December 2021

Thanks to federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to states in April 2021, there are several big — as in hundreds of millions of dollars — buckets of money for counties and cities to fund the work of organizations doing pandemic-related resiliency work in their communities.

By Oden Taylor, Photo: Karlos Rene Ayala/Cal Matters, Cal Matters, December 14, 2021 Jami e Marquis can’t count the number of times they’ve been called the wrong name. A junior psychology major at the University of California, Davis, who identifies as non-binary, they changed their name several years ago. But since then they’ve struggled to get that name even on basic educational records, instead of their name assigned at birth that they do not identify with, commonly known as a deadname. “I...

By Samantha Young, Photo: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images, California Healthline, December 15, 2021 About 1 in 8 Californians who have died of covid lived in a nursing home. They were among the state’s most frail residents: nearly 9,400 mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles whom Californians entrusted to a nursing home’s care. An additional 56,275 confirmed covid cases among nursing home residents weren’t fatal. “The number of covid infections and deaths that happened...

By Sara Tiano, Illustration: Christine Ongjoco, The Imprint, December 7, 2021 A s more than 1,000 young adults in Los Angeles are set to age out of foster care on New Year’s Eve, county leaders are scrambling to find them all stable homes. The youth raised in government care who are set to lose basic needs benefits had been granted a reprieve during the pandemic. They turned 21, but did not have to leave the program known as “extended foster care” that provides housing and other government...

By Ben Brazil, Photo: Don Leach/Times Community News, Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2021 A few years ago, Adelia Sandoval sat at the foot of an old oak tree and pondered the resilience of her people, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians. The spiritual leader and her tribe, considered to be the original people of Orange County, had been fighting for years to preserve a small portion of the land surrounding the old oak. The Mother Tree, as she called it, was rooted on the grounds of one of...

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond today announced that California community-based organizations will be able to apply for grants to address the social isolation experienced by students during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of its ongoing efforts to address the pandemic’s continued impact on students, the California Department of Education (CDE) will award grants of up to $250,000* each to community-based organizations that can demonstrate their ability to partner with...

Description The purpose of the SD Program is to prevent sexual and domestic violence through primary and secondary prevention efforts, prioritize marginalized/underserved populations within communities, and build the capacity of local organizations. Grant Subaward Performance Period May1, 2022 – April 30, 2024 Submission Deadline Wednesday, February 9, 2022 Available Funding Individual Applicants may request up to $300,000. [ Please click here to view the RFP .]

By Abené Clayton, Photo: Boris Zharkov/The Guardian, The Guardian, December 9, 2021 A deadly mass shooting at a suburban Michigan high school brought back a familiar American routine: utterances of shock, followed by condolences, blame, and then calls for action that fall on deaf ears. Last week’s school shooting came as young people across the US are reckoning with a historic surge in gun violence. While shootings on school campuses declined significantly during the pandemic – incidents...

Please join us for the final ACEs Aware Ventura County lecture series session with Dr. Sharon Elmensdorp, PhD, BCBA-D & Dr. Kathleen VanAntwerp, Ed.D. Unit 4 Session 3 : Trauma-Informed Network of Care: Supporting a Resilient Ventura County REGISTER HERE to attend this LIVE free session or view on-demand. Dr. Sharon Elmensdorp is a Board Certified Behavioral Analyst-Doctoral Level (BCBA-D) and works with Ventura County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA). Dr. Elmensdorp has a...

We are excited to announce that new resources to support clinical approaches to addressing ACEs and toxic stress are now available in Spanish on the ACEs Aware Initiative . Please download and share these materials with your networks! ACE-Associated Health Conditions (Pediatric and Adults) 10 Categories of ACEs Infographic Spectrum of Positive, Tolerable, and Toxic Stress Infographic Stress Busters Wheel Additionally, Spanish versions of the Adult and Pediatric Algorithms and Workflows, Case...

By David Tuller, Image: Malte Mueller/Getty Images, California Healthline, December 9, 2021 Editor’s note: This article contains references to racial and ethnic slurs. Corey Baker, a gay man in Columbus, Ohio, has seen many dating app profiles that include phrases like “Blacks — don’t apply.” Sometimes when he declines invitations, he said, men lash out with insults like “you’re an ugly Black person anyway.” And some of his friends have been slammed with the N-word in similar situations.

From California Department of Public Health, December 2021 The California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Injury and Violence Prevention Branch (IVPB) is proud to release a new resource titled, “Opportunities to Empower and Support Girls and Women in California: An Environmental Scan of Leadership Opportunities and Economic Supports to Prevent Sexual Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, and Teen Dating Violence.” The IVPB addresses root causes of violence and applies an upstream approach...