Blog

New and returning lawmakers take the oath of office on day one of Washington state's 2017 legislative session. — Jeanie Lindsay/Northwest News Network As advocates prepare to see how ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) science, trauma, and resilience play out in the 2020 state legislative sessions — many beginning in January — they are undoubtedly asking: “What does a legislator want?" It may be a stretch to play on Freud’s question: “What does a women want?", but the query captures how...

By Megan Conn, The Chronicle of Social Change, December 2, 2019 When Roxanne Williams became a foster parent four years ago, she started in the deep end of the parenting pool. New York City child welfare workers brought her a boy with limited English on a Friday afternoon and left after confirming her home was safe, leaving Williams to muddle through their first days together on her own. “It was rough – you weren’t getting the calls back [from her foster care agency] as fast as you wanted...

We developed ACEs Connection's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tool — called the Inclusion Tool, for short — to ensure that ACEs initiatives across the world focus on being inclusive when forming a steering committee, recruiting leaders, providing education about ACEs science, recruiting members, or providing resources and services within their communities. The more inclusive your ACEs initiative is, the more diverse it will be, giving your initiative a real shot at achieving equity and...

October is National Bullying Prevention Month and we'd like to shed some light on this global epidemic that is greatly affecting our youth: 1 in 3 students are targets of bullying 12,000,000 students will be bullied this year 100,000 kids skip school each day because they do not feel safe Learn how experts are tackling bullying through data tracking, relationship mapping, community organizing, and more. Educators will walk away with a real roadmap that they can use and implement right away...

By Sean Coffey, UCLA Newsroom, October 7, 2019 A report released today finds that physical and mental health care needs as well as abuse and traumatic experiences are major contributing factors to a loss of housing for unsheltered people, especially unsheltered women. A research team at the California Policy Lab analyzed survey responses from more than 64,000 single adults ages 25 and older who were experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness in 15 states across the U.S. from 2015...

By Silke Meyer, The Conversation, October 6, 2019 Last month, eight women died as the result of male violence in Australia. Five were within one week. In six of the cases, the alleged perpetrator was a current or former partner. These figures seem all too familiar. This time last year, seven of the nine women allegedly killed by a male perpetrator were in the context of an intimate relationship. And like this time last year, media coverage, national and political outcry remained relatively...

An ACEs Connection webinar co-sponsored with 4 CA In 2017, California became the first state in the country to pass a law supporting universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the 5.3 million children in the state’s Medicaid program. As clinicians around California await the state’s announcement of what this new policy will entail, many are wondering what it takes to integrate ACEs science in a pediatric practice. Meet Drs. Deirdre Bernard-Pearl, R.J. Gillespie and...

By Veronika Tait, Psychology Today, October 4, 2019 Groundbreaking research conducted in the 1990s found that the greater number of negative childhood experiences a person had, the more likely they were to experience poor health outcomes later in life such as heart disease, liver disease, and cancer. A new study published in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect has found that positive experiences, such as having a teacher who cares about them, can buffer against these negative outcomes.

This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, not just because it addresses ACEs, but because the storytelling is stupendous! Darrell Hammond and filmmaker Michelle Esrick will do Q&A’s after the 7:25 pm shows on Sept. 13th and 14th. There are three showtimes daily from September 13th through Sept. 19th. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk will join them for the Q&A on September 13.

By Mauricio Tellez-Sanchez, August 29, 2019, for Chronicle for Social Change California Assembly Bill 901 would instruct schools to refer habitually truant students in California to community-based organizations rather than juvenile court. The California State Senate will vote Friday on a measure that seeks to decriminalize truancy and limit the power of probation departments to work with youth who have not been charged with any crime through “voluntary probation” programs. Assembly Bill...

By Daniel Strain, University of Colorado Boulder, September 3, 2019 At the start of second grade several years ago, a young boy that we’ll call Carlton to protect his privacy had been through more than most of his school friends. Before classes began, Carlton was diagnosed with lymphoma. But when he got to school, the boy decided to share his story with his fellow seven-year-olds. He even pointed out where doctors had poked him to draw blood. And that’s when something surprising happened,...

By Giles Bruce, Center for Health Journalism, August 26, 2019 Incarcerating parents doesn’t just affect them, but can also have a major mental health impact on the children left behind, even as those kids become adults. That’s the crux of a new study published in JAMA Network Open that crystallizes the long-term psychological effects of having a caregiver behind bars. It comes at a time when an estimated 8% of American children have had a parent or guardian imprisoned. Previous research has...