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This report from Child Trends and the National Center for Children in Poverty includes a review of the prevalence of early childhood trauma and its effects. The report offers promising strategies for child care and preschool programs looking to help young children who have endured trauma, and presents recommendations for policymakers to support trauma-informed early care. [For more of this story go to https://www.childtrends.org/publications/ecetrauma/]

Los Angeles Unified School Board members have clarified what staff on the district's campuses are supposed to do if federal immigration agents show up at their campus. In February 2016, when they declared L.A. Unified campuses as immigration "safe zones," the board had already directed school employees to alert district higher-ups of any request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. But in case the implication wasn't already clear, board members passed a resolution Tuesday...

President Trump’s pick to run federal mental health services has called for a bold reordering of priorities — shifting money away from education and support services and toward a more aggressive treatment of patients with severe psychiatric disorders. The proposal has some psychiatrists — a generally liberal bunch — cheering despite their distrust of the Trump administration. [For more of this story, written by Meghana Keshavan, go to ...

Empowering a Community in Building Resiliency Peace4Tarpon, a non-profit community organization committed to educating all sectors of the community regarding the impact of individual and systemic trauma and creating a just, healthy and resilient Tarpon Springs, just announced the recipients of its Building Resiliency Grants. On March 31, nine mini-grants up to $1,000 each were awarded to individuals, schools and organizations which had submitted proposals designed to build resiliency within...

The new program provides videos, activities, storybooks, games and other resources, in both English and Spanish, to help children with their early development. Specific topics include reading and writing, moving your body, exploring emotions, dealing with divorce and helping kids grieve. The program features the Sesame Street Muppets and is primarily sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. [For more of this story go to ...

Every novelist, psychologist, anthropologist and your Aunt Jane have wanted to know this. What motivates people and what’s going on when their behavior is irritating or just plain doesn’t make sense? At Echo, we encourage adults to look beneath the behavior of children and to understand ‘behavior as communication.’ It may be that the child is choosing a way of communicating that is hard for you to deal with but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the behavior is driven by some deep need or...

Please use this PSA to serve the mission discussed below. You can expect Spanish and Vietnamese language versions within a couple of months. We all know we don't want children experiencing violence or abuse or neglect or other forms of Adverse Childhood Experiences, because the more of them a child experiences, the higher the risk that they will experience negative developmental, emotional, behavioral, social, and medical consequences, consequences that can be life-long. But what do want...

May is Mental Health Awareness Month , and that seems as good a time as any for me to break my year-long hibernation to shout this to the rooftops: My child, Alex , was the most amazingly vibrant, feeling, loving, creative force you could imagine. Alex was full of life. Alex committed suicide last year, at the age of 14. I am shouting out my pride to drown out the idea that mental illness is something to be ashamed of. What I am ashamed of are profound shortcomings in awareness about this...

For years, Tony Hillery owned and operated a limousine service in New York City. But after the recession hit, his business dwindled. In 2011 he decided to use his downtime to volunteer at a public elementary school in Harlem — a small step from which an entirely new career took root. The idea for his nonprofit, Harlem Grown , began in the school lunchroom. Hillery quickly recognized a need for good nutrition, ambitious goals and role models. He started recycling, and the kids jumped in to...

Harvard researchers posing as the parent of a depressed 12-year-old called hundreds of child psychiatrists and pediatricians looking for appointments, and discovered what many actual parents know through bitter experience: Most of the time the calls were fruitless. The group phoned 913 doctors listed as network providers by Blue Cross Blue Shield organizations in Boston, Chapel Hill, N.C., Houston, Minneapolis, and Seattle. After two attempts, they were able to get an appointment with a...

Some kids just need a break. And they get two in Britt Sexton’s art classes at Beach High School. “I have an alarm that goes off twice a period,” Sexton said. “This Beyonce song comes on. And the kids stop what they’re doing.” Then she and the students do squats. Twenty of them. “It gives them a chance to get up,” Sexton said. “Some of them will dance while they’re squatting.” It’s her way of implementing one of the principles of a pilot program at the Long Beach Unified School District...

When child welfare systems infuse trauma-informed care into everything they do, kids experience fewer placements and fare better in foster care, according to new Casey-funded research. In a five-year study conducted by Child Trends , researchers focused on kids served by KVC Kansas, a nonprofit offering child welfare and behavioral health support through a public/private partnership with the Kansas Department of Children and Families. As part of the study, administrators, staff and foster...