September 2017

Undocumented immigrant students will remain welcome at California colleges and universities, regardless of President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to roll back legal protections for so-called “Dreamers,” education leaders said. “Our doors will be wide open for all eligible undocumented students. They are welcome and wanted,” said Long Beach State President Jane Close Conoley. “And we will continue to offer state financial aid to those who are eligible.” Following up on a campaign...

Diann Sparks hadn’t planned on adopting, until one of her sisters asked her to attend an adoption class in a town 120 miles away from her home in Possum Trot, part of east Texas’ Shelby County. At the time, Sparks had one biological daughter and was a single parent working a full-time job at a chicken plant. Possum Trot, a deeply religious black Baptist community in a mostly white county, doesn’t show up on Google maps. It has no streetlights, no post office, no grocery store and a lot of...

Iashia Nelson cradled her 4-year-old son, shielding him from the pounding rain as she and close to 30 others huddled together on a rooftop, praying they would be rescued. In the eight hours they waited, without any food or water, Nelson, 36, said she witnessed at least four people die. She saw a woman and child trapped in a car, honking their horn in panic until the water engulfed them. She saw another woman, clinging to a tree, lose her grip and be swept away by the rapids. She saw three...

Cristel Simmonds from headspace, a mental health service aimed at young people, recently volunteered at a fundraising event supporting the homeless, who according to Mental Health Australia, have a much higher incidence of mental illness than the rest of the population. She said people could become homeless very quickly due to a number of reasons. "It could be drugs and alcohol, it could be domestic violence, it could be financial or a quick shift in employment situations," she said. "It...

This post draws on experiences and lessons learned from working during the recovery phase of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La 2005. Disasters are calamitous events, traumatic and customarily outside the scope of normal human experiences and likely to involve psychological and physical injury. Disasters uniquely affect children because they are afflicted not only by the trauma of the event but also by their parents' fear and distress. When disasters strike, it disrupts the functioning of...

Here in Kansas, some very exciting conversations are happening in education and in our communities. Several communities and even more school districts are asking the question: "How do we become trauma-informed? How do we create communities and schools where everyone can win? How do we become healthier as a whole and how do we begin the long overdue process of healing individually and collectively?" Of course our spotlight search has led us here and to Jim Sporleder. The work done with Paper...

The United States is on the threshold of advancing much needed improvements in child and population well-being by addressing the epidemic of adverse childhood experiences and finding ways to come together, use what we know, and heal and catalyze a new epidemic of child and family flourishing. A special issue of Academic Pediatrics highlights new national research with inspiring commentaries across a wide range of leaders, each of whom calls out the critical importance of an immediate, strong...

Good Morning- I'm wondering if other are familiar with this program, offered by Vyne Education as a workshop on Trauma, Attachment & NeuroScience- Informed Treatment. I'm curious and interested in finding curriculums and approaches that benefit our many children who have high ACEs in K-12 education. Thanks!

In recent years unauthorized immigrants known as “dreamers” have captured nationwide attention and become a force in American politics. Brought to the United States as children, these young adults came forward to ask for the right to give back to the country they call home. With protection from deportation, they say, comes the ability to pursue higher education and forge careers, to move from fear and uncertainty to planning a future with purpose. In 2012 their call was answered with...

Results from Canada's first national survey looking at operational stress injuries among first responders such as police, paramedics, firefighters and 911 operators suggest they are much more likely to develop a mental disorder than the general population. The research was conducted online between September 2016 and January 2017 by a group of mental health experts from across the country. It is published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Of the 5,813 participants, 44.5 per cent...

Many of us don’t really know what makes a relationship healthy. Which is understandable, because many of us simply never learned. We look to our families to teach us, and depending on your childhood experiences, you might’ve seen a very different picture. A picture that was anything but healthy (though you assumed, again understandably, that it was totally normal and common). Maybe you regularly heard screaming and slammed doors. Maybe you regularly saw conflict go unaddressed, put away in a...

One often neglected theme is the fear of somehow being unmasked or shown up to be fraudulent in some important way that many adult daughters experience; that irrational but powerful fear is a direct consequence of not having their emotional needs met in childhood. Some of that feeling of faking it seems to emanate from the shame they feel—of being excluded from the magic circle of being loved and still wondering whether they are somehow to blame. This is an unconscious pattern of thought...