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Community Resilience Initiative is seeking an innovative and passionate individual to join our organization as an Associate Director (AD). The AD reports to the Executive Director and to the Board of Directors. Job Overview The role of the Associate Director is to sustain the resilience-based, trauma-responsive capacity building work at the local, regional, state and national stage for which CRI is recognized. Success in this position will be evidenced by recognition of its exceptional...

By Katelyn Newman, US News & World Report, July 15, 2019. INCIDENTS OF CHILDREN entering America's foster system as a result of their parents' drug use have surged since 2000, new research shows, coinciding with the country's recent opioid crisis. Using case data from the federally mandated Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, researchers from Cornell and Harvard universities found that 1,162,668 – or nearly 24% – of 4,972,911 entries of children into foster care...

Funding Opportunity Application Due Date: 07/25/2019 Maternity Group Home Program *See attached pdf for more info. Description: The Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Transitional Living Program’s Maternity Group Home (MGH) grant program. The purpose to provide safe, stable, and appropriate shelter only for pregnant and/or parenting youth ages 16 to...

Google has spent millions of dollars proving that trust is the bedrock of constructive communication. They wanted to know why their best teams succeeded, and after not being able to prove any of their assumptions and going back to observe those teams, they found that what they had in common was not personality or intelligence or confidence or prior success, but something they called ‘psychological safety.’ That’s the kind of safety that’s built on feeling able to be real and vulnerable in a...

This year, for the first time ever, the U.S. has more people over 60 than under 18. That milestone has brought with it little celebration. Indeed, there are abundant concerns that America will soon be awash in a gray wave, spelling increased health care costs for an aging population, greater housing and transportation needs, and fewer young workers contributing to Social Security. Some fear a generational conflict over shrinking resources, a looming tension between kids and “canes.” As I...

Storycatchers help justice-involved youth find their voices and resolve old traumas by making them the stars of the show. On the drive home from Priya Shah’s first Storycatchers musical, she pulled over to cry. Shah, who now serves as the executive director of Storycatchers, had just seen a musical at the Illinois Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Warrenville, Illinois. She watched girls tell stories of sexual abuse, battery and neglect. She also saw stories of hope and...

While @Donna Jackson Nakazawa is usually too busy writing books, training, and research to blog, she does share gems, nuggets, and information every once in a while on Twitter or Facebook which demand to be turned into blogs. With her permission to post, here's a recent, consolidated Tweet thread version of her writing. It's in response to another thread by Jennifer Brea (which can be found here) where she details about what we can expect from her upcoming book, The Angel and the...

CRI is excited to announce new trainings! We will have online trainings in July, and an in-person training in September. July Online Trainings CRI Course 1 LIVE WEBCAST: Trauma-Informed Training A dynamic 2 part six-hour LIVE WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into...

Excerpt from article by Dennis Thompson in United Press International. To read the rest of this article by Dennis Thompson published in United Press International, go here . Cissy's Note: it's rare to find articles on the healing impact of parents, after ACEs, or in general. There's so much advice to parents but not enough listening and learning from parents. This article shows just how parents can best support kids after trauma. Of course we need safe and supportive schools, systems, and...

Resources for individuals, organizations, and communities moving along trauma and hope-informed pathways in order to: Prevent and mitigate adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Promote resilience and safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. Promote equity and racial justice. Prevent substance abuse and promote mental health. … so that all children, youth, families and communities have equal opportunity for educational success, economic stability, health, and well-being.

An important discussion about use and misuse of mindfulness by Mina Kim. From the apps on our phones to the magazines at our grocery stores, we're inundated with tips on using "mindfulness" to reduce stress. But San Francisco State professor Ronald Purser argues that the mindfulness advertised is more like "McMindfulness": well-packaged, individualized complacency that preserves the status quo. Instead of linking our unhappiness to larger social structures, we identify it as self-imposed --...

Back in the spring, I was in the middle of putting together a panel on community interventions for ACEs when the conference planning chair suggested adding Tara Shephard. We had an amazing panel that day, but Tara hit it out of the park. Her love and care for African-American girls in Arkansas and the adversities they face was apparent in every word she spoke that day. To give some background, Tara is an author, education and mental health advocate; an auditor for the American Correctional...