Tagged With "Prevent Symptoms From Worsening"
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Inside the ACE Score Strengths Limitations and Misapplications with Dr. Robert Anda (www.YouTube.com) & Note
Cissy's note: Thanks to @Elizabeth Perry for flagging me and letting me know about this important YouTube video posted on April 6th via the ACE Interface Laura Porter channel which furthers this important discussion about the uses/misuses of ACEs scores. This topic is written about from a personal perspective by @Sirena Wheeler here, yesterday, on ACEs Connection a piece entitled Erasing My ACEs which @Laura Porter commented upon. I have found tremendous benefit from learning about ACEs...
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Inside the Adverse Childhood Experience Score: Strengths, Limitations, and Misapplications [ajpmonline.org]
By Robert F. Anda, Laura E. Porter, David W. Brown, et al., American Journal of Preventive Medicine, March 25, 2020 INTRODUCTION Despite its usefulness in research and surveillance studies, the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) score is a relatively crude measure of cumulative childhood stress exposure that can vary widely from person to person. Unlike recognized public health screening measures, such as blood pressure or lipid levels that use measurement reference standards and cut points...
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Interview: Trauma-Informed Care with Transition-Age Youth [psychologytoday.com]
Last month, an article titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore” in the New York Times Magazine described the upsurge in violence in a city long known for its “blight, suburban flight, segregation, drugs , racial inequality, [and] concentrated poverty.” At the center of the storm are transition-age youth, who too often face long odds and challenging futures in the communities where they live. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Cobb-Richardson , MS. For the past 20 years, she has...
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Interview: Trauma-Informed Care with Transition-Age Youth [psychologytoday.com]
Last month, an article titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore” in the New York Times Magazine described the upsurge in violence in a city long known for its “blight, suburban flight, segregation, drugs , racial inequality, [and] concentrated poverty.” At the center of the storm are transition-age youth, who too often face long odds and challenging futures in the communities where they live. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Cobb-Richardson , MS. For the past 20 years, she has...
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Interview: Trauma-Informed Care with Transition-Age Youth [psychologytoday.com]
Last month, an article titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore” in the New York Times Magazine described the upsurge in violence in a city long known for its “blight, suburban flight, segregation, drugs , racial inequality, [and] concentrated poverty.” At the center of the storm are transition-age youth, who too often face long odds and challenging futures in the communities where they live. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Cobb-Richardson , MS. For the past 20 years, she has...
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Introducing myself, Morgan Vien & NEW Practicing Resilience Community
Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...
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Is child protective services effective?
An article called "Is child protective services effective?" in this month's Children and Youth Services Review finds that CPS involvement does not reduce the risk of further substantiated maltreatment. It highlights both the need to improve interventions and questions current mandates that are not garnering results. As the article explains, one possible reason interventions may be less effective is that most CPS cases are opened for neglect, not abuse, and most services are aimed at...
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Is the Solution Really for More Children to Enter Foster Care? [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
Last week , in a provocative op-ed in the Washington Post , Naomi Schaefer Riley – a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – argued that the problem in America’s child welfare system is “not that we’re taking too many children away from their parents. We’re not taking enough.” To support her claim, she cited a mishmash of statistics, including an increase in the national child fatality rate, and then some isolated data from two jurisdictions involving re-entry rates for children...
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Is There A Foster-Care-To-Prison Pipeline? If So, This New LA-Based Program Aims To Break It (witnessla.com)
“Everyone talks about the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy. “But doing this work you see that there’s a group-home-to-prison. Kennedy is the Director of Loyola’s respected Center for Juvenile Law and Policy (CJLP), which was founded in 2004 to “tackle the injustices of the Los Angeles County juvenile court system” by providing pro bono advocacy for youth who find themselves caught up in that system. Thanks to a highly competitive $1 million grant from...
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It started in her garage. Now, a Puyallup woman helps clothe almost 1,500 foster kids a year (The News Tribune)
It all started in Erika Thompson’s garage. Thompson, who has been a foster parent for a decade, remembers it well. Not long before, she welcomed the first of what would become many foster children into her home. Like many foster kids, the child arrived on Thompson’s doorstep in crisis and with almost nothing. The child was from King County, so Thompson was able to turn to a Seattle-based nonprofit that provides support and services for foster kids and their caregivers, including new and...
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Join Feb. 18th webinar on addressing ACEs in public policy
Please join this ACEs Connection co-sponsored webinar "Making Meaningful Change: Addressing ACEs through Public Policy" on Feb. 18 (11:30 am-1:00 pm ET) presented by the Health Federation of Philadelphia and MARC (Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities). In this webinar, three nationally recognized experts will discuss policy and advocacy strategies on a local, state, and national level using evidence from studies they have conducted with legislators and the general public. Speakers...
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Keeping Kids in Families [AECF.org]
In this data snapshot, the Annie E. Casey Foundation examines how placements for young people in foster care have changed from 2007 to 2017. Using data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Casey finds that child welfare systems are doing a better job of placing kids in families. At the same time, racial disparities persist for kids of all ages and progress eludes teens in care. To push for further progress, the four-page snapshot tells how states can leverage the federal Family...
