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   The first time Alexandrea Murphy heard someone at a meeting of the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative use the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people,” she scribbled down those four words so she wouldn’t forget.    In an area—Cook County, home to Chicago and the second most populous county in the nation—that has been plagued by devastating gun violence, that phrase helped her think differently about the rising number of shootings and deaths.

Echo's conference this year is packed with great workshops for teachers, parents and anyone who works with children and their families. In addition to the not-to-be-missed keynotes (such as Susan Craig ), we are proud to present: Jose Ivan Arreola-Torres Workshop Spotlight: Holistic Healing for Immigrant & Undocumented Youth In this important workshop, Jose Ivan Arreola-Torres will talk about an often overlooked aspect of student mental health - the mental and emotional...

The Educational Purchase License of 'Paper Tigers' will be available to ship starting on March 15th, 2016 for K-12, University, and Public Library institutions. This license will allow your institution to keep Paper Tigers and host multiple screenings of it in the future.  CLICK HERE to learn more. --If you'd like to host your screening in the first two week of March, please contact us at edu@tugginc.com and we'll discuss how to ensure it arrives on time. --The Educational Purchase...

As I read the article “TPS board considers contracts for consultants” (Feb. 2) I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. As Tulsa Public Schools seeks to address the discipline problems in their classrooms it appears that a consultant experienced in mental health was not considered. Certainly, experts in education like Kimberly Lewis and Tisha Edwards mentioned in the article are of paramount importance to these matters. However, as a child and adolescent...

Oprah Winfrey’s book, “ What I Know For Sure ,” comes to my mind often when I look at what life has presented me with and what I face each day. I often ask myself what do I know for sure about girls involved in our juvenile justice system. What I know is that our girls today are scared and often lack the guidance of a caring adult. It is my experience that many girls who come into contact with the juvenile justice system have experienced some form of trauma, mental health...

Monserrat Zarza was 15 years old when she was assigned to a group home, only six months after entering the Los Angeles County foster care system. Group homes provide a placement option for hard-to-place children “with significant emotional or behavioral problems,” according to the state of California. Being in an environment with several dozen other troubled kids was not what Zarza expected when she gathered the courage to pick up her phone and ask for help after a decade of...

The Community & Family Services Division at the Spokane (WA) Regional Health District has come through again, with a Spanish version of the parent handout (in English) that we posted last year , and which has been downloaded thousands of times. The English versions came about whiledoing a story about the trauma-in formed elementary schools in Spokane, WA .I interviewedp ublic health nurse Melissa Charbonneau who said that she'd been giving an...

Photo by Kim Seng A study showing that women veterans commit suicide at six times the rate of civilian women has prompted U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and colleagues to propose legislation requiring the VA to develop gender-specific suicide prevention programs. The “Female Veterans Suicide Prevention Act” would expand the Department of Veterans Affairs’ annual evaluation of mental health and suicide-prevention programs to include data specific to female veterans.

Hung above social worker Patrick Duganz’s desk in the Gallatin County Health Department is a quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead, to the effect of how teaching men to be good fathers represents “the supreme test of any civilization.” By that standard, his job — as the department’s “dad liaison,” or, technically, “father engagement specialist” — is among the most important in town. “We know we get the best outcomes if...

Key learning points: – The Antenatal-Postnatal Promotional Guides promote early infant development and early parenting – Practitioners use these materials to structure and facilitate personalised ‘guided conversations’ with parents that explore key topics and priorities during pregnancy and early infancy – The guides help parents and practitioners make accurate, well-informed decisions about families’ needs at a crucial time of life...

There have been a number of useful entries in the weeks since Senator Bernie Sanders declared himself against reparations. Perhaps the most clarifying comes from Cedric Johnson in a piece entitled, “ An Open Letter To Ta-Nehisi Coates And The Liberals Who Love Him. ” Johnson’s essay offers those of us interested in the problem of white supremacy and the question of economic class the chance to tease out how, and where, these two problems intersect. In Johnson’s...

Over the past 35 years, with the exception of a few golden years in the late 1990s, the wages of low- and middle-income American workers have taken a beating. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute highlights an often-overlooked consequence of this trend: Low-income workers are increasingly reliant on government assistance to get by. "Arguably the largest economic challenge facing the United States right now is the problem of wage stagnation," says David Cooper , the report's...