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Contra Costa County (CA)

Tagged With "Trauma Informed Yoga Outreach Training"

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New organization calls all pediatricians to end crisis that's "hiding in plain sight"

Laurie Udesky ·
When the question of screening patients for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was first raised a couple of years ago, Santa Barbara pediatrician Andria Ruth had mixed feelings about it.
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New Prevention Institute Report Offers Framework for Preventing Community Trauma, Building Resilience

Julia Wei ·
A new Prevention Institute report, featured Wednesday in USA Today , offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the relationship between community trauma and violence. In doing so, the report provides insight into how we can overcome the inequities that contribute to a cycle of inner-city gun violence, poverty, unemployment, and poor health in communities of color. As additional treatment models are developed for individual trauma, there is a growing need for addressing trauma as a...
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Oakland, CA, youth organization takes next step in systems change to heal trauma

Laurie Udesky ·
In a room in East Oakland, Calif., photos of children are projected on a screen. “Who is that?” asks Briana Moore, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice and a master trainer for the East Bay Agency for Children’s Trauma Transformed program. “Bill Clinton,” responds one of the 20 employees of the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC).
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Policymaker Education Day Registration STILL OPEN!

Gail Yen ·
Registration is still OPEN for another week to the second annual Policymaker Education Day hosted by the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) in Sacramento on May 22nd! Don't miss this opportunity to be able to share your thoughts and expertise with your Assemblymember or Senator on how to address childhood adversity in your communities. Guest speakers include Assemblymember Dr. Arambula of Fresno County, Ted Lempert of Children Now and Sarah Pauter of Phenomenal...
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Report reveals how foster care, juvenile and adult justice systems traumatize youth, calls for policy shifts

Laurie Udesky ·
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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RYSE Center's Listening Campaign: Young people in Richmond, CA help adults understand trauma, violence, coping, and healing

Kanwarpal Dhaliwal ·
"My experience with violence is very brutal...I grew up with violence as if it were my sibling." - LC participant (youth) "We know we can't run the city- it's too complex- but our experience and our voices should count, especially because we're the most effected ." - LC participant (youth) "Our city's problems are shared by us all; we are all part of the problem AND the solution. Listening is a key component to healing." - LC Share Out partici pant (adult) Three years ago, RYSE Center in...
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RYSE gathering: To promote healing from trauma, institutions need to stop seeing youth as the problem

Laurie Udesky ·
A young man told clinical therapist Marissa Snoddy recently that when she calls him a leader, she got it all wrong. “He said, ‘I just came from Juvenile Hall,’ I’m not a leader.” But, she said, “We just kept giving him love. And we said, ‘You’re courageous for showing up and being here,’” The very fact that he was there, she explained, showed he was a leader. Snoddy related the anecdote recently for 80 people attending the Trauma and Learning Series launch led by Rising Youth for Social...
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School by school, Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative is forging ahead on building resilience

Laurie Udesky ·
What began as a presentation by ACEs Connection's Donielle Prince about ACEs science for members of the Berkeley Healthy Schools Collaborative morphed into a lively discussion about how the 11 members who attended the meeting were involved in shepherding trauma-informed practices into their organizations and schools. Prince, who is ACEs Connection’s San Francisco Bay Area community facilitator, talked about the evolution of ACEs Connection into a network of more than 22,000 members in...
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Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action

Laurie Udesky ·
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all

Laurie Udesky ·
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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Suisun Elementary (CA) makes ACEs science intrinsic to everyday life

Laurie Udesky ·
Students start each day with meditation During her first year as principal of Suisun Elementary in Suisun City, Calif., in 2014 Ann Marie Neubert suspended 102 students — out of a student population of 550 —for disrupting their classes. It was a serious problem, but the school’s teachers didn’t know what to do. “[Teachers] felt like they were using all the tools in their toolbox and it wasn’t changing behavior,” she recalls. Ann Marie Neubert Too many students were spending too much time out...
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Survey: Healthcare providers, community organizations weigh in on California's ACEs screening program

Laurie Udesky ·
In January, California took a historic leap forward to promote universal ACEs screening of the state’s 13 million adults and children in the Medi-Cal program. The eventual goal is to promote ACEs screening for all patients, but this is a first step in dealing with a major issue that ACEs science has identified: that many children will develop serious health problems later in life because the healthcare system is not currently set up to detect the roots of those problems. The term ACEs, which...
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Toxic Stress, Behavioral Health, and the Next Major Era in Public Health
 by Mental Health America

