Tagged With "Healing Collective Trauma in the Time"
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There’s a good reason this police trainer tells new recruits that they are racist (washingtonpost.com)
(Image Credit: Michael Schlosser, director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, offers new recruits training on interactions with minority communities. (L. Brian Stauffer) Michael Schlosser wants new police officers to understand one thing before they go out in the field: They’re influenced by racial bias. This strategy is a major component of a three-year-old diversity education course at the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, where officers...
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This former Philadelphia cop had an incredibly simple plan to keep kids out of prison. Don’t arrest them. (washingtonpost.com)
Kevin Bethel didn’t become a police officer to lock up children. But it was under his watch as deputy police commissioner that Philadelphia’s school to-prison pipeline was in full effect. Now retired, Bethel is on a mission to keep children out of prison, with a police-led school diversion program that is showing impressive results. “My issue became, what is the trauma of me taking a 10-year-old child, for example, the minimum age for us, putting him in handcuffs, and taking him out of the...
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Too young for juvie? California bill bars prosecution of kids under 12 [SacBee.com]
Sen. Holly Mitchell sits at her desk on the fifth floor of the Capitol and holds up a book. On the cover a small boy in oversized jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt stands on a plastic milk crate, too small to reach, as a police officer presses the young child’s ink-soaked fingertips onto a piece of paper. “That image just stuck with me,” Mitchell said. The senator from Los Angeles is pushing a bill through the Legislature that would bar the state from prosecuting children under age 12. In...
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Toxic Stress: Issue Brief on Family Separation and Child Detention [immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu]
By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...
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Toxic Stress, Toxic Streets (4 minute video)
This video is about 2 years old, but I just came across it last week and wanted to share with you all. It is a powerful statement by the students at Leadership High School in San Francisco, CA. They speak about the ongoing adversity and toxic stress in their daily lives and in their community, all through the power of music. The youth voice is so important as we work to bring trauma-informed and resilience building practices to communities. Link to video: Toxic Stress, Toxic Streets
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Trauma-informed Courts: How to Create One and Why You Should [jjie.org]
By Brenidy Rice and Judge Ann Gail Meinster, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, July 17, 2019. Modern courtrooms function more like emergency rooms than traditional courtrooms. The sound of the gavel replaces the siren. Clerks, judges and attorneys are the first responders while the podium becomes the center for the differential diagnosis and treatment. More than ever before, courts are inheriting and being asked to resolve fundamental societal issues that bring people into contact with...
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Trauma-informed juvenile justice systems: A systematic review of definitions and core components (psycnet.apa.org)
Abstract Objective: The U.S. Department of Justice has called for the creation of trauma-informed juvenile justice systems in order to combat the negative impact of trauma on youth offenders and frontline staff. Definitions of trauma-informed care have been proposed for various service systems, yet there is not currently a widely accepted definition for juvenile justice. The current systematic review examined published definitions of a trauma-informed juvenile justice system in an effort to...
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Trauma-Informed work within Legal/Courts Systems
Hi all & happy 2018! Our Greater Richmond TICN formed a Trauma-Informed Legal/Courts Committee two years ago with the intention of bringing a focus to professionals within the disciplines related to legal/courts (law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, sheriffs, judges, clerks, probation/parole officers, detention center staff). We know that these professionals are exposed to primary, secondary and vicarious trauma on a regular basis and acknowledged that training and supports...
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Treating Young Offenders Like Adults Is Bad Parenting [TheAtlantic.com]
Part of the philosophy for creating a separate juvenile-justice system in the United States is the idea that the state can act as a parent, or parens patriae—protector, caretaker, disciplinarian—when a young person fails to respect the rights of others, commits petty or serious crimes, or shirks age-based societal norms by committing so-called status offenses. But parenting is hard. Even for the state. Sometimes the lessons learned with one generation benefit the next. Sometimes cultural...
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Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
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U.S. Senate passes Whitehouse-sponsored juvenile justice bill [providencejournal.com]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate this week passed a bipartisan juvenile justice bill, years in the works, that aims to secure greater protections for at-risk youth. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse announced Tuesday that the Senate that night passed by unanimous consent the measure, which he wrote jointly with Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. Whitehouse and Grassley have been pursuing its passage since 2014. If enacted into law, the proposal would require states to comply with its...
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We Need to Understand How to Provide Trauma-Informed Care [JJIE.org]
The philosophy of trauma-informed care is becoming more and more embedded in the philosophies and practices of child-serving agencies. When a child experiences a single traumatic event and is fortunate enough to be surrounded by supportive and nurturing adults, that trauma can generally be assessed and usually treated effectively with the help of parental support. When a traumatized child responds with internalized distress such as sadness, depression or anxiety, our systems appear to...
