Tagged With "Department of Human Services"
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11 New Communities Join ACEs Connection: May, 2019
Please welcome these 11 new initiatives from AZ, CA, CO, FL, KS, KY, MI, MN, NM, NY, UT, and VA to ACEs Connection . We also have a private community for ACEs Connection community champions, facilitators, and managers.* ACEs Connection Community Champions, Facilitators & Managers * Chisago County (MN) ACEs Initiative Colorado ACEs Connection Durango (Colorado) ACEs Connection Dutchess County (NY) ACEs Task Force Fairfax County (VA) Trauma Informed Community Network Fighting ACEs in Palm...
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8 Ways to Manage Your Team While Social Distancing [hbr.org]
By Timothy R. Clark, Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2020 The Covid-19 virus has disrupted and rearranged the workplace with breathtaking speed. In the span of a week, organizations across every sector have sent millions of employees home to work remotely. Without warning — and in many cases, without preparation of any kind — managers have been thrust into the position of leading virtual teams, many for the first time. It’s challenging enough to manage yourself in quarantine without...
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A Call to Children’s Residential Treatment Centers: Please, Please Do Your Own Trauma Work
The challenges of becoming an effective trauma-informed organization are considerable for sure. Taken as an opportunity, and not a burden, they present a unique platform for organizational learning, healing, and growth. Among so many other things, the efforts inure to the benefit of a milieu that becomes a sanctuary for healing and where little boys are not subject to blame for unintended treatment outcomes.
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A Case for Collecting Adverse Childhood Experiences Data
Let me start with a radical statement: I love data. One of my favorite activities in my role as chief strategy officer at Children & Families First , a large non-profit child and family services agency, is turning columns of numbers into sets of colorful graphs. But even more satisfying is watching someone engage with the data as it reveals previously hidden meaning. Since 2014, Children & Families First has been collecting adverse childhood experience (ACE) data from the people we...
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A Vicarious Trauma Informed Organization and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Building a resilient workplace begins by recognizing the importance of connections and relationships at work including leaders, supervisors, and staff. A Vicarious Trauma Informed Organization recognizes the challenges human service professionals face and addresses the impact of vicarious trauma and disaster mental health. Through an organization’s policies and practices, an employee’s resilience is fostered. Your mission statement can recognize the need for self-care. The goal of...
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ACEs Connection's Inclusion Tool makes sure nobody's left out
We developed ACEs Connection's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tool — called the Inclusion Tool, for short — to ensure that ACEs initiatives across the world focus on being inclusive when forming a steering committee, recruiting leaders, providing education about ACEs science, recruiting members, or providing resources and services within their communities. The more inclusive your ACEs initiative is, the more diverse it will be, giving your initiative a real shot at achieving equity and...
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ACEs Science and Racism
This is a collection of resources regarding structural racism and trauma. This list aims to give a broad overview and is not all-inclusive. We welcome suggestions; if you have any, please comment below! The titles below and the PDFs in attachments are in alphabetical order. BSC Full Report Trauma Resilient Informed City Baltimore: This is the full report of the work, data, lessons, and direct quotes from several teams of people from various backgrounds in the Baltimore community as they...
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Addressing ACEs as a Social Transformation Initiative
It's time for adult children to fully recover from the lies they were programmed to believe about themselves and others when they were developing, and to adjust the norms in our society to ensure the healthy development of our descendants and the recovery of the adult affected.
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Addressing Trauma and Building Resiliency as Comprehensive Disaster Planning and Response
The attached memo is intended to make observations about communities affected by disaster-related trauma, and to offer recommendations for trauma-informed recovery. Community examples provide case studies or models for other communities grappling with similar issues. Suggested resources and tools provide communities with support for accelerated action. Memo authors represent active cross sector networks that contribute to resilient community infrastructure development, awareness building,...
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At an HIV Clinic, Patients and Staff Have a Voice in Shaping Trauma Informed Care
Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the Women and HIV Program, front row, center and clinic staff To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a...
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At an HIV Clinic, Patients and Staff Have a Voice in Shaping Trauma Informed Care
Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the Women and HIV Program, front row, center and clinic staff To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a...
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Building Bridges to Resilience in Santa Barbara County
The full moon was setting and the sun was rising as organizers from KIDS Network, Children & Family Resource Services, Casa Pacifica, and the Department of Behavioral Wellness began setting up the 2019 BRIDGES TO RESILIENCE Conference on October 14 th at the beautiful Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. The stately halls and ballrooms were a flurry of activity as staff prepared to receive over 350 community members who work with children, youth and families in Santa Barbara County.
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Case Statement on Trauma Informed Approaches
Attached is a Case Statement on Trauma Informed Approaches--it is a review of the Greater Harrisburg Area's and beyond's ACE scores, the outcomes of these ACEs and some ideas of how to resolve the negative consequences of this crisis of epidemic proportions. Please use it to advance the cause of moving from the bad news of ACEs towards the good news of becoming trauma informed and resilient. I would also welcome your comments, questions and recommendations! Thank you.
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Community Resiliency to be discussed on "Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams" this Sunday Evening
This Sunday evening's "Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams" Radio Show LIVE at 8:00 pm CST will be discussing the importance of Community Resiliency and how the Community Resiliency Model is helping people who have suffered from the traumatic experiences in their lives. The special guests on the show this Sunday night will be Elaine Miller-Karas and Kelly Doty. Elaine is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of the book, Building...
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Defining Mindfulness (mindful.org)
Mindfulness —where does it come from? Naturally, we hear this question a lot. We’ve addressed it on several occasions, including in a piece now online called “ 5 Things People Get Wrong about Mindfulness, ” but it’s helpful to address core questions like this again and again. There is no final answer, no last word on the matter. The many mindfulness teachers and advocates who encouraged us to start Mindful—and whom we represent in everything we do—believe mindfulness is an inherent human...
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Environment Matters: It's More Than Just Common Sense
The connection we are trying to make with those we serve can be only as effective as the level of safety one feels within the space we are doing the work.
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Erasing My ACES
Why I hid ACES from my medical records in order to receive equal treatment.
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Essentials for Childhood Framework
From the CDC’s Injury Prevention & Control, Division of Violence Prevention: "Safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are essential to prevent child abuse and neglect and to assure all children reach their full potential. The Essentials for Childhood Framework proposes strategies communities can consider to promote relationships and environments that help children grow up to be healthy and productive citizens so that they, in turn, can build stronger and safer families and...
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From the Archives: Dr. Kenneth Clark on Racism and Child Well-Being [hogg.utexas.edu]
From 1971 to 1983, former Hogg Foundation program officer Bert Kruger Smith hosted The Human Condition , a radio show that, across a span of 400 episodes, engaged a variety of notable guests in wide-ranging conversations on the things that make us human. In recognition of Black History Month, this episode of our Into the Fold podcast takes us back into The Human Condition’s archives with a 1974 broadcast featuring the late African American psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose innovative...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation Chapter IV
According to Alice Miller author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, an Enlightened Witness is “an understanding person who helps a victim of abuse recognize the injustice they suffered and gives vent to their feelings about what happened to them”. Brene Brown author of Daring Greatly states, "empathy is feeling with or alongside someone, while sympathy is feeling sorry for." https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw In Topeka we unpacked and explored the message of the Enlightened Witnesses in our lives.
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How I Became a Champion for Trauma-Informed Change
I began riding the “trauma-informed care” wave three years prior to realizing I was part of something bigger than my own vision to bust open the conversation on trauma. When my life as a writer, editor, and advocate for parenting survivors of childhood abuse collided with my professional life as a mental health care manager, I knew the universe was trying to tell me something. Having long ago succumbed to the realization that everything really does happen for a reason, I started to see my...
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I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy (dailygood.org)
The use of the term “empathy” has been expanding in recent years, from workplaces to prison systems to conversations about gun control. Research into mirror neurons in the 1980s and 1990s brought sharper focus to the notion of empathy, but it has since acquired numerous dimensions, according to Cris Beam, a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and the author of a new book titled, I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy. Empathy is ingrained in the psyche from...
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Immigrant teens, parents explore ACEs, resilience in 5-week course with family doc
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family doctor in San Jose, Calif., was determined to find a way to teach ACEs science to her patients. Teens would come to the Washington Neighborhood Clinic clearly depressed by a range of problems at home that were contributing to risky sexual behavior and marijuana use, as well as preventable health problems like extreme obesity.
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Improve Birth and Perinatal Outcomes with a Trauma Sensitive Approach
The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.
