February 2022

Hello survivors, advocates, policy-makers, social workers, teachers, principles, business owners, parents, and community members. Here are some resourceful articles which are published by medical, health and legal institutions about child abuse, sexual assault and neglect. Keep in mind that you are not a statistic, you are a person with lived experience, and you are a survivor who is empowered to learn and to grow. You are in control of your fate. You have the power to heal. The journey of...

I can envision an end to the ACEs epidemic. The current loneliness epidemic and the current family estrangement epidemic are also rooted in ACEs. Relying on professional therapy alone will never do it. Most of us either don’t need professional therapy or can’t afford it; and there will never be enough good therapists to meet the need - over half the people in the US (approximately 60%) have experienced ACEs. Key to the strategy is broad based self-analysis, supported by therapists as needed.

Dr. Melissa Merrick, CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America. Photo by Steven Gross. By Dr. Melissa Merrick, Imprint News, February 15, 2022 — As a researcher and policy advocate who has dedicated her career to the prevention of child abuse and neglect, I was thrilled to see the House of Representatives pass the Build Back Better Act late last year. Now it’s up to the Senate to provide the necessary economic and social supports American families need to thrive as our country continues to grapple...

By Jeff Stein, Photo: Brittany Greeson/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, February 17, 2022 The number of American children in poverty spiked dramatically in January after the expiration of President Biden’s expanded child benefit at the end of last year, according to new research released on Thursday. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University said that the child poverty rate rose from 12 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent last month, an approximately 41...

By Melinda Wenner Moyer, Illustration: Alva Skog, The New York Times, February 15, 2022 Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, knows she’s edging toward burnout when she wakes up, feels instantly angry at her email inbox and doesn’t want to get out of bed. It’s perhaps not surprising that a mental health professional who is trying to stem the rising tide of burnout could burn out sometimes, too. After all, the phenomenon has practically become ubiquitous in our...

By Atiya Jordan, Photo: Brandon Harris, Black Enterprise, February 16, 2022 A North Carolina college student turned an independent advocacy study into a life-changing battle for his childhood friend to be released from prison 12 years early. Maryland natives Brandon Harris and Sura Sohna grew up together in Annapolis, attending the same elementary and middle schools. By 12, Sohna’s troubles with the law began after he was arrested for stealing a bike. By 2018, he was facing 15 years in...

By Don Lee, Photo: Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2022 At first, it was just a few things in the meat and produce sections that caught Gayle Stafford’s eye. But soon she noticed that prices were rising for soup and cereal. And it wasn’t just in the supermarket. With overall inflation now running at a 40-year high of 7.5% , Stafford, a schoolteacher who lives outside Cincinnati, suddenly finds herself worrying about the family’s financial future, especially...

By Naomi Zewde, Raz Edwards, and Erinn Bacchus, Photo: Unsplash, Roosevelt Institute, February 16, 2022 Most household wealth (particularly for low- and middle-income Americans) is held in home equity. Federal policies during the early 20th century helped open new avenues to homeownership for middle-class Americans—but these policies were explicitly racially exclusionary, employing a system of “redlining” to delineate the desirability of neighborhoods based on their racial makeup. Though the...

By Annie Kenny, Photo: iStock, The Washington Post, February 17, 2022 There’s this place around the corner from you, seemingly insignificant, but it hosts a house of horrors. It’s a place where the same therapists, medical providers and teachers who are legally required to report suspected child abuse are not allowed to save a child before more abuse occurs. Where truth is obsolete, and right and wrong don’t matter. It’s called family court. And I’ve been trapped there for four years now.

By Dan Gearino, Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images, February 17, 2022 In the race to build renewable energy projects in 2021, Texas lapped the competition. The state had 7,352 megawatts of new wind, solar and energy storage projects come online during the year, according to a report issued this week by the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. The runner-up, California, brought 2,697 megawatts online. But what got my attention wasn’t Texas’ dominance in 2021. It was that Texas also...

By Glenn Gamboa, Photo: Apsatou Bagaya/Vow for Girls/AP, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, February 16, 2022 Hope Nankunda is fighting to keep young Ugandan girls in school and away from marriages until after they turn 18. It’s a calling that began for Nankunda as a teacher, when she found herself spending more time counseling her students than engaging in classroom instruction. “They share about the challenges in their communities, in their homes, and most of these challenges have a lot to do...

By Turnaround for Children, Photo: Alison Shelly/EDUimages, Turnaround for Children, February 17, 2022 In communities across the country, students and the adults who teach, support, and care for them are struggling under the weight of more than two years of uncertainty, fear, and lack of safety from the COVID-19 pandemic. BIPOC families have disproportionately experienced some of the most disruptive impacts due to the pervasive context of systemic racism, which has been exacerbated by the...