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Webinar: The Human Impact of Climate Change
The Community Resiliency Model Disaster Relief Program Climate change emergencies are real and the human toll during and in the aftermath impact children, teens and adults. This webinar will hear from Kelly Doty, a survivor, who lost her home in Paradise and is working in a community-based program to help the children and their parents in the aftermath. Elaine Miller-Karas, the key developer of the Community Resiliency Model Disaster Relief Program, will explain the program and how it helps...
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What Does Trauma-Informed Mean to Foster Youth? [JJIE.org]
For three decades, I have listened in awe to the brave voices of children, youth and families who have shared, in anguish, their past experiences — experiences that anyone would objectively call “adverse” and ones that can have lasting effects on health and well-being. The seminal ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study opened my eyes to how pervasive their stories were and how these findings might influence the development of effective interventions and treatment, especially for...
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What If We Could Reach Families Before the Crisis? There Would Be Fewer Kids in Foster Care [chronicleofsocialchange.com]
It’s no secret that our foster care system is overburdened. More than 250,000 children enter foster care each year. We don’t have enough foster families to meet this demand, and we don’t have enough adoptive families either. At the end of 2017, 123,000 kids around the country were still waiting to be adopted into a family. But what if the only answer isn’t recruiting more foster and adoptive parents? Are there other things we can do? What if the answer is recruiting more communities to get...
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What Is a “Trauma-Informed” Juvenile Justice System? A TARGETed Approach [JJIE.org]
Adolescence is a time of great opportunity, but also turmoil. As many as two-thirds of all teens face the additional challenge of coping with traumatic events such as life-threatening accidents, injuries, illness, disaster, or violence or sexual or emotional abuse and exploitation. That figure rises to closer to 100 percent for those who live in families or communities in which violence, poverty, neglect, racism or discrimination based on gender, gender identity or disability are prevalent.
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Why Juvenile Prisoners Become Unhealthy Adults [PSMag.com]
The United States’ juvenile incarceration woes are well-documented: More than 1.3 million adolescents and children are arrested every year, and roughly 80 percent of juveniles who spend time incarcerated wind up back behind bars as adults. There are major public-health implications from this high juvenile incarceration rate, and academics and policymakers alike are both scrambling to understand how, exactly, juvenile incarceration affects young people’s health. Though previous studies have...
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Why We Need to Root for the Philadelphia Eagles
Next week the Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl, and while some of us already have plans to cheer them on from our living rooms, there is another opportunity for us to show them our support. Eagles players and coach Jeffrey Lurie are waging a battle to ensure criminal justice reform and bringing an end to racial inequality. These issues are at the heart of much of our community trauma, and we need to uplift the work of the Eagles to help our communities heal. The New York Times...
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Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner? (nationswell.com)
In the far southern outskirts of Dallas County, Chad Houser pulled off the I-45 highway, drove onto a dead-end road leading to several shooting ranges and made a quick right turn to his final destination: the Dallas County Youth Village , a non-secure juvenile detention facility for 10-to-17-year-old boys. Stepping out of his car, Houser, a chef at the acclaimed Dallas bistro Parigi , noticed a putrid stench rising from the nearby landfill and water treatment plant. He grabbed a bundle of...
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Young People are Using Musical Theatre to Heal Their Trauma - And It's Working (nationswell.com)
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...
Ask the Community
policy
Does anyone have, or know where I can find, sample trauma-informed policies?
Calendar Event
2018 National Conference on Juvenile Justice (San Diego)
Calendar Event
International Prisoner's Family Conference (Dallas, TX)
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7 Ways to Help a Child Deal with Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress feels awful. Thankfully, there are small things we can all do to help relax a hyperaroused nervous system.
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A Baby Court Offers Hope for Families [Kristof.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
As a family court judge in Flint, Michigan, I see poverty flood my courtroom in a vicious cycle of cases in dependency, delinquency, criminality, and then back to dependency. The mantra in family court is that no one should lose their kids because they’re poor. The sad reality is that this happens all too often when generational poverty creates what Nicholas Kristof calls a “broken class.” Many times it falls to the courts to fix families. It would be nice if it were easy. But often courts...
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A Community Garden Became an Alternative to Juvenile Detention [CityLab.com]
The first time Tatiana visited the Curtis “50 Cent” Community Garden in Jamaica, Queens, she didn’t want to touch the dirt. “It was scary,” she says. “I just had to stick my hand in real quick and get it over with.” That was around two years ago. Tatiana, then in 10th grade, had racked up around 200 absences at her nearby high school. She was failing all of her classes, and a handful of petty crimes had landed her in juvenile court. Through the Queens Youth Justice Center , an...