To view the document, click on the following link:  http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/toxic-stress-behavioral-health-and-next-major-era-public-health      
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Tracking Trafficking [pacificsun.com]

By Will Carruthers, Pacific Sun, February 5, 2020 North Bay residents don’t appreciate the scale of a crime happening all around them, despite an increased effort at public outreach over the past decade, according to a local nonprofit director. “Human trafficking happens every single day,” says Christine Castillo, the executive director of Verity, a Sonoma County nonprofit that offers services and support to trafficking victims and sometimes coordinates with law-enforcement agencies...
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Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence

Laurie Udesky ·
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
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Trauma-informed groups rev up to address race, inclusion

Laurie Udesky ·
Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...
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Trauma Transformed launches regional effort in San Francisco Bay Area

Alicia St. Andrews ·
Nearly 300 impassioned and committed people crowded into the Green Room at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center last week to launch Trauma Transformed. Known as T2, the regional effort – representing the San Francisco Department of Public Health and seven Bay Area counties – is funded by a four-year, $4-million grant from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Youth, families, health directors and public health leaders...
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Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services

Briana S. Zweifler ·
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
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University students seeking counseling learn about their ACEs

Laurie Udesky ·
Dr. Diane Suffridge, a clinical psychologist and director of the University Counseling Services at Dominican University in San Rafael, Calif., has been interested in trauma for many years. But last summer that interest took a sudden and interesting turn. A student counselor she advised had written a research paper on the link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) health and mental health outcomes in foster youth, and it gave the student a new view of the patients she counseled at the...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress

Laurie Udesky ·
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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A middle school tackles trauma, finds more calm and less suspensions

Laurie Udesky ·
6 th grader Cayla White (right) helps lead class meditation with Niroga Institute’s Lauren Banister/ photos by Laurie Udesky During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended -- 19.2 percent of the student population. “I was watching really good people burning out from the [teaching]...
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ACES Aware Webinar: Dec 13th, 12-1pm PT - Public Comments about soon-to-be-released Request for Proposal

Gail Kennedy ·
The Department of Health Care Services and the California Office of the Surgeon General are hosting a webinar of the Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Advisory Committee’s Provider Education and Engagement Subcommittee. Subcommittee members will discuss a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) released for public comment as part of the ACEs Aware initiative. The draft RFP invites external organizations to apply for grants to support provider training activities, provider engagement activities...
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Building Trust Cuts Violence. Cash Also Helps. [NYTimes.com]

Samantha Sangenito ·
DeVone Boggan could teach a class on the art of making a statement. In 2010, he invited a group of the most dangerous gun offenders in Richmond, a Bay Area city of about 100,000 residents, to a conference room at City Hall. At each seat was a name card starting with “Mr.” and an information folder labeled “Operation Peacemaker.” Wearing a suit and his signature fedora, Boggan began the meeting by apologizing on behalf of the city for not reaching out to the men sooner. Peace in Richmond, he...
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Contra Costa County Data Dashboard: Child Adversity and Well-Being

Val Krist ·
A product of the Essentials for Childhood Initiative (EfC), the Child Adversity and Well-Being Dashboards contain indicators of child adversity, health and well-being utilizing data available on kidsdata.org . For more information about the dashboards, please refer to the California Data Dashboards page. The Contra Costa County Data Dashboard contains select indicators of child adversity and well-being. The dashboard is a product of the Shared Data and Outcomes Workgroup of the California...
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Dozens of stakeholders representing thousands of practitioners send public comments on Calif. ACEs-screening plan

Laurie Udesky ·
Update: We posted this story on Tuesday evening and received a response from the Department of Health Care Services Wednesday that clarifies additional information. DHCS information Officer Katharine Weir said that subject to budget approval by the legislature and the governor: The reimbursement rate will be $29. Federally Qualified Health Centers will also be reimbursed for screening pediatric patients for trauma through Prop 56 funds and federal matching funds. In response to a question...
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Dr. Mona Delahooke Will Present at The Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference in California

Emily Read Daniels ·
Have you been hearing all the buzz about Dr. Mona Delahooke's new book, Beyond Behaviors ? In my opinion, it’s the best new book of 2019. Dr. Delahooke is a practicing pediatric clinical psychologist of thirty years. She is gaining critical acclaim and grassroots support for challenging the prevalent and pervasive behaviorist bias in schools. As a result, she is an emerging authority in the growing revolution to re-interpret children's misbehavior. She highlights much of the books' content...
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During COVID-19, how does a trauma-informed school pivot to distance learning?

Laurie Udesky ·
All photos courtesy of Antioch Middle School staff Antioch Middle School seventh-grader Alyssia Garcia was accustomed to scanning the cafeteria during lunch for kids who might need her assistance. “I’d look for kids who looked sad, kids who were sitting alone, kids who looked angry,” says Garcia, a peer advocate at her school. Alyssia Garcia When she’d spot students sitting alone or looking sad, she’d approach them and ease into conversation. “If it’s a sad person, I’ll try to cheer them up...
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How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children

Laurie Udesky ·
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 do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.

Laurie Udesky ·
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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Hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands: The ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building movement accelerates in the San Francisco Bay Area

Jane Stevens ·
Last Friday, on a sunny Spring day in Santa Clara, CA, about 100 people gathered to celebrate a milestone: Over the last 10 months, 65 trainers from Trauma Transformed, a regional trauma-informed center and clearinghouse in the San Francisco Bay Area, have educated 4,048 people in six counties about trauma-informed principles and practices.
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Interactive training on nature and health for health care providers, Oakland, Ca

Laurie Udesky ·
October 27, 2018 8:45 AM 5:00 PM PDT Calling all health care providers! Save the date! Saturday October 27th, 2018 Join The Center for Nature and Health and Primary Care Clinic, UCSF Benioff's Children's Hospital: When: Saturday, October 27th, 2018, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (Outdoor time included!) Where: CHORI Library, 5700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, Ca Register now: www.bitly.com/ucsf- nature2018 Featured speakers: Daphne Miller, MD, Physician and author Jose Gonzalez, Founder, Latino...
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Leaders in SF public housing deal with their own and community trauma head on

Laurie Udesky ·
Sengthong Sithounnolat, Jeris Woodson, Donald Greene, Ashley Blanco On a recent Saturday, 10 people gather around a table at the offices of Trauma Transformed in Oakland, Calif., where quotes from figures like Frederick Douglas, Nelson Mandela, and Coretta Scott King grace one wall as light streams in from a skylight above. The group is known as the Resident Warriors, which meets weekly. One participant talks of her recovery from addiction and her mother’s murder. Another mentions being...
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Middle school tackles everybody's trauma; result is calmer, happier kids, teachers and big drop in suspensions

Laurie Udesky ·
Sixth grader Cayla White (right) helps lead class meditation with Niroga Institute’s Lauren Banister (photo: Laurie Udesky) ________________________________ During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended -- 19.2 percent of the student population. “I was watching really good people...
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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

Alison Cebulla ·
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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Trauma to Trust uses ACEs science to heal wounds between community members, police

Laurie Udesky ·
photo courtesy of EJUSA/Ron Holtz Studio Forty-seven-year-old Al-Tariq Best, founder and executive director of the HUBB , an arts and healing organization for youth, recalls the rage, humiliation and fear he felt as a 17-year-old when he and three other Black friends were pulled over by police in Newark, N.J. Al-Tariq Best “[There were] all these people around us. They search the car. They strip the car down. They make us pull our pants down in broad daylight. And I'm, I'm upset. And I'm...
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Greater Richmond Trauma Informed Community Network, first to join ACEs Cooperative of Communities, shows what it means to ROCK!

Jane Stevens ·
In 2012, Greater Richmond SCAN and five other community partners hatched a one-year plan to educate the Richmond, Virginia, community about ACEs science and to embed trauma-informed practices. Eight years later, the original group has evolved into the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (GRTICN) with 495 people and 170 organizations. And they're just scratching the surface.
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‘Trauma on top of trauma’: Bay Area students under stress from pandemic face wildfire risks [sfchronicle.com]

By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2020 Students in the Bonny Doon school district had been back in class — virtually — for two days before the wildfires forced them to evacuate, many fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night Wednesday. Teachers and students lost homes to the powerful wildfires raging through the charming, wooded town in the Santa Cruz Mountains. School had just started, but now Superintendent Mike Heffner, who is also the principal of the...
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The 'war on drugs' was a war on people of color

Laurie Udesky ·
In the spring of 1982, Susan Burton turned to alcohol and drugs to cope with the death of her 5-year-old son, who had run into the street and was hit by a vehicle driven by an off-duty police officer . Over the course of the next 17 years, Burton was in and out of prison. “Each time I left, I felt a little more broken,” she told me recently. What would have made a difference, she said, was “if there could have been a way to have therapy from traumatic childhood events, disappointments and...
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Want to empower youth in communities of color during COVID? Let them lead.

