident Sonja Summerville Trotter has cycled in and out of homelessness. As with so many others, there wasn’t one single event or cause that led to her living on the streets. Her life has been complicated by post-traumatic stress disorder from painful experiences that included surviving a rape, and she has been in and out of addiction treatment and jail. In March, Summerville Trotter left...

By Michele Chabin, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 3, 2020 Peyton Barsel was 9 years old when her father, Alex Barsel, died of a heart attack at the age of 42. The shock and grief were like a tsunami that threatened to drown her family. “My mom is an incredible woman and parent, but when you are 40 and suddenly lose your life partner, that’s a lot to grapple with, especially with a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old,” said Peyton, now 18. “She did the best she could, but for quite a while I...

By Taylor Walker, Witness LA, October 26, 2020 With an overall juvenile justice budget of $156 million, Alameda County spends approximately $493,000 per year for each kid in its probation-run juvenile detention facilities, says a new report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Nearly one in three of those young people will be re-convicted after release. Alameda’s probation report for the first quarter of 2020 counts the county’s juvenile hall population at 57 kids, and Camp Sweeney’s...

By Cecilia Cruse, THE Journal, November 4, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and wide-reaching effect on students, from the quality and nature of the instruction they have received to their social and emotional well-being. Whether students are attending school in person or continuing with remote learning, K-12 leaders need to plan for how they will address not only students’ academic needs but their social-emotional needs as well. Many children have been seeing or hearing...

On Monday, October 19, 2020, over 60 leaders from Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo Counties virtually gathered to begin weaving connections at the Tri-County ACEs Aware Care Network Leadership Convening. Under the guidance of Barbara Finch (SBC Department of Social Services, KIDS Network), Terri Allison (Moonlit Consulting), and Carl Palmer (LegacyWorks Group), participants came together with the intention of learning about local implementation of the ACEs Aware initiative,...

Another request for our parenting tips bumper stickers and another apology because we haven't the funds to print them. This one came from someone who attended today's Zoom. Hi David, I saw your chat on the ACES zoom call today. I would love to get the bumper stickers to put in our lobby for parents. My information including address are below. Please let me know if you need additional information. Thank you, Tami -- Tami ------------------, LCSW Pronouns: she/her Licensed Clinical Therapist...

Positive opposites are a concept you can discuss, model or praise in well-child visits. Every unwanted behavior has a positive opposite ! By replacing "don't" with "please do," you can think of yourself as helping a child learn how to behave - not just tell them what not to do. And, you are giving them the opportunity to practice following directions and self-regulation skills. So, next time you feel like saying, "Don't play with the otoscope," you can try out, "Please put the otoscope back...

Election day is full of shock, awe, and surprise. One of the many surprises this year comes out of the state of Oregon where Oregonians voted to decriminalize the possession of street drugs including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and more. Measure 110 in Oregon passed by a wide margin as the votes are continuing to come in. While selling and manufacturing these substances remains illegal, the possession of small amounts of these drugs will now only result in a fine, like a traffic...

The deaths of several New Mexico children in recent years—a 13-year-old whose father was accused of fatally torturing him; an eight-year-old who was kicked to death by her mother; a girl raped, strangled and stabbed by her mother’s boyfriend the night before her 10th birthday—drew horror, outrage and scrutiny of the state’s child welfare system. Those incidents drove child welfare and public health specialists Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello to examine the data. Cappello and...

TRACEs’ work group on youth and children in foster care spent a good portion of the last year’s monthly meetings examining holes in the system: How would foster families be affected by changes in funding from the Oregon Department of Human Services? What would it mean for kids if Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) positions were cut? Most important, what did foster children and youth, their families of origin and their foster families need in order to thrive? “We put together a...

Before the pandemic, Sara Buckley, an 8 th grade science teacher at Park Middle School in Antioch, California, could handle students who were acting out during class. Understanding that trauma lies beneath disruptive behavior, she didn’t send kids to the principal for punishment. Instead, she’d talk with them to find out what was going on at home or outside of school—and then work out a plan for how to respond differently the next time they were triggered. They could visit the school’s...