Tagged With "youth leader"
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MARC Brown Bag Webinar Series: September Sessions & Archives
Join Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) for a series of free, short (45-minute) webinars with national leaders who will share some of their expertise and engage in dialogue with you on key strategies for creating just, healthy and resilient communities. Seats are limited, but recordings will be available after each session. Register at MARC.HealthFederation.org/BrownBag for the following sessions: Thursday, September 7 @ 1pm ET Melissa Merrick, PhD —Preventing Child Abuse and...
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Harmonium CEO Rosa Ana Lozada “walks the talk” of trauma-informed, resilience-building practices
Harmonium staff pictured (left to right ) Front row: Brian Newcomer, Rosa Ana Lozada, Heidi Echeverria, and Janice Tangback Back row: Amy De Meules, Natalie Kessler, and Justin Campbell There’s almost a Zen-like feeling when you walk into the office of Rosa Ana Lozada, chief executive officer of Harmonium, Inc. The deep red accent wall, large corner windows, and small Japanese fountain send a message that a trauma-informed, resilience-building mindset starts at the top of this...
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Measuring Trauma-Informed Care: A 3-Part Series. FREE DOWNLOAD
Measuring Trauma-Informed Care: Overview of Series Federal, state, and local governing bodies are increasingly mandating trauma-informed care (TIC), requiring organizations, schools, and service systems to demonstrate they are advancing TIC in their settings. Yet, organizations and schools have little guidance about how to do so. For example, the Family First Services Prevention Act requires Qualified Residential Training Programs (QRTPs) to demonstrate effective use of a TIC framework, but...
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Mental Health Focus of New Youth Program in Torrance and Long Beach [presstelegram.com]
By Nick Green, Press-Telegram, October 7, 2019 A fast- emerging youth mental health crisis linked to excessive screen time, loneliness and social media addiction has prompted a Torrance and Long Beach nonprofit group to create a program aimed at countering escalating rates of anxiety and depression caused by the pursuit of an Instagram-like culture of online perfection. Indeed, The Volunteer Center South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach realized when angst-riven youth reach adulthood, they may not be...
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Merced College NextUp Center Celebrates Foster Youth Services with Grand Opening [yourcentralvalley.com]
By YourCentralValley.com Staff, February 5, 2020 Merced College celebrated the grand opening on Wednesday of the NextUp Center to support current and former foster youth under the age of 26. Merced College says it was one of 45 community colleges to receive a NextUp grant from California Community Colleges in the amount of $643,840 to establish the program which offers support and resources including academic and vocational counseling, meal and gas cards, educational supplies, and more.
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My turn: We must build strong children (calmatters.org)
Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom has made early childhood development one of his signature issues . We at First 5 Los Angeles and First 5 organizations across California stand ready to help him turn that pledge into reality. The new governor’s goal of prioritizing funding for “cradle-to-career” programs gives me hope that in 2019, we will finally see the passage of legislation that makes quality early learning available for all California children. California is a national leader on climate change...
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New Navigation Center for Transitional Age Youth Approved [patch.com]
From Patch, February 26, 2020 On Tuesday, February 25, the Board of Supervisors approved the lease for a new 75-bed Navigation Center at 888 Post Street. Mayor London N. Breed and Supervisor Aaron Peskin sponsored the legislation to create the Navigation Center to serve Transitional Age Youth (ages 18-24) experiencing homelessness. 888 Post Street will become the City's first Navigation Center for young people ages 18-24. The Navigation Center model provides low-barrier shelter so young...
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New Rankings Show Healthiest and Least Healthy Counties in California [March 19, 2019 Public Health Institute]
REPORT EXPLORES THE IMPACT OF SEVERE HOUSING COST BURDEN ON RESIDENTS Marin County ranks healthiest in California and Lake County is the least healthy county in the state, according to the annual County Health Rankings, released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute (UWPHI). The Rankings are available at www.countyhealthrankings.org . An easy-to-use snapshot that compares counties within states, the Rankings show that...
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New Resources from the Mycelium Youth Network [myceliumyouthnetwork.org]
By Mycelium Youth Network, May 2020 Mycelium Youth Network prepares youth in the Bay Area -- who are most vulnerable to and already feeling the effects of environmental racism -- for climate change. We use a merger of indigenous environmental traditions that emphasize youth environmental stewardship and relationship building alongside a rigorous STEAM curriculum that focuses on practical hands-on skills for climate resilience and mitigation that youth create and implement in their homes and...
