Blog

Please join me and my friends at Calo Programs, Attachment and Trauma Network (ATN), the American Adoption Congress (AAC) and the Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh) for their "Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma." It's a six-city bus tour May 4-11 to raise broad public awareness and engage people in inter-active workshops; here's the website: www.endchildhoodtrauma.com From the Campaign's flier: Calo Programs is partnering with three of the nation's leading...

The 2018 Prevention Resource Guide: Keeping Children Safe and Families Strong in Supportive Communities was recently released by the Office of Child Abuse and Neglect in the Children's Bureau of the US Department of Health and Human Services. This guide is designed to support service providers as they work with families to promote child well-being and prevent child maltreatment. It focuses on protective factors that build on family strengths to foster healthy child and youth development. In...

One of the most challenging parts of entering recovery is that you are forced to face the same painful emotions and challenges you did before, but this time without the help of drugs and alcohol. In a previous column , I wrote that: Abstaining from drugs and alcohol didn’t immediately take away the problems in my life and within myself emotionally. Although they compounded my problems, drugs were never the actual issue. Mind-altering substances were how I attempted to treat myself. I was...

Dealing with students’ childhood trauma may improve classroom behavior and attendance rates — at least that’s the idea at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s wellness centers. They are located in or near schools, and are designed to serve kids impacted by issues such as deportation threats, domestic abuse, housing instability and other trauma. The district is working with local nonprofits to expand the program. Suzanne Markey is a social worker with the district. She said schools often...

Iowa school employees working with students would be required to have least one hour annually of training in suicide prevention under a bill that received final approval Wednesday from the Iowa Senate. Senate File 2213 , which was amended by the Iowa House, passed on a 49-0 vote. The bill now heads to Gov. Kim Reynolds for consideration... The legislation requires the State Board of Education to adopt rules requiring school districts to adopt protocols for suicide prevention and intervention...

When I lecture at universities, advocacy groups, hospitals, schools, etc., I’m often asked: what advice do you have for parents who have high ACE scores if they are trying to raise children with fewer ACEs? Children with ACEs find “resiliency” because an adult provides a safe environment – in which they feel known, validated. So that means that the most important thing adults can do is to manage their own stuff. Self-regulation by adults is a first step to help kids self-regulate themselves.

Linda Rosenberg, President and CEO, National Council for Behavioral Health, brings news from the field to the National Council membership and joins the chorus of voices responding to the 60 minutes segment with Oprah Winfrey on childhood trauma in her post "Oprah Winfrey and Healing from the Inside Out" If you don’t fix the hole in the soul… you’re working at the wrong thing. – Oprah Winfrey Far too many children are growing up with a “hole in their soul.” Nearly half the nation’s children...

Growing up in North Dakota in the 1980s and 1990s, there was nobody who shared my family’s last name. “Husain? Hoooooo-sayn? You’re not related to … ?” teachers would sometimes ask. No, I would explain, I wasn’t. My name was spelled differently from the then-dictator Saddam Hussein, and, either way, it’s a very common name in the Middle East and South Asia. Sometimes teachers would half-laugh; sometimes they would just look me over with a hint of skepticism. If they had taught one of my...

At Calvary Women’s Services in Anacostia, Courtney has been trying to catch up on what the rest of the world has been doing in the last few years. She has battled addiction and housing instability. She left an abusive relationship. Now, she reads, writes, watches Netflix — she just finished “Bloodlines” — and has dreams of starting a career as a tattoo artist and shop owner. Courtney has been homeless in Kentucky, Ohio, and the District. While she was living in Kentucky in 2016, the man she...

After wildfires and hurricanes ravaged the country last year, we saw devastating human impact, but also soon came to understand the huge financial costs to communities needing to rebuild. Reports are calling 2017 the most costly disaster year on record, with estimates of over $306 billion in damage to housing, transit, infrastructure and businesses. We know that a $1 investment of federal funds in resilient infrastructure can yield $6 in savings, and we also know that community voice is...

As the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination approaches and people across the country seek to celebrate his memory, it is a key time to reflect on what King’s legacy was ― and wasn’t ― and what it might look like to really honor him today. Time and again, educators and activists, including King’s daughter Bernice , have pointed to how King’s words have been whitewashed and mischaracterized over time, with children taught a sanitized version of King’s activism in schools,...

For one week in February, students at D’lberville High School in Mississippi roamed the hallways before and between classes, greeting fellow students with a simple hello. They encouraged other students to do the same, to write their names on badges pinned to their clothing and to try to meet a new person each day. But what may have seemed like overly friendly gestures was something more profound—part of a broader initiative aimed at preventing the next school shooting. The D’lberville...