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Introducing Dawn Daum, Community Manager: Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond
The movement to incorporate trauma-informed care, and the wave to bring awareness to ACEs science has manifested in to the perfect storm; the perfect mix of compassion and frustration. I've said over and over again, once you become aware of the research and science behind trauma, and start to talk to other people about what it all means and how it looks, its a game changer. Since our agency-wide ACEs/Trauma 101 training by Acesconnection.com community member, Dave Wallace , atleast once a...
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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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Introduction to Trauma Informed Care
This YouTube video of a 2016 webinar is a great overview of trauma informed care, including an introduction to ACEs. Introduction to Trauma Informed Care for the Children, Caregivers and Ourselves Check out this book recommendation: The Cultural Nature of Human Development
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Investing In Community Resilience: Deploying Trauma-Informed Practice for Funders & Capacity Builders (Webinar Series)
Register Here As a philanthropist, your passion for building just, healthy, resilient communities is evident. Until recently, we have been missing critical information that can help us develop best practices to achieve such a goal. Today, the science is clear – adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma can impact the brain and body, contributing to a host of negative outcomes in all aspects of life. Some effects can even be passed from generation to generation. In the last two decades,...
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(Learning Circle) Investing in Community Resilience: Using ACEs and Trauma Science for More Effective Practice
The spread of COVID-19 has created a myriad of challenges for communities around the globe. The science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), trauma, toxic stress as well as healing and resilience, can provide helpful tools for supporting communities through this time of crisis. Please join us on Wednesday, May 13th from 3-4pm ET for the first Learning Circle of the Investing in Community Resilience web series. Connect with others from around the country who are integrating ACEs and...
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Looking for online training and consulting?
Looking for tools to help your organization or community integrate a trauma-informed and resilience-building approach? At Origins, we offer training courses to support you from your aha moment to your action plan. It all starts with The Basics, a 90-minute online training that will provide you with an overview of the key concepts behind a trauma-informed approach. When you’re ready to move from aha to action, sign up for The Resilience Champion Certificate, a self-paced 6-week online training...
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“Motherless Children Have the Hardest Time”: Epigenetic Programming and Early Life Environment [pediatrics.aappublications.org]
The Blind Willie Johnson blues song “Motherless Children” highlights the maternal bonds that we all know are critical to emotional and cognitive development. Authors of previous work looking at infant stress response have found that these bonds begin in utero and can be influenced by both maternal and paternal influences and across multiple generations. 1 The observations of Barker et al 2 on the Dutch famine birth cohort of World War II were perhaps the first published observations of this...
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New Peer Support Group Successes and Challenges
I started a weekly peer support group for women survivors of trauma in April 2018. It took a few weeks to get any uptake on the offer. In the beginning a few people who knew me trickled in to provide some encouragement. Some people working at the center that eventually agreed to give me access to a room to host the event, told me that if people got the sense that I was in it for the long haul, they would then start taking me up on my offer. I was determined to persist, so I stuck it out even...
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Of Mice & Meetings: Bringing Our Whole Selves to Work During the Pandemic
My wife works for an educational company and her past few weeks have been busy working with schools and districts across California as they face the herculean task of adapting to distance learning for the remainder of the school year. One of my favorite stories from last week comes from a training that one of her colleagues was conducting with a school site. During the training, without skipping a beat, the trainer announced that his daughter had just handed him their pet mice and he was now doi
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Online ARTIC for Trauma-Informed Measurement
Due to high demand, we've added a 4th FREE Online ARTIC webinar - April 16. Only a few seats are still available so register today at this link The Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) is hosting a FREE webinar for leaders in health, trauma, and trauma-informed care (TIC) to preview the new Online ARTIC, a cutting-edge online tool for measuring TIC. The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale is one of the only validated measures of TIC. It measures professional and...
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Opioid Crisis Shows How Economic Inequality Kills [ineteconomics.org]
America’s growing rate of economic inequality is more than a numerical ratio that worries economists or a trendy political talking point. The phenomenon has been linked to human tragedies ranging from higher murder rates to growing gaps in life expectancy . Add death by opioids to the list. In recent years, social scientists have been debating why more people have been dying from drug overdoses. Does the increased availability of highly addictive opioids fully explain the rise? Not entirely,...