Laurie Udesky ·
Widespread reporting has revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated many poor communities of color. Less widely known is how the pandemic has affected young people in those communities. “COVID-19 has had a particularly harsh impact on youth of color,” further traumatizing [juvenile-justice] system-impacted youth and their families already struggling with disproportionately high rates of disease, death, job loss and housing insecurity,” said Jim Keddy of Youth Forward . Keddy was...
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Speakers at children & youth conference call for systems change based in love, liberation

Laurie Udesky ·
California can support children and youth by tackling the state’s — and the country’s — legacy of White supremacy and replacing it with a trauma-informed approach of love, empathy, and support.
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Youth Detention Facility finds culture of kindness more effective than punishment

Laurie Udesky ·
A corner of the Multi-Sensory De-escalation Room, All MSDR photos courtesy of Valerie Clark When a young person enters the de-escalation room in the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility , they’ll find dimmed lights, bottles of lavender, orange and other essential oils, an audio menu featuring the rush of ocean waves and other calming sounds, along with squeeze balls, TheraPutty, jigsaw puzzles, and an exercise ball to bounce on. TheraPutty, squeeze balls and more Sometimes, with a...
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Policing in schools: Redefining public safety to be supportive & healing, instead of punitive & criminalizing

Laurie Udesky ·
A recent video , shared on the national news, shows a 16-year-old Florida student being slammed to the ground by a police officer working at her school. It’s one of many such incidents of school-based police violence against students captured in videos around the country. Some of the victims are as young as five years old. About 47% of U.S. schools employ armed police officers , known as school resource officers, who are there to keep students safe. But students who attend these schools...
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Childcare providers use two- generational approach to help preschoolers from being expelled

Laurie Udesky ·
It’s shocking: Preschoolers are three times more likely to be expelled than children in elementary, middle and high school, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Boys are four times more likely than girls to be kicked out, and African American children are twice as likely as Latinx and White children. One organization with childcare centers and mental health providers in Kentucky and Ohio began a long journey 15 years ago, when they began hearing about...
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California PACEs Connection initiatives spark new connections in regional meeting

Laurie Udesky ·
Among PACEs Connection initiatives around the country, it’s well known that our social network is something like a bustling, giant town square where people share ideas, resources and any number of conversations about how to prevent childhood adversity and promote positive childhood experiences. On May 14, PACEs Connection assembled a virtual town square gathering of PACEs initiatives in California, where we have 58 initiatives sparking action all across the state. Speakers at the gathering,...
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Peer-led organization offers San Francisco's unhoused food, work, dignity and more

Laurie Udesky ·
He is sprawled out on the sidewalk, motionless, flushed cheeks framed by high cheekbones. He’s slender, probably in his mid-20s, his straight, coal black hair pulled back, and his orange t-shirt twisted up over his stomach. “He’s OD’ing on fentanyl!” shouts a guy holding a skateboard.
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Dan Press traces how legal work for Native Americans led to advocacy to uproot trauma

Laurie Udesky ·
L-R Dr. Mary Cwik, Dr. Tami DeCoteau, Dan Press, Dr. Zach Kaminsky, photo courtesy of Elizabeth Prewitt In 1964, Dan Press was in his first year of law school and was not liking it; he wanted a way out. He applied for a volunteer spot with AmeriCorps VISTA, the domestic version of the Peace Corps, and was intrigued by a position on an Indian reservation. Dan Press “I knew nothing about Indians, but it sounded like a good opportunity,” says Press, who was raised in Flushing, in the Queens...
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Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice with Special Guest, Becky Haas, Pioneer in Developing Trauma-Informed Judicial Initiatives

Porter Jennings-McGarity ·
Please join us for our new series entitled: Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice. This monthly virtual Zoom series will feature conversations facilitated by Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity, PhD/LCSW, PACEs Connection’s criminal justice consultant, with special guests to discuss the need for trauma-informed criminal justice system reform. Using a PACEs-science lens, this series will examine the relationship between trauma and the criminal justice system, what needs changing, and strategies being...
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The 2023 Creating Resilient Communities Accelerator Program is now Open For Registration

PACEs Connection is excited to kick off our 2023 Creating Resilient Communities (CRC) Annual Accelerator Program.
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The 2023 Creating Resilient Communities Accelerator Program is now Open For Registration

PACEs Connection is excited to kick off our 2023 Creating Resilient Communities (CRC) Annual Accelerator Program.
 
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