March 2021

By Karen D'Souza, EdSource, March 11, 2021 President Joe Biden’s child care relief bill, part of the sweeping $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that the president signed into law Thursday, may not end the growing child care crisis, but it will throw a much-needed lifeline to a field on the brink of collapse, early childhood advocates say. “Our early educator community has been desperately underfunded for decades. Even before the pandemic, most child care providers — particularly those in...

ACEs Connection , the CTIPP (The Campaign for Trauma -Informed Policy & Practice), and the Relentless School Nurse , are co-hosing the Transform Trauma with ACEs Sciences Film Festival and Zoom discussion series. These are our next two events and we hope you will join us: 1. Weekend Streaming of Whole People from March 12th - March 14th, 2021): We will be streaming of parts 4 and 5 of the Whole People documentary series on the weekend of M arch 12th through March 14th, 2021 in the...

Fritzi Horstman grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan – not as posh as it is now, she says, but still a respectable, middle-class neighborhood. By the time she was 16, she had become a “juvenile delinquent, doing drugs and running around.” What happened? And why was her ACE score 8, when she finally assessed it nearly 40 years later? Domestic violence underscored her childhood and teen years, she says. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother a “rage-aholic” who abused her and her...

By Loren McCullough and Dr. Bob Sege, 3/11/21, positiveexperience.org/blog What’s going on with families during the COVID pandemic? In partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics , Prevent Child Abuse America , and with assistance and financial support from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) , The Lucile Packard Foundation , the California Department of Public Health , and KidsData.org , we surveyed California parents, to find out how they are doing during the...

The Advancing California’s Trauma Informed Systems (ACTS) project is a collaboration between the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), Office of Child Abuse and Prevention (OCAP) and the Chadwick Center at Rady Children’s Hospital . The ACTS Project team is looking to expand their network of trauma-informed Child Welfare county system partners. Currently the ACTS network includes nine counties from across the state and we have openings for new partners now and also have a great...

Telling the truth about philanthropy is the first step to transforming it for generations to come. What would it mean to “decolonize” philanthropy? Language matters. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang have powerfully argued, “ Decolonization is not a metaphor ,” and shouldn’t be used to describe anything but fundamentally dismantling white supremacy. That means centering oppressed perspectives, supporting the rematriation of land, redistributing resources, shifting power and decision making, and...

San Diego Unified’s Junipero Serra High School will now be called Canyon Hills High School after students successfully petitioned for the name change, saying that the name of the founder of California’s mission system is offensive to indigenous peoples whose ancestors were subjected to its doctrine. On Tuesday night, the San Diego Unified School Board unanimously voted for the name change and to change the school’s mascot from a conquistador to a rattlesnake, or a “Rattler.” Students who...

Amid laughter and more than a few eyes glistening with tears, much gratitude and a chat-box filled with uplifting messages, members of ACEs Connection from around the world gathered via Zoom on March 4 to celebrate the milestone of the social networking site reaching 50,000 members. The group acknowledged founder and publisher Jane Stevens’ foresight in starting this human and digital catalyst, growing and supporting the worldwide ACEs and resilience movement and telling its authentic...

Please join us for the next Children's Advocates' Roundtable from 12:00pm - 2:00pm on Thursday, March 18 . We look forward to hearing from Dr. Luke Wood to discuss addressing inequitable disciplinary practices in CA public schools. We will also welcome Ann Quirk from the Children's Law Center to talk about ongoing efforts to address inequitable suspensions and expulsions of foster youth. Participants will have the opportunity to share information and resources related to their budget and...

To help raise awareness during Child Abuse Prevention Month, the California Training Institute (CalTrin) and our sister organization, the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse (CEBC) , are partnering to present Child Abuse Prevention: State of the Science. This webinar will review the research evidence base for child abuse prevention programs, with a focus on primary and secondary prevention. Attendees will also learn how to identify which programs are most appropriate for their agency’s...

Body, Mind, and Spirit. An indivisible combination that is the cornerstone for holistic wellness for Native Americans. It is also the slogan that appears beneath the medicine wheel on the sign for the San Diego American Indian Health Center . “Da'anzho,” said Ruben Leyva, standing at the corner in Bankers Hill where the clinic is located. “That means ‘hello’ in the Apache language. I am a Chiricahua Chíhénde Apache. I stand here honored and humbled to speak to you on Kumeyaay land.” In order...

I recently read a quote that @Christine Cissy White (ACEsConnection) shared that says, "Trauma informed care isn't trauma informed, without the trauma survivor." No matter what degree, training, or book you acquire you can never really know how it feels to experience trauma unless you go through it. I remember when I first discovered I had an ACE score of 7; I had been serving the community by teaching resiliency, self-healing, and breaking stigmas around mental health. I came across the...