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A Court of Their Peers (northcoastjournel.com)
The judge is chewing gum. Her hair is piled in a messy bun on top of her head, where a pair of sunglasses also rests. She giggles shyly as she walks up to the podium and adjusts the microphone. Teen Court is now in session. A national diversion program, Teen Court is operated locally through the Boys and Girls Club of the Redwoods. The crime is real, the court is real and the sentence is real, although the emphasis is on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The goal is to steer young...
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A Police Department's Difficult Assignment: Atonement [witnessla.com]
By Michael Friedrich, CityLab, October 27, 2019 Standing before the congregation of the Progressive Community Church of Stockton, California, Eric Jones, the city’s police chief, apologized. It was July 2016, in the furious days after the police shootings of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those were followed closely by the deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and in Baton Rouge after protests over the Sterling...
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A system of care for traumatized children (socialjusticesolutions.org)
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and is an opportunity to highlight a system of care for those children victimized and traumatized by abuse. In Montana, a collaborative team (the Linking Systems of Care Committee) and in Virginia (the Partner Agency Team) is involved in The Linking Systems of Care for Children and Youth Demonstration project funded by the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Victims of Crime . This unique project is designed to provide...
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A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff
A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff August 12, 2015 Juvenile justice probation and detention workers play an important role in helping system-involved youth and families navigate justice and social service...
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ACES and Justice Policy Brief
The Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative is pleased to share three policy briefs on the impact of ACEs in the health, justice, and education systems including promising practices and recommended actions for change. These briefs were developed by members of the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative—system leaders in Illinois who are working from an ACEs-informed lens to improve systems to prevent and mitigate trauma across generations. Rooted in social justice, these briefs are a call to...
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ACEs Connection Info
ACEs Connection Welcome Tour What you get What you can do ACEs Connection How-Tos Directory How-To post a blog How-To add a picture How-To change your email settings And more ACEs Connection Roadmap to Resilience Toolkit Directory Assets mapping Logic model MOUs And more ACEs Connection Network Overview ACEsConnection.com and ACEsTooHigh.com ACEs, trauma-informed, and resilience-building Collective impact community of practice And more ACEs 101 FAQ ACEs, toxic stress, and epigenetics...
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Advocates Hope NY Court Ruling on Warrants for Foster Youth Leads to Reform [jjie.org]
NEW YORK — Christina Young remembers the day the cops came for her at school. She was 15 years old — a sophomore at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business in lower Manhattan. She and four of her friends were sitting together at a table in the school’s large and chaotic cafeteria. It was lunch time but they weren’t eating. They didn’t like eating lunch at school. They didn’t have a reason why really, they just didn’t like to. Instead they used the time to hang out, and listen to music on...
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Ambitious New Report Says It’s Time To Rethink The Nation’s Juvenile Probation Systems [witnessla.com]
For more than a decade, the nation’s juvenile justice systems have steadily cut back on unnecessary use of incarceration for young people. The reduction in the use of youth lock-ups have been good for kids and for public safety. Reforms that resulted in incarcerating fewer kids, statistically improve the chances of success for youth when they become adults, while also corresponding with the steady decline in juvenile crime during the same period. Yet, according to an important new report...
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An Unusual New Program Seeks to Cut Urban Crime by Pushing Gang Members into College [psmag.com]
This story was produced in collaboration with the Hechinger Report . When Matt Jackson's girlfriend was killed in gang crossfire in 2014, leaving him a single father to a three-year-old girl, he knew it was time to do something different with his life.* Jackson, who grew up surrounded by drugs and violence in Boston's South End neighborhood, had been getting into trouble since he was a kid. Locked up at 14 for possessing crack cocaine, he spent what might have been his college years in...
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Association of Childhood History of Parental Incarceration and Juvenile Justice Involvement With Mental Health in Early Adulthood (JAMA Open Access)
Question Is a childhood history of parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement associated with mental health conditions in early adulthood? Findings In this nationally representative cross-sectional study, young adults with a history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement reported more mental health conditions compared with peers with no justice system exposure during childhood. Meaning Parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement may be...
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Balancing science with justice for violent teens [Tennessean.com]
As research emerges about the impact of trauma on a child’s developing brain, state leaders are grappling with the thorny problem of how to balance science with justice when dealing with violent and criminal teens. The development issues are commonly referred to as “adverse childhood experiences” – and they impact just about every public entity that encounters children – from public schools to the Department of Children’s Services to hospitals and the criminal justice system. Lawmakers this...
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Beyond Paper Tigers is Back!
Back for the second year, Beyond Paper Tigers conference will take place June 28th and 29th in Walla Walla, WA. Featuring Dr. Ken Ginsburg from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as the keynote speaker, BPT builds on the story of one community and how they've learned that embracing trauma-informed care and implementing ACEs science truly takes a village. Operationalizing the latest in brain science, BPT will provide concrete strategies for intervention with youth, families, and communities...