Tagged With "Crisis Line"

Tonier Cain spoke at the Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence conference last month in North Carolina. If you don't know her name you might recognize her as the woman featured in the Healing Neen documentary ( which is must see). I am just starting to recover from her speech. Seriously. It was hard to stand after she spoke. When I did, I went right to a yoga mat in the self-care calm room for a while. I took off my high heels and curled up in a ball for a bit. I'm still digesting her words.

Without coffee and yoga, I'm kind of a jerk. These are my personal "puppy uppers and doggie downers" and prevent me from being cranky, quick to cry, and ready for conflict. Coffee and calming make life more manageable. Humans seem tolerable. Without helpers I might veer into hating humans for being so needy which is not a great trait for a parent, partner or a professional. Or a self. My partner says coffee and exercise are acts of kindness, services he does to promote public safety. In...

Dr. Suzanne Frank has known about the impact of childhood adversity on young lives for decades. She’s seen the fallout in the faces of young people huddled in beds at a children’s shelter where she worked years ago. She’s seen it as the regional child abuse services and champion for the Permanente Medical Group. And she’s seen it in hospital examination rooms where, as a member of the Santa Clara County’s Sexual Assault Response Team, she’s been called in to examine shell-shocked children...

Over the past few months, the Benchmark’s Partnering for Excellence (PFE) team has been working diligently to prepare our newest partnership in Pitt and Craven counties to become effective advocates as they become a more trauma-informed community. We have been thrilled by the collaboration and efforts that we have seen coming from The Department of Social Services’ (DSS) Child Welfare teams, Trillium—the managed care organization supporting the PFE implementation locally—and, local mental...

By the summer of 2005, the Reverend Richard Joyner of Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church realized he was conducting funerals twice a month—a startling number given his town’s tiny population. Nearly 300 souls call Conetoe (pronounced “ka-‘nee-ta”) home. The predominantly African American hamlet is situated in North Carolina’s Edgecombe County, where a quarter of households live below the poverty line and heart disease kills more 
20- to 39-year-olds than do car accidents. “I’ve closed...

Maddie’s Miles October 26, 2019 Jamison Park Winston Salem Maddie’s Miles was founded by Claudia Marini to honor the memory of her daughter Maddison Marini. Maddie lost her battle with addiction on December 29, 2016 at the age of 22. Maddie’s Miles is the main fundraiser for Maddie’s Mission, a non-profit organization that promotes awareness, support, and treatment for those that continue to battle with this illness of addiction. Maddie’s Mission supports multiple projects through the...

Jennifer Donahue, Delaware Office of the Child Advocate, testifies before the HELP Committee (Jennifer Perry to her right) ____________________________________________________________ Some seasoned advocates say legislators are influenced by stories while their staffs are swayed by data. There was some of both at the April 11 hearing on the draft Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 of the U.S. Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) Committee but it was the personal stories that...

Carla: This is AWESOME!!!!!!!!! This line is so concise and clear. "ACEs increase risk but resiliency brings healing." It's wonderful to hear your take on the summit and to hear that are doing yoga. YAHOO!!!!!!!!! GO you! Great piece! cis

Whether you work in a hospital, a safety net clinic, or in another health care setting, no health care provider working during the COVID-19 pandemic needs to read the flurry of news stories that highlight the extreme stress experienced by people in this line of work – you already know it firsthand. This webinar will introduce health care providers to the Community Resiliency Model ( CRM ), an evidence-based method of managing traumatic stress, preventing burnout and building resiliency. This...

Benchmarks is very grateful for the opportunity to host child welfare stakeholder focus groups as part of a new project with Vaya Health. Vaya is committed to providing quality services to our most vulnerable population- children that have experienced trauma, child abuse and neglect. As a part of the child welfare project, the data collection process will include the typical number crunching, quantitative data analysis, but we know that does not always capture the entire story. In order to...

While many of us involved in this work are aware of the importance of understanding the impact that diagnoses like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a mental health condition which results in coping difficulties following traumatic experiences—and other trauma related disorders can have on people’s lives, the reality is that many still lack necessary awareness. As we, in our roles as professionals, allies, advocates, and educators celebrate PTSD awareness month and work to engage those...

September is Suicide Prevention month, and the theme for this year’s World Suicide Prevention campaign is “Creating Hope Through Action.” Perfectly situated only a couple of months after the United States launched the new National Suicide Prevention and Crisis Line. The new line, 988, was designed to be an easy to remember way for people to access help in times of need. While a new crisis line increases the availability of needed mental health assistance, the stigma surrounding mental health...

One of the hardest things to do in project management is to define goals and objectives for your project. While it seems like a relatively simple task, clarifying goals and objectives that directly tie to the identified problems can be particularly difficult in the beginning stages of a project. This can especially be the case in health and human service-related fields where the aims of projects are often to solve complex issues that are compounded by systemic and political barriers. Due to...

The importance of safe and supportive homes for youth in foster care cannot be overstated. The "Safe & Supportive Homes: Family Foster Care Recruitment and Retention" workgroup, part of Vaya's Pathways to Permanency project, has been making significant strides in enhancing the foster care experience for both children and resource families. As an extension of the highly successful virtual Treat Them Like Gold (TTLG) Learning Collaborative , the workgroup is now introducing the All-Staff...