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Kids of Color Often Shut Out of High-Quality State Preschool, Research Says [blogs.edweek.org]
By Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week, November 6, 2019 A study of 26 states and their preschool programs finds that as of roughly two years ago, a mere 1 percent of Latino children and just 4 percent of black children in those states were enrolled in "high-quality" state-backed early-learning opportunities. That's one main conclusion from a new report from the Education Trust, an education civil rights advocacy group. "Young Learners, Missed Opportunities: Ensuring That Black and Latino...
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Kinship care families: New policy can guide pediatricians to address needs [aappublications.org]
A growing body of evidence suggests that children who cannot live with their biological parents fare better overall when living with extended family than with nonrelated foster parents. Acknowledging the benefits of kinship care arrangements, federal laws and public policies increasingly favor placing children with family members rather than in nonrelative foster care. Despite overall better outcomes, families providing kinship care endure many hardships, and the children experience many of...
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L.A. County to Implement State Plan to Prevent Unintended Pregnancies Among Youth (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
The state plan, “ California’s Plan for the Prevention of Unintended Pregnancies for Youth and Non-Minor Dependents ,” aims to address the fact that by age 21 over 1 in 3 girls in foster care will have given birth, according to a report by the Children’s Data Network. Representatives from all three departments, the child welfare advocacy community and at least one former foster youth will participate in developing the strategy. “What’s important here is to make sure we’re catering to the...
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LA County to provide more support to relatives caring for foster children [svgtribune.com]
About 9,000 foster children in Los Angeles County — or 52 percent of all county foster youth — live with relatives, DCFS Director Philip Browning told the Board of Supervisors.
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LA Foster Families Suffer As Stipends Get Stuck In State’s Reform Bottleneck (witnessla.com)
In an effort to streamline the evaluation of a household’s fitness to take in a foster or adoptive child, California implemented a pilot project called Resource Family Approval (RFA) as a pillar of its reforms. On the surface this is a good thing, since it means that rather than putting a candidate through multiple processes of varying thoroughness for potential caregivers, the new process would offer a single, comprehensive standard that includes mandated foster parent training,...
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LA lacks foster care families for infants, toddlers [scpr.org]
One of the most effective ways to compound the negative effects of trauma and adversity on the littlest, and most vulnerable served in child welfare are multiple placements. When any child in foster care is moved from placement to placement, it is traumatic. When infants and toddlers are moved from placement to placement, it can have a much greater impact on development because placement changes unstable primary attachments. For our littlest people, the relationship with a primary caregiver...
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Left Behind: Trump's Immigration Plans Could Spur Uptick in Foster Care Numbers [socialjusticesolutions.org]
As we begin a new year, a new presidency, and new policies on immigration, it’s vital for child welfare leaders to increase coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to address the impacts of deportation policies on children who remain in the US, often in a foster care placement, following the deportation of their parents. Having experienced a significant lack of coordination between child welfare and immigration systems, including barriers to reunification in my own practice,...
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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Questioning, and/or Gender Nonconforming and Transgender Girls and Boys in the California Juvenile Justice System: A Practice Guide [nclrights.org]
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...
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Life After Foster Care [LATimes.com]
T heir stories begin with heartbreak. A family unable or unwilling to care for them. Parents dead, addicted to drugs, absent. About 400,000 children in the U.S. live in foster care, according to federal officials. Entry into the foster care system is meant to keep them safe, but the reality is often fraught with its own dangers and disappointments. Times photojournalist Robert Gauthier interviewed more than a dozen young men and women from the Los Angeles area who were on the verge of being...
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Life in College After a Life in Foster Care [NYTimes.com]
Being an extrovert is a double-edged sword. I can speak confidently in my college classes and in front of large groups. But everyone seems to think I’ve got it all under control, and I rarely feel that way. There’s a ticking clock always in the back of my mind. I need to graduate and become financially independent before the support I get from the foster care system disappears. [For more of this story, written by Noel Anaya, go to ...
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Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent. [NYTimes.com]
Eline’s children feared going to sleep in the closet of their studio apartment, but it was the only place they would be safe from the rats. Covered in blankets from neck to toe, Eline would keep an eye on the kitchen entrance and followed the sounds of the rodents rummaging in the cupboards. I represented Eline (I can’t disclose her real name), a mother of two, in Bronx Family Court when she was charged with neglect. Her younger son had been deemed undernourished because of faltering weight.
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Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent (www.nytimes.com)
Note: An article by Emma S. Ketteringham that shows how the system traumatizes and re-traumatizes many children and their parents. My hope is that as we talk about trauma-informed, trauma-aware, self-healing and resilient communities we talk less about how people can do better, try harder and more about we can all be a safer, kinder and treat symptoms of adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences and focus on treating the causes of both instead. When I met Eline, she...
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Live webcast with U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro: how Congress is responding to families’ needs during the COVID-19 pandemic [Zero to Three]
Responding to Families’ Needs During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Conversation with Representative Rosa DeLauro, sponsored by Zero to Three Join ZERO TO THREE, Think Babies™, and partners this Friday, March 27 at 11 am EDT for a web broadcast with U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) about how Congress is responding to families’ needs in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She will share what is in the bill on issues such as child care, Early Head Start, and paid family and medical leave, and...