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New Study Shows Communities Can Reduce the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences [Mathematic Policy Research]
[ Ed. note: Following is a media release published yesterday by Mathematica Policy Research. This follows on the heals of the report, "Self-Healing Communities" that Laura Porter, Dr. Robert Anda and WHO wrote for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Both reports and executive summaries are attached to this blog post. Both reports are significant, because they show that community ACEs initiatives -- with "modest investments and limited staff" -- are solving some of our most intractable...
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New Youth Council to Advise LA County Officials on Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice, and Other Matters Affecting LA's Kids [witnessla.com]
By Taylor Walker, WitnessLA, February 5,2020 On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to launch a Youth Commission to advise the board and county departments on matters of policy, budget, programs, and other issues that affect the county’s youth and their families. With this commission, the county has the opportunity to create a “trailblazing model” for jurisdictions across the nation, Supervisors Janice Hahn and Sheila Kuehl wrote in their motion. “In...
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OCAP needs you! Apply now to become a member of their 2019 Citizen Review Panels
Make a difference in the lives of vulnerable children in California. Use your voice to change the child welfare system in California! Convened by the Office of Child Abuse Prevention (OCAP), they are seeking citizen (YOUR) input at their quarterly meetings. Now is your chance to make recommendations to the State! Apply now t o become a member of the California Child-welfare Citizen Review Panels (CRPs). Meetings are held 4 times a year. Participation can be by phone, computer, or in-person.
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Op-Ed – Looking To Oakland For Gun Violence Reduction Strategies That Work [witnessla.com]
It’s the best news you’ve probably never heard. Oakland, long synonymous with gun violence, is suddenly emerging as a national leader in the field of violence prevention. Since 2012, shootings are down more than 50 percent and are on pace to reach their lowest levels in decades. California leaders have much to learn from how people in Oakland came together to rewrite the violence reduction playbook. [For more on this story by Reygan Cunningham and Mike McLively, go to...
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Orange County CA First Child Trauma Meeting a Big Success
On April 27, "Healing Orange County from Childhood Trauma" held its first meeting in Mission Viejo, CA at a local restaurant from 6 to 8 pm. We posted it on meetup.com as the founding meeting of Orange County (CA) ACEs Connection. I was honored to co-create the meeting with my dear friend Dana Brown, Southern California director for ACEs Connection. We felt awe as three education activists, six professional trauma therapy providers, individuals suffering child trauma and a total of 12 people...
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Over 14,000 CA foster youth facing end to critical services
May is National Foster Care Month. If foster youth are not reunified with their families or adopted by age 21, youth “age out” of the state’s foster care system and services often end abruptly. In 2015, more than 14,000 California foster youth—nearly a quarter of all those in care statewide—were between the ages of 16 and 20 years old.
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Parent and Youth Leaders Educate Policymakers on ACEs in Sacramento on July 11th
Twelve parent and youth leaders, reentry and educational leaders, and community organizers represented the region of San Diego in Sacramento on July 11th. Aligning with about 80 other community members and professionals statewide, everyone met with and educated legislative staff on the impact of ACEs, community trauma, community healing and resilience building. Organized by the 4CA steering group led by Center for Youth Wellness, Children Now, and ACEs Connection Network, the ACEs science...
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Preparations begin for 2018 State Legislative Sessions—Tools to help you communicate with your state legislators
With the majority of states convening legislative sessions in 2018*, now is the time to begin preparations to advance trauma-informed proposals and educate lawmakers on the impact of trauma on the health and wellbeing of their constituents. ACEs Connection Network (ACN) will be sharing tools to help in this process over the next months. Two are now available—“How to Create a Community Profile” and “Tips on How to Build Relationships with Your Legislators.” One of the most effective tools...
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Report reveals how foster care, juvenile and adult justice systems traumatize youth, calls for policy shifts
YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...
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Resilient Communities are Healthy Communities
Resilient Communities are Healthy Communities…what’s good for health is good for climate!” Authored by: Judy Robinson and Sara Jensen Carr, Design 4 Active Sacramento Climate change directly threatens the health and well-being of California’s nearly 40 million people. Without intervention at the local, regional, and state scales, these dangers will only become more pronounced in coming years. The Safeguarding California Plan devotes an entire public health chapter to these risks, stating:...
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Resilient Communities are Healthy Communities
Resilient Communities are Healthy Communities…what’s good for health is good for climate!” Authored by: Judy Robinson and Sara Jensen Carr, Design 4 Active Sacramento Climate change directly threatens the health and well-being of California’s nearly 40 million people. Without intervention at the local, regional, and state scales, these dangers will only become more pronounced in coming years. The Safeguarding California Plan devotes an entire public health chapter to these risks, stating:...
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Children Now is hiring (in Sacramento)!
https://www.childrennow.org/portfolio-posts/healthpolicyassociate/ Health Policy Associate/Senior Associate (Sacramento) Children Now is a nonpartisan whole-child research, policy development, and advocacy organization dedicated to promoting children’s health, education and well‐being in California. Children Now also leads The Children’s Movement of California , a grassroots network of more than 3,000 business, education, parent, civil rights, faith, and community‐based organizations, as...
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Community Profiles from selected CA ACEs Initiatives and Programs
CA communities and organizations from across the state shared information about their trauma informed and resilience building initiatives at the Child Adversity Policymaker Awareness Day on July 11, 2017 in Sacramento. The event, organized by 4CA ( California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity) , educated state legislators about the impacts of child adversity across the lifecourse and strategies for preventing ACEs, healing trauma and creating resilient communities. A series of fourteen...
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Congressional Briefing Addresses Public Policy to Improve Response to ACEs
In the final weeks of the 114 th Congress, Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) welcomed her colleague Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) as a new host in the third and final briefing on addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The December 1 briefing focused on public policies to improve coordination, prevention and response to childhood trauma. In addition to joining forces to raise awareness of the impact of ACEs, Senators Heitkamp and Durbin are drafting legislation based on a framework they...
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CRI's Search for National Resilience Champions
CRI is the nation’s first Resilience community network and a national leader in the effort to create and support inclusive, equitable and healthy communities who understand, model and promote the common language of safety, connection and love. Contextual community resilience is our emphasis and helping to share that message is our passion. Why did CRI create a national resiliency award? Malcolm Gladwell defined a tipping point as ‘the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling...
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California, NY's Amazing Low-Crime Trends Need to Be Studied [jjie.org]
By Mike Males, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, October 14, 2019 Leaders across the United States agonize over recent mass shootings as Americans fear more to come. Perhaps we can learn from youth in two mega-cities where gun violence has fallen dramatically even as politicians fail to act. Teenagers in the nation’s two largest metropolises, New York City and Los Angeles, once suffered gun killing rates triple the national average. Over the last 25 to 30 years, however, teens’ gun...
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California Snapshots provide overviews of data on prevalence of ACEs and initiatives to prevent and heal ACEs
Snapshots of California-specific information are outlined here as resources for your policy and advocacy activities—whether it is educating an elected official or leader in the non-profit world or in business about ACEs-trauma-resilience or simply persuading a potential partner to include ACEs science in developing organizational priorities. The snapshots include data on ACEs and child well-being, profiles of statewide ACEs initiatives, and community profiles (aka stories). CAHMI Fact Sheet...
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Governor Newsom announces Nadine Burke Harris to be CA's first-ever surgeon general
Governor Gavin Newsom today announced the appointment of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a national leader in pediatric medicine, to serve as California’s first-ever surgeon general. There is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community around early warning signs and childhood determinants of serious health outcomes. As surgeon general, Dr. Burke Harris will urge policymakers at every level of government and leaders across the state to consider the social determinants of health, especially...
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Governor Newsom To Replace Head Of State’s Youth Justice System Chuck Supple. So Now Who Will Run The DJJ? [witnessla.com]
By Celeste Fremon, Witness LA, September 17, 2019 On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would be replacing the top person at California Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), which is the state’s youth lock-up system that Newsom wants to see reformed. The division’s present leader, Director Chuck Supple, will be “stepping down effective immediately citing health reasons,” according to the statement released by the governor’s office. Director Supple was appointed as Director of DJJ in...
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Hanna Center takes ‘trauma care’ on the road
For 72 years, Hanna Boys Center has been a place of refuge for disadvantaged boys – boys who, largely by circumstance, were in trouble. Dysfunctional homes, neighborhood violence, feral upbringings, drug abuse: Hanna Boys Center has sheltered all kinds. Over those decades Hanna Boys Center has established itself as a leader in transformational protocols, a vanguard on the fractious front advocating for at-risk youth. ..... ..... Trauma-informed care argues that children who’ve experienced...
