May 2022

While most of our attention here is focused on assisting maltreated children and their families or adults suffering from the residual of their childhood trauma, I have been working at the other (tragic) end of the spectrum of child deaths due to abuse and neglect (in bureaucratic language "critical incidents.") For three years I have been a volunteer member of the CAPTA mandated Citizens Review Panel under the Department of Social Services' (DSS) Office of Child Abuse Prevention. It has...

The Attachment & Trauma Network, Inc. (ATN) announces the launching of Team R&R - an online community for educators and other child-serving professionals on the journey of being trauma-informed and resilience-building. The community focuses on R&R...being regulated & relational...as cornerstone qualities in being trauma-informed, healing-focused and resilience-building. The community's two big focuses are on providing exclusive content and peer-led connection and interaction.

Big thumbs up to Ingrid Cockhren and Mathew Portell. Great interviews! Their History. Culture. Trauma podcast is exceptional. They are informed and articulate. They work well together and know how to get the best from their guests. These quality broadcasts don’t just happen fortuitously. Lots of prep work is involved and I and others appreciate the effort. Keep up the wonderful work.

The HOPE National Resource Center (NRC) is growing. Last week, Kristin Sereyko started as HOPE’s new Senior Project Manager. Kristin will be responsible for overall management of finances and program growth. She will assist with strategic planning and execution of this plan helping to ensure sustainability and successful growth of the HOPE NRC. We are excited to welcome her to the HOPE National Resource Center. As our work expands across the country and around the world, so does our team.

By Maavni Singh, Preston Gannaway/The Guardian, The Guardian, May 5, 2022 “I just don’t know where to go.” Sarah sighed as she looked past her tent off the I-80 highway, at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Sarah and her partner, Kevin, both 55, have lived in the scattered encampments along this stretch of busy highway in Berkeley, California , for years now. They’ve had to pack up several times, moving from one camp to the next as authorities cleared plot after plot. Last month, a federal...

By Jaclyn Peiser, Image: Nashville Public Library, The Washington Post, May 5, 2022 About a week after a Tennessee lawmaker suggested burning banned books , the Nashville Public Library announced a bold campaign encouraging the exact opposite. This month, Nashville residents can trade in their faded library cards for bright yellow ones with an unapologetic message: “I read banned books.” The card is part of the library’s Freedom to Read campaign, which encourages autonomy over what patrons...

By Azeen Ghorayshi, Photo: Chona Kasinger/The New York Times, The New York Times, May 4, 2022 Young children who transition to a new gender with social changes — taking on new names, pronouns, haircuts and clothing — are likely to continue identifying as that gender five years later, according to a report published on Wednesday, the first study of its kind. The data come from the Trans Youth Project, a well-known effort following 317 children across the United States and Canada who underwent...

By Jackie Powder, Illustration: Dung Hoang, Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health, April 15, 2022 At age 6, Priscilla Agnes Morrisseau became number 332A. It was the identification assigned to the little girl when she arrived at St. Margaret’s Indian Residential School in 1953. Forcibly removed from her family home on the Couchiching First Nation reserve in Fort Frances, Ontario, by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs, she spent the next five years at the school run by the Catholic Church. It...

By Sheila Wayman, Photo: iStock, The Irish Times, May 4, 2022 The heartbreaking scenario of a seven-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister fending for themselves while their mother was bound and placed in a wardrobe for four days was shared at a recent conference in Dublin. Family and child psychotherapist Joy Winterbotham told their story, as reported by Kitty Holland in this newspaper , to illustrate how children are being misdiagnosed with personality or behavioural disorders when in...

Hi Folks, The month of May recognizes Mental Health Awareness and National Trauma Awareness The May Surviving Spirit Newsletter - sharing Hope and Healing Resources for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php It can be read online via - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2022-05-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_May_2022.pdf or this - http://ml.survivingspirit.com/dada/mail.cgi/archive/newsletter/20220501202915/ To...

The state in which a baby is born and lives in their first 3 years can make a difference in whether they have a strong start in life. But even more critical than the apparent geographic differences are the disparate experiences among babies of different races, ethnicities, and income levels, with inequities starting even before birth. Often driven by systemic racism, these disparities persist even in states where babies overall are doing better than in other states. A nation that tolerates...

Prevent Child Abuse Illinois (PCA Illinois) recently announced the release of a statewide environmental scan survey to assess the awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) among Illinois residents, and we need your help! Please help us get the data we need by sharing this survey with your colleagues, students, and networks. The more Illinois residents we reach, the more accurate our data will be, which will help ensure our future public awareness campaigns and educational efforts are...