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Project FORECAST - Becoming a Trauma-Informed Workforce
TRAINING THE WORKFORCE BY INCREASING KNOWLEDGE AND BUILDING SKILLS Project FORECAST uses simulation-based learning experiences to develop trauma-informed critical thinking skills. Take advantage of this free opportunity to become a FORECAST facilitator and join us in developing a trauma-informed workforce. If you train students or child-serving professionals in the fields of: � Child protection � Law enforcement � Juvenile justice � Mental or behavioral health � Healthcare Join Project...
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Promoting Agency & Employee Wellness
Wellness is a key ingredient to building a more resilient workforce and has been a big part of the journey in becoming trauma-informed. I was asked by a police lieutenant last week what our agency, Greater Richmond SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) does to promote wellness. I told him about recent activities that I've organized within the CAC TFT Program (Child Advocacy Center Trauma-Focused Treatment Program) that I oversee and about ongoing agency efforts. This conversation got me thinking that...
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Report: ACEs and trauma-informed care across 8 countries
The International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) is a virtual international collaborative which aims to strengthen leadership and thereby improve services for people with mental health or addiction issues. Eight countries belong to IIMHL: Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden and the US. Countries’ pay a small amount to belong and in exchange there are regular communications on innovation, research and national work plus every 16 months a...
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Resource List -- ACEs Science Videos & Documentaries
You can find videos and video clips of ACEs presentations and on-air segments listed here.
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Resource List -- Trauma-Informed Guides, Presentations, & Self-Assessment Tools
The resources listed in this blog focus on how to implement trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs science.
These materials can be used by organizations, agencies, programs, and communities to better understand how to bring a trauma-informed lens to their work.
Resources are divided according to format type (guide/toolkit, presentations, videos, webinars) and organized alphabetically.
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Road Map to Trauma Informed Care [Trauma Informed Oregon]
Programs, organizations, and systems that make a commitment to implementation will differ in many ways–from the service context, to the motivation for change, to hoped-for outcomes, and resources available. Nonetheless, in a developmental way, implementation moves through a number of common steps that we’ve tried to reflect in the Road Map below. The Trauma Informed Care Screening Tool (found below the Road Map) builds on the Road Map by delving into each phase and offering a series of...
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Safety First - Toxic Stress in Education
What is the purpose of having school without power?
I work in a small school in a big state. The local school community had the power shut over the weekend as a preventive action for avoiding fires. This morning I was told that there would be school without power and to plan to provide services and teach children without power.
My instinct was - this is not safe!
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San Bruno, CA, police reduce stress, burn-out with mindfulness
When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...
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Science Says Your Pet Is Good for Your Mental Health [www.time.com]
Morgan's note: There may be constraints that don't allow for pets - I would suggest offering to take friends' dogs on walks or take care of friends' pets if they are out of town or busy for the day, fostering animals, volunteering at local animal shelters, etc. To read more of Mandy Oaklander 's article, please click here . Photo from Getty Images.
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Spotlight: An ACEs Connection community, Resilient Sacramento, tackles the issue of the traumatic impacts of racism and oppression
Resilient Sacramento has recently made explicit, their commitment to doing trauma-informed education & engagement that centers race, and other forms of structural oppression, as sources of trauma. The resources shared in a recent Resilient Sacramento meeting are described here for the entire ACEs Connection community. Please add your resources to the comments!
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The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The Trauma-Informed Supervisor Training Tool
That is the question that so many of us champions of change are asking ourselves right now. Luckily, the information is and logistics of how to make this happen are becoming clearer. Thank you to @Christina Cunningham, Prevention Coordination Specialist for the Fairfax County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services for allowing me to share this resource with our community. (see attached PDF file) It has been a valuable tool in helping me coordinate an agency training on the...
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The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy (Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association)
Grabbe L, Miller-Karas E. The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. 2017; 24 (1): 76-84.
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The Who, How, and What of Leadership… and where trauma-informed fits in.
Are we born leaders or is it a skill that we cultivate? Strong leadership is a lot like resiliency. Although we can be born with qualities that may make it a little easier, it develops in relationship with others. It is truly cultivated by building our individual skills, having the support of others, and being willing to do our own work. Being a leader means you know Who you are, you get that How you do the work matters, and you are intentional about What you do. Combining these three...