Tagged With "Aidan Phillips"

Local public schools suspended and expelled far fewer students last year as they continued to shift away from punishment and toward prevention and positive reinforcement, according to the latest figures from the California Department of Education. Sacramento County school districts issued about 27,000 suspensions during the 2016-17 school year, down by 18,000, or 40 percent, from the 2011-12 school year. Districts expelled 160 students, down by 108, or 40 percent, from 2011-12. Despite the...

The California Assembly passed AB 1971 Wednesday, legislation which amends the state’s definition of “gravely disabled” to include medical treatment as a basic human need for those suffering from a serious mental illness, just as necessary to well-being as food, clothing or shelter. AB 1971 is sponsored by Los Angeles County, the Steinberg Institute, and the California Psychiatric Association. The bill passed with bipartisan support by a vote of 66-0. The proposal for the change in state law...

California has welcomed about 112,000 refugees in the last 15 years, according to the State Department. They have resettled in more than 440 California cities and unincorporated communities. San Diego County has seen the biggest influx of refugees in recent years, with more than 31,000 refugees resettling there since 2002. About 11,500 Iraqis have resettled in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon alone. Los Angeles County welcomed nearly 30,000 refugees in the last 15 years. In the Los Angeles...

What responsibility does government have to protect people with serious mental illnesses who refuse treatment? How should it balance the right to liberty with the need for care? At the heart of the long effort to answer these questions is a law signed in 1967 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. Aimed at safeguarding the civil rights of one of society’s most vulnerable populations, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act put an end to the inappropriate and often indefinite institutionalization of people with...

It's been exactly a decade since California last executed a murderer. But since then more than 180 California criminals have been sentenced to death. The sentences have not been uniformly distributed. Some counties have stopped or almost stopped sending murderers to Death Row. Others continue to condemn prisoners with relatively high frequency. It's unclear whether these criminals will ever be executed. California halted executions in 2006 following a court order related to whether the...

If you are a child welfare professional working with youth in California, chances are this practice guide may be a useful resource! Developed by Impact Justice and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and published in January 2017, this practice guide is designed to provide probation department practice guidelines, and policy recommendations for working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, and/or gender nonconforming and transgender girls and boys who interface with the California...

By Phillip Reese, California Healthline, November 11, 2019 Less than a decade ago, the emergency department at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego would see maybe one or two young psychiatric patients per day, said Dr. Benjamin Maxwell, the hospital’s interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry. Now, it’s not unusual for the emergency room to see 10 psychiatric patients in a day, and sometimes even 20, said Maxwell. “What a lot of times is happening now is kids aren’t getting the...

(From left to right) State Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, Rep. Jackie Speier, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, participate in a town hall meeting on gun violence at Lincoln High School in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, August 27 Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle Editor's note: In her role as state surgeon general, Dr. Harris addressed gun violence as preventable and important to treat as a public health issue. She said that in 2017, there were...

By Theresa Clift and Phillip Reese, The Sacramento Bee, June 20, 2020 The recent surge in Sacramento County’s confirmed COVID-19 cases has hit several socioeconomically-disadvantaged communities hard, including some places that had previously avoided the worst of the outbreak, according to a Sacramento Bee review of county and census data. All five of the ZIP codes with the highest rates of COVID-19 cases per 10,000 residents diagnosed from mid-May through mid-June are in areas with high...

ACEs Connection will begin highlighting ACEs and Resilience initiatives by county. We're starting this effort off by listing the recent ACEs Aware grantees by county.

By Phillip Reese, Kaiser Health News, August 26, 2020 It’s official, California: COVID-19 has left us sick with worry and increasingly despondent. And our youngest adults — ages 18 to 29 — are feeling it worst. Weekly surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau from late April through late July offer a grim view of the toll the pandemic has taken on the nation’s mental health. By late July, more than 44% of California adult respondents reported levels of anxiety and gloom typically...

Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Violence Prevention Research Award Recipients Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years). For example: experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect witnessing violence in the home or community having a family member attempt or die by suicide Also included are aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding such as growing up in a...

Thank you to Aidan Phillips from the WAVE Trust for his excellent and engaging presentation for attendees of our monthly Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) call for March. The information he shared is invaluable as we continue our work to influence change at the national level through the National Trauma Campaign . If you were unable to join, would like to watch again, or want to share with others, you can find the call recording here . Additionally, if you would like...

Strengthening the wounded soul can improve psychological and physical wellbeing and help to complete the recovery process. Although ACEs, understandably, can numb feelings, including spiritual feelings, once healing has progressed, spiritual feelings can often be successfully cultivated.