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Lois Henry: Upping the bar for foster children [bakersfield.com]
A new law in California, effective this year, is reducing the number of groups home and congregate care facilities. This law is part of a larger framework called the Continuum of Care Reform (Assembly Bill 403). This editorial by Lois Henry sheds light on the plans of one California community, Bakersfield, to reduce group-care and increase the number of foster homes. Including efforts to level the playing field for relative caregivers and streamline the permanent plan of adoption.Zachary...
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Lucinda from Minnesota #FosterEquality
My childhood was filled with war and terror, from growing up in a war-torn country to fighting my own battle with accepting my identity as a Queer Black Muslim girl. I was born in Liberia during my country’s second civil war that displaced so many Liberian families. My family and I escaped the war and came to the US in 2002 but the trauma of war followed my family. My family was separated after my stepfather's PTSD started to impact his parenting. My first placement was St. Joseph’s Home For...
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Making the Good Stuff Louder: Trauma Dad, Bryon Hamel
Byron Hamel, (AKA Trauma Dad ), is a filmmaker , children's rights and men's wellness advocate. He's also a father with "ACEs through the roof," who survived child torture at the hands of a man now on death row for infanticide. Before the Father & ACEs chat started last week (see full chat transcript ), we discussed if and how to give a trigger warning. Hamel's experienced horrific trauma during childhood. He didn't want to traumatize those on the chat but wanted to be honest.
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Manchester's Childhood Trauma Response Program Attracts International Interest [nhpr.org]
A delegation of law enforcement and public health workers from Wales visited the Manchester Police Department Tuesday. They were there to learn about a city program that connects children who have experienced trauma with mental health services. The program (ACERT) trains police officers in the effects of trauma on child development, and coordinates with social workers to help recruit affected families into trauma-therapy and other programs. To read the article, click here . ACERT stands for...
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MARCH 19, 3:30 PM EST: Top Trump Child Welfare Official and Former Foster Youth will Host COVID-19 Town Hall [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Daniel Heimpel, The Chronicle of Social Change, March 18, 2020 On Thursday, March 19, Jerry Milner of the federal Children’s Bureau is teaming up with former foster youth and tech entrepreneur Sixto Cancel to co-host a virtual town hall inviting foster youth to contribute to the fight against the coronavirus. “Those closest to the problem should be informing the solutions,” Cancel said as he frantically worked to put the event together from a Los Angeles hotel room. “We wanted to create a...
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Medicaid to 26 for Former Foster Youth: An Update on the State Option and State Efforts to Ensure Coverage for All Young People Irrespective of Where They Aged Out of Care (October 2014)
Shadi Houshyar State Policy Advocacy and Reform Center October 2014 Signed into law on March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes notable improvements to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)...
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Meet the Former Foster Youth Who Founded a Film Festival to Help Youth Tell Their Stories (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
Growing up in foster care in Los Angeles , Johna Rivers didn't always get the opportunity to express her creativity. Once she got older, Rivers wanted to offer something for kids like her. So she founded a film festival to tell their stories. Now 24, Rivers is the founder and executive producer of the three-year-old Real to Reel Global Film Festival . It began in October 2015 as a way to showcase films produced by youth ages 14 to 23 that shine a light on social issues. The film festival is...
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Mental Health Is The Biggest Issue Teens Face Today, New Research Shows (bustle.com)
A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that seven-in-10 teens identified anxiety and depression as a major problem they face, The New York Times reported. While being a teenager has long been synonymous with angst, it's important to distinguish typical teen behavior from anxiety and depression, which are diagnosable mental health conditions . Though issues like bullying, substance use disorder, alcohol consumption , and gang violence were also cited as problems, mental health was...
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Mental Health, Social Adversity, and Health-Related Outcomes in Sexual Minority Adolescents: A Contemporary National Cohort Study [thelancet.com]
By Background Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have mental health problems, adverse social environments, and negative health outcomes compared with their heterosexual counterparts. There is a paucity of up-to-date population-level estimates of the extent of risk across these domains in the UK. We analysed outcomes across mental health, social environment, and health-related domains in sexual minority adolescents compared with their heterosexual counterparts in a large,...
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Missed Opportunities: Pathways from Foster Care to Youth Homelessness in America [voicesofyouthcount.org]
By Voices of Youth Count. Voices of Youth: Alanna’s Story Alanna is a 23-year-old woman living in Philadelphia. 1 She was placed in foster care at the age of three, along with three siblings, because her mother was using drugs. Alanna and her siblings spent 7 years in foster care. They were initially placed together in a foster home that Alanna described as abusive. According to Alanna, the child welfare agency “did nothing” the first time Alanna reported the abuse. After she reported the...
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Mom Has a Kitchen Dance Party With 3-Yr-Old. Then She Hears “I Miss My Other Daddy.” (faithit.com)
Being a foster parent is not for the faint of heart. A cycle of taking in broken, wounded little hearