May 2017

Download the Summit Flyer here . The summit’s schedule-at-a-glance is provided below. Full details of the summit are provided in the Summit Packet . Events which are free are denoted with an asterisk (*). Thursday, June 1, 2017 Tabernacle Baptist Church Family Life Center 7:30am – 8:30am: Registration 8:30am – 3:15pm: Workshops on Building Trauma Sensitive Schools and Building Trauma Sensitive Clinical and Support Services 4:15pm – 4:45pm: Meet and Greet 4:45pm – 5:30pm: Dinner and Music...

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) came about because the federal government and states had a long history of treating Native American* parents as unfit just by their being Indian. As recently as the 1970s, mothers knew to hide their children when strange white sedans appeared on the reservation because social workers would scoop up children and quickly arrange for them to be adopted by white families, often in the Midwest or further east. During Congressional hearings held in the 1970s,...

Jefferson County, Mississippi, is home to 7,297 people, and 2,870 of them are hungry. The county’s food insecurity rate, 38 percent, is the highest in the nation, according to the latest Map the Meal Gap report . The report, released last week by the hunger relief organization Feeding America, collates data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Current Population Survey to stitch together a portrait of food insecurity at the state...

In our over-stressed world, many health care providers, social workers, and caregivers are suffering from slow yet painful burnout. Many of the rest of us, working long hours and raising families, seem to be approaching burnout, too. Sometimes we may feel that we’re too exhausted to keep giving to others, even though giving is a primary source of happiness in our lives. So how can we keep giving without burning out? We’re told that self-care is the answer: Give yourself a treat; you deserve...

What happens when we feel empathy for another person? What are you feeling when that chronically anxious student sinks further into his chair or your teenage girl sobs through her closed bedroom door? Empathy, or the capacity to “feel with” and share others’ emotions, can be a beautiful gift that connects us with each other. Yet it can also feel heart-wrenching and even unbearable at times. Researchers tell us that our initial empathic responses can shift in one of two directions—toward...

In 2001, a nonprofit drug treatment provider called Bridges joined a bold new venture with the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). It was aimed at better serving the children of parents who had come into contact with the child welfare system because of drug use or addiction. The resulting Specialized Treatment and Recovery Services (STARS) program would sit at the center of the county’s family drug court, developed to help address Sacramento’s dismal...

In 13 counties across the U.S., Americans can now expect to die younger than their parents did. And the eight counties with the largest declines in life expectancy since 1980 are all in the state of Kentucky. That’s according to a new study out Monday in the journal JAMA: Internal Medicine , for which researchers examined geographic changes and inequality in life expectancy across the U.S. [For more of this story, written by Olga Khazan, go to ...

If you want to have some input about how ACEs affect chronic pain, you may want to participate in some part of this day-long webinar. You can register here . Here are some studies that link childhood adversity with chronic pain: Finestone, H.M., Stenn, P., Devies, F., Stalker, C., Fry, R., Koumanis, J. (2000). Chronic pain and healthcare utilization in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect , 24, 547-556. Van Houdenhove B . Assessing adverse childhood...

Today would have been my Mom’s 76th birthday. Mom died eight months ago after a 50+ year battle with the grave disease of addiction and, in her later years, significant mental health issues. Here's what my mom's addiction taught me about shame, resilience, and grace: https://traumainformedlancaster.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/what-my-moms-addiction-taught-me-about-shame-resilience-and-grace/

Education scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings: In the black community, "There is no 'P' in our PTSD"

Dr. McCaw describes the genesis and evolution of Kaiser Permanente's Family Violence Prevention Program

Low-income kids face language-learning obstacles at home and at school, a new study contends. "Children may go from a home with limited physical and psychological resources for learning and language to a school with similar constraints, resulting in a double dose of disadvantage," said study lead author Susan Neuman. She is a professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University. Neuman and her colleagues followed 70 Michigan kindergarteners. Half lived in poor areas in...