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How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children
Dr. Elizabeth Grady is a pediatrician at the South San Francisco Clinic, a community clinic of San Mateo Medical Center. She and Susana Flores , a senior public health nurse with San Mateo County Health, spoke with me about how the clinic and other health agencies in San Mateo have been able to craft ways to work together to prevent and heal toxic stress in children. Grady also talked about how she and Flores have been working with the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), a group of...
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How far can California push the nation — and the world? Jerry Brown's climate summit may provide the answer (latimes.com)
“This is a very odd challenge we have,” Brown said in an interview in his office. “It is coming at us from all over the planet. Everyone is contributing and everyone has got to do something to combat it. It is a totally unique world challenge, never before faced. There is nothing like this.” Brown had not planned the summit as an act of defiance. The idea emerged soon after the Paris climate change accord was signed in 2015, with strong support from President Obama, and the world assumed the...
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How Naming the Alleged Abusers in the Catholic Church Scandal in California Helps Survivors Overcome Their Trauma [psmag.com]
When Dan McNevin was nine years old, he served as an altar boy to Father James Clark in Corpus Christi Church in Fremont, California. There he worshipped alongside generations of his Irish Catholic family, attending mass and answering phones for the parish office. At first, says McNevin, now 60, Clark was "grooming him." But soon the priest began to abuse him both physically and emotionally, undressing, touching, and assaulting him. He didn't tell anyone, including his parents, for more than...
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How the Great Recession Weighed on Children (imperialvalleynews.com)
Baltimore, Maryland - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers have found that increases in unemployment in California during the Great Recession were associated with an increased risk for weight gain among the state's 1.7 million public school students, suggesting that economic troubles could have long-term health consequences for children. The researchers, publishing online June 1 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, say that for every one percentage...
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Ideas for engaging with your state legislators in the home district
Whether or not you participated in the July 11 4CA Policymaker Education Day in Sacramento, there are many ways to build a mutually constructive relationship with your legislators by communicating regularly throughout the year. Ways to build those relationships include meeting face-to-face in the district, attending forums, town halls, or district office hours as well as making phone calls, and sending emails and letters (to the legislators and to local paper). Make the commitment now to...
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In Sacramento, Youth Activists Push to Get Police Out of Schools [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Susan Abram, The Chronicle of Social Change, January 6, 2020 As a 10th grader at Sacramento’s Luther Burbank High School, Stephanie Lopez remembers when she saw a school resource officer treat her brother like a criminal. Her brother had bumped into the officer and apologized, Lopez said. But the officer proceeded to question him and asked him for his ID. “It was all new to me,” said Lopez, now 17 and a senior, of the aggressive approach the officer used with her brother. “When I was...
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Inside the fight over how to address San Francisco's 'state of emergency' for black student achievement (latimes.com)
Black students in San Francisco would be better off almost anywhere else in California. Many attend segregated schools and the majority of black, Latino and Pacific Islander students did not reach grade-level standards on the state's recent tests in math or English tests. A local NAACP leader called for declaring a "state of emergency" for black student achievement, a problem the city's school board acknowledged. "The problem cannot be reduced to one sickness or one cure," said Rev. Amos C.
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Job Opportunities with California ACEs Learning and Quality Improvement Collaborative
Three new UCSF job opportunities to be part of California’s effort to reduce toxic stress with ACEs Aware UCSF’s Center to Advance Trauma Informed Healthcare (CTHC) is leading the California ACEs Learning and Quality Improvement Collaborative (CALQIC), a two-year shared learning project involving 50 pediatric and adult clinics in 5 CA regions. The goal of CALQIC is to integrate screening and response for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) into healthcare settings in a way that enhances...
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Re: Educators’ “Complex Trauma” Resolution: Will it have an impact?
CA is ahead of a number of states in having passed a general resolution in 2014 just behind Wisconsin, Vermont, and Massachusets. ( https://acestoohigh.com/2014/0...eduction-resolution/ ) It would be great to have schools as the leader in this movement of shift in philosophy of compassion. Who else has passed legislation since then? Arizona introduced legislation last year but it was not passed. Where are we at on this nationwide in 2016?
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Re: Customizing ACEs Screening for High School Students in Santa Rosa, CA
Hi Todd, This is a bit complex to answer - but I will do my best! Here goes ... Since this post was written the work at Elsie Allen and Roseland Pediatrics has continued to evolve and now includes all of the Santa Rosa Community Health Center sites (most are based on a Family Medicine model) see minutes below for further details. Click this link for more detailed Minutes from Sonoma County ACEs Connection Meeting From the document: Meredith Kieschinck MD shared the initial data revealed by...
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The important role of policy in addressing childhood trauma during COVID-19 and beyond
By Renee Gross, JD Health Policy Consultant, Kaiser Permanente Over the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused everyone to grapple with uncertainty and manage new stressors at home, at work, and in our communities. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll indicated that 45% of Americans report that the current crisis is harming their mental health. We are facing unprecedented disruption in our daily lives and navigating a world of school and business closures, job losses, social...
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Opinion: More Than Ever, We Must Prioritize the Mental Health and Well-being of Children [stanfordchildrens.org]
By Rachel Velcoff and Steven Adelsheim, Stanford Children's Health, June 8, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the lives of families across the country and left many adults feeling stressed, anxious, and struggling to cope. It has also put the mental health of our youngest and most vulnerable at risk. Now, three months into the pandemic, youth are experiencing further stress and trauma, as our country grapples with another profound crisis: the murder of George Floyd and the...
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Trauma Transformed is seeking a new Center Director!
View job description for the Trauma Transformed Center Director position, and link to an ACEs Connection story about the center's impact.
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Alameda County’s Youth Transitions Partnership Program: A Promising Model for Supporting Transition-Age Youth in Foster Care [chapinhall.org]
By Laura Packard Tucker, Amy Dworsky, and Molly (Mayer) Van Drunen, Chapin Hall at The University of Chicago, June 2020 The Youth Transitions Partnership (YTP) blends service coordination, intensive case management, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help transition age youth in foster care in Alameda County, CA engage with support systems and improve their outcomes. YTP was funded by the Children’s Bureau Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) grant program. This brief describes the...
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Single-Year 2018 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) Downloadable Data Sets and Codebooks, and combined 2017-2018 State Comparison Maps and Tables are Now Available on the DRC [camhi.org]
From Data Resource Center on Child and Adolescent Health, June 10, 2020 The Data Resource Center (DRC), a project of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative located at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health , under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), is excited to announce the release of the single-year 2018 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) downloadable data sets and...
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A Better Normal Friday, June 19th at Noon PDT: LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma
Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of A Better Normal, our ongoing series in which we envision the future as trauma-informed. LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion On Historical and Generational Trauma With Panelists Rev. Dr. D. Mark Wilson and Alexander Cho, Ph.D., Moderated by ACEs Connection staff members Jenna Quinn and Alison Cebulla Friday, June 19th, 2020 Noon to 1pm, PT (3pm to 4pm ET) >>Click here to register<< Please join us...
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California Considers Extending Foster Care for Young Adults Until Pandemic Emergency Ends [calhealthreport.org]
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Report, June 22, 2020 At the beginning of March, Monse Gonzalez had her entire year planned. She would graduate from community college, save part of her paychecks as a childcare worker, and start school at the University of Santa Barbara. Then came the pandemic. Suddenly, everything Gonzalez, 18, had worked for was in jeopardy: her job, her housing, her associates degree. While many young adults have families to lean on during these uncertain times,...
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CME/CE/MOC Now Available for CYW Online ACEs Course! [centerforyouthwellness.org]
From Center for Youth Wellness, June 24, 2020 Great news! You can now receive CME credits and MOC points for taking Center for Youth Wellness’ online learning courses. Receive 1.5 CME credits for ACEs: The Science & Foundational Framework , which lays out evidence for how exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress impacts the brain and causes multi-systemic effects. This course will enable you to: Describe the link between ACEs, additional adversities and toxic...
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Northern California Youth Listening Sessions: Hearing the Voices of Youth Involved in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58eeb29cdb29d6de1df8ac76/t/5ed85f5b4c61935658893996/1591238520469/Youth+Listening+Sessions+Report.pdf Justin Martinez, 29, will be a first-generation graduate when he earns his psychology degree from San Francisco State University this month. Martinez was formerly a foster child and shared his story at a Youth Listening Session , an event where young people in the foster care and juvenile justice systems engage in honest dialogue and self-expression.