Tagged With "Abused Children"
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How Incarcerated Parents Are Losing Their Children Forever [themarshallproject.org]
Lori Lynn Adams was a mother of four living in poverty when Hurricane Floyd struck eastern North Carolina in 1999, flooding her trailer home and destroying her children’s pageant trophies and baby pictures. No stranger to money-making scams, Adams was convicted of filing a fraudulent disaster-relief claim with FEMA for a property she did not own. She also passed dozens of worthless checks to get by. Adams served two year-long prison stints for these “blue-collar white-collar crimes,” as she...
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How prison disproportionately hurts the health of minority children [CenterForHealthJournalism.org]
The idea that locking up parents can have baleful effects on their children’s health isn’t exactly new. I have written before about research that found links between the incarceration of parents and learning disabilities, developmental delays and behavior problems, even after other variables were taken into account. But a new paper published Thursday in the British journal The Lancet makes clear just how unequal the effects of incarceration can be on families in the United States, which...
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How The Juvenile Justice System is Failing Girls [yr.media]
By Susie Armitage, YR Media, October 16, 2019 When Bree was booked into a juvenile detention center as a teen, they were subject to a strip search. “The staff had to take off my clothes and started patting me down, touching me, and making me feel uncomfortable,” said Bree, who asked that their last name not be used for privacy reasons. As a youth advocate with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, Bree recounted their experience of incarceration in a report. “I felt violated, like I...
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In Photos: A Mother Adjusts to Parenting After Prison [YesMagazine.org]
When Kendra Wright was incarcerated for drug-related offenses at Oregon’s only women’s prison, her then-6-year-old daughter, Selene, was placed in the care of Wright’s grandparents. Prohibited from speaking to Selene, Wright cherished what little contact she had: Wright’s grandmother would call her while Selene was in the same room. “It was the only way I could hear her little voice,” Wright said. But in 2013, Wright was accepted to the Family Preservation Project, an initiative then run by...
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Incarcerated Girls Finally Get Their #MeToo Moment with Spirit Awakening Foundation's Latest Event [prnewswire.com]
LOS ANGELES , March 27, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- TIME'S UP for Hollywood , but what about incarcerated young women who have been victims of sexual abuse? As social media provides growing platforms for women to speak up about workplace discrimination and sexual abuse, many voices still remain unheard in the background. Spirit Awakening Foundation continues its 22-year legacy of arts-based, trauma-informed work in Los Angeles County by helping incarcerated girls break the silence and...
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Initiative connects Oregon inmates with their children (Wilsonville Spokesman)
By Jake Thomas, January 24, 2020, for Oregon Capital Bureau Portland nonprofit and Oregon Department of Corrections say effort would improve visitation areas and support families. Portland inmate Irvin Hines says visits from his children can be stressful. The father of three children ages 5, 14 and 21, Hines is in custody at Portland's Columbia River Correctional Institution . He described the thin mat he and his young son had to sit on in a corner of the facility's cafeteria. He also talked...
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Inmates can't afford to communicate with their children or families - Another example of an unjust justice system
In an oddly placed story, the Arts and Entertainment section of the Star Tribune in Minnesota covered the cost of phone calls for inmates after the FCC decided that it would not support caps on cost for inmates to make calls. The article starts out talking about the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, but this issue isn't fiction, it's impacting families all over the United States. In criminal justice reform this issue could easily get lost when larger issues like mental health are so...
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Introducing NEW Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community
Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...
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Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind [nytimes.com]
There’s an anecdote that Ruth Wilson Gilmore likes to share about being at an environmental-justice conference in Fresno in 2003. People from all over California’s Central Valley had gathered to talk about the serious environmental hazards their communities faced, mostly as a result of decades of industrial farming, conditions that still have not changed. (The air quality in the Central Valley is the worst in the nation, and one million of its residents drink tap water more poisoned than the...
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Job center at women’s reentry facility opens (workforce.org)
Opened in October, the center, managed by grant sub-recipient Second Chance, started enrolling participants, with the goal of offering trauma-informed reentry services to 400 women pre-release and to 100 of those 400 post-release. Enrollment of voluntary participants is based on three criteria. The individual must: be a resident of the facility be within 180 days of release have not been convicted of a sexual offense other than prostitution Though the goals are similar for both men and women...
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Juvenile Law Center (advancing the rights and well-being of children in jeopardy)
Trauma and Resilience: A NEW LOOK AT LEGAL ADVOCACY FOR YOUTH IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE AND CHILD WELFARE SYSTEMS While rates of trauma are high for all youth, they are particularly high for youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. This...
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Kamala Harris Unveils Justice Reform Plan Focused on Youth and Families [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Sara Tiano, The Chronicle of Social Change, September 9, 2019 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rolled out a criminal justice reform plan Monday that focused heavily on youth justice and child welfare issues. Harris’s plans aligns with several fellow Democrats on proposing reforms to the juvenile justice system, but she is the first in the crowded Democratic primary field to talk about addressing some child welfare issues. A key tenet of Harris’s plan is the creation of a...
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Kids Under 12 Can No Longer be Sent to Juvenile Hall for Most Crimes Starting in 2020 [capradio.org]
By Steve Milne, Capital Public Radio, December 20, 2019 One of the last pieces of legislation from former California Gov. Jerry Brown’s final year in office would end the prosecution of pre-teens who commit crimes, other than murder and forcible sexual assault. Right now, California has no minimum age for sending children to juvenile hall. Beginning in the new year, counties will no longer be allowed to process kids under 12 years old through the juvenile justice system. Instead, they will...
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LA County Supes Seek Better Care And Outcomes For Pregnant And Post-Partum Incarcerated Women And Girls And Their Babies (witnessla.com)
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to identify ways to better support pregnant women and girls in the county’s jails and juvenile lockups. The motion, authored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn, directs the Department of Health Services and the sheriff’s department, in coordination with other relevant county departments to report back to the board in 90 days with data on the number of pregnant women and girls in sheriff’s department or probation custody,...
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Listening to Killers: Bringing Developmental Psychology into the Courtroom in Murder Cases
Only 1/1000 have an ACE score of 9 or 10. In his new book, James Garbarino, shows us how we as society create killers through overwhelming ACEs . He is empathetic and paints a portrait of the reality most killers are...
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Making Prison Visitation Programs Trauma Informed
While reading the Trauma Informed Oregon newsletter I came across Shannon's story - so powerful! Please read ... From Shannon Turner, MSW, LCSW At the time of writing this blog, there are two million, two hundred-twenty thousand, three hundred adults currently incarcerated in the US. In thirty-five states analyzed in a study, one in every ten inmates has served at least ten years in prison. My brother is one of the over two million inmates currently incarcerated in the US. Outside prison...
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Mental Health in Criminal Justice Resources
7 Common Characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts Source: Gains Center, SAMHSA Description: Identifies seven common characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts (JMHCs) as part of a National Institute of Justice – funded study,...
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Suit: A federal jail in Philly is stopping kids from seeing their dads (philly.com)
Marie Gottschalk, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist and author of the 2014 book Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics , said that the courts have typically given prisons wide berth to adopt restrictive policies in the name of security. " There's a broader trend across the country of making it more difficult to visit people who are incarcerated," she said. "We're seeing greater use of videotaping rather than letting people come visit. It's part of...
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System Changes Could Improve Relationships between Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children [chapinhall.org]
By Amy Dworsky, Colleen Schlecht, Gina Fedock, et al., Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, March 2020 The dramatic increase in the number of women in state and federal prisons in recent decades has led to calls for gender-responsive policies and practices that address the needs and circumstances of incarcerated women and recognize the central role that motherhood plays in many incarcerated women’s lives. This brief describes the results of a project undertaken by researchers from...
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These 5 Charts Show Why Mass Incarceration Harms Everyone’s Health (yesmagazine.org)
There’s little doubt among researchers that mass incarceration is wreaking havoc on our society, in particular on people of color, LGBTQ, and the poor. What’s often overlooked in this discussion is the damage that prisons and jails do to our health—from those who are incarcerated to their family members waiting at home to those who work in detention settings. As researchers and advocates, we have studied mass incarceration issues and started discussions on the ethics of this practice. To us,...
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These puppies have a ‘magical’ effect on a state prison. Can they help inmates change? (sacbee.com)
A program called Tender Loving Canines is among the new and restored rehabilitation courses popping up in California state prisons since Gov. Jerry Brown began emphasizing programs that help inmates prepare to reenter society. Hector Amezcua The Sacramento Bee Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article111664572.html#storylink=cpy When a pair of puppies stepped into a state prison’s highest security yard on a scorching summer day, dozens of felons...
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Throwaway Kids: 'We are sending more foster kids to prison than college’ (kansascity.com)
For the past year, The Kansas City Star has examined what happens to kids who age out of foster care and found that, by nearly every measure, states are failing in their role as parents to America’s most vulnerable children. https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html#storylink=cpy
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TIC: News and Notes for the Week of October 21, 2019 [dhs.wisconsin.gov]
ACEs, Adversity's Impact There is only one boat: The myth of normalcy by Dr. Gabor Mate Understanding historical trauma to strengthen community Childhood trauma linked to early, premarital childbirth and poor health for women Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become 'forgotten' victims. It's time they were given a voice Children's language skills may be harmed by social hardship Does racism...
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Toxic stress from El Paso, Dayton, Gilroy shootings addressed in Thursday Community Resilience Model Webinar
An ACEs Connection webinar will offer helpful self-regulation tools to those rocked by recent shootings in Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX , and Dayton, OH. The Building Resilient Communities webinar is offered by ACEs Connection this Thursday, August 9, at 10:00 AM PDT / 1 :00 PM E D and will last approximately 1 hour. Elaine Miller-Karas will teach her Community Resilienc y Mode l. Find registration details below. This webinar is free and open to the public. It serves professionals and community...
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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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Turning Gold into Lead: Understanding the Role of ACEs to Our Work as Judges
Dr. Vincent Felitti studied the connection between ACEs and health. Unexpectedly, he uncovered for the courts and our community partners a path past our litigants’ “past.” By applying science to what we do every day and responding appropriately to ACEs, we have a chance to change the trajectory of each life we touch. We have an opportunity to change the world if we see it through a trauma lens.
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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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Who’s Helping The 1.9 Million Women Released From Prisons And Jails Each Year? [witnessla.com]
By Wendy Sawyer, Witness LA, July 30, 2019 Given the dramatic growth of women’s incarceration in recent years, it’s concerning how little attention and how few resources have been directed to meeting the reentry needs of justice-involved women. After all, we know that women have different pathways to incarceration than men, and distinct needs, including the treatment of past trauma and substance use disorders, and more broadly, escaping poverty and meeting the needs of their children and...
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Young Adult Court: Ending Mass Incarceration with Trauma Informed Criminal Justice
The last two decades have given rise to a body of research establishing that young adults are fundamentally different from both juveniles and older adults in how they process information and make decisions. The prefrontal cortex of the brain — responsible for our cognitive processing and impulse control — does not fully develop until the early to mid-20s. At the same time that young adults are going through this critical developmental phase, many find themselves facing adulthood without...
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YPD hosts specialized training for over 170 officers and advocates
I had the chance to attend a training for law enforcement and others, described below, in Yarmouth, MA, a few weeks ago. The presentation, "Trauma Informed Response Training for Law Enforcement & Multi Disciplinary Team Members," was given by retired detective Justin Boardman . Boardman was joined in the morning by the chief domestic violence prosecutor of the Cape & Islands, Michael Patterson. Here is a news story excerpt about the training from the Cape Cod newsletter (yes, the...
Ask the Community
2 generation approaches for re-entry
Hi everyone, I've been doing some research looking for trauma informed two generation approaches to helping formerly incarcerated parents re-enter, develop and share strategies for coping with trauma, and develop skills and strategies to reconnect...
Ask the Community
Help our public radio station with a story: How did separation from your parents as a child impact you?
KQED is the National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco, CA. We’d like to hear from adults (18+) who were separated from their parents when they were children. Perhaps the separation was due to economic reasons, war and conflict, incarceration, foster care, or something else. How did that period of separation impact you in the long-run? How has it impacted your connection to others and how you build relationships? If you're a parent, how does it influence how you parent? We’re...
Calendar Event
International Prisoner's Family Conference (Dallas, TX)
Comment
Re: Children of Incarcerated Parents
Hi Patrick, Thank you for your insightful, robust post of such exemplary resources for our children, youth and families impacted by the trauma of their parents incarceration. As a Commissioner on the Commission on Gang Prevention & Intervention with the City of San Diego, please know I'm profoundly grateful to learn from you and share with my colleagues. In gratitude, Dana Brow
Reply
Re: Trauma-Informed Services for Formerly Incarcerated Populations
Hi Stephanie - in Lancaster County, PA, we have been working over the past several years to "build the foundation for a trauma-informed criminal justice system". We started by providing the following trainings for criminal justice professionals, using nationally developed curricula: 1) trained entire staff of our county prison and entire staff of our county adult probation & parole department using SAMHSA's "How Being Trauma-Informed Improves Criminal Justice System Responses" (400 CO's...
Comment
Re: Behind the Scenes With John Legend & Sesame Street (2 minutes - Sesame Street in Communities)
Many thanks, Stacie Schrieffer LeBlanc, J.D., M.Ed. Executive Director, New Orleans Children’s Advocacy Center & Audrey Hepburn CARE Center Programs of Children's Hospital | Founding Member of LCMC Health 1101 Calhoun I St. New Orleans, LA 7011.8 Office (504)896-9237 | Fax (504)896-9733 Stacie.LeBlanc@lcmchealth.org | www.CHNOLA.org | www.NOCAC.net Help guide our community to protect children from abuse by following and sharing: www.Faceboook.com/NOCAC |...
Comment
Re: Banning in-person jail visits is foolish and needlessly cruel (latimes.com)
Thank you for sharing this article. I delivered a public comment on behalf of ACLU of California at the Board of State and Community Corrections back in February 2017 stressing that in-person visitation significantly improves outcomes for incarcerated people, correctional facilities, and the general public. According to a report by the US DOJ National Institute of Corrections, the many important benefits of in-person visitation include: improved psychological well-being among incarcerated...
Blog Post
New episode of Transforming Trauma! Compassion Prison Project: Bringing Trauma-informed Care into the Prison System with Fritzi Horstman
Transforming Trauma Episode 017: Compassion Prison Project: Bringing Trauma-informed Care into the Prison System with Fritzi Horstman In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by Fritzi Horstman, Founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project . Through her work, Fritzi aims to bring trauma-informed care to a population in high need of trauma healing and not likely to receive it: men and women in prison. Sarah and Fritzi discuss Adverse Childhood...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...
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A year without visits: COVID-19’s impact on children with incarcerated parents (North Carolina Health News)
By Hannah Critchfield, July 16, 2020, NC Health News. Correctional facilities throughout the state have shut down in-person visitations to help quell the spread of COVID-19, creating one more roadblock for kids trying to navigate the criminal justice system to stay connected with a parent. In any other year, on Father’s Day, 11-year-old Marley Bennett and her grandmother would pack up their pre-made lunches and drive to Orange Correctional Center for a visit with Marley’s father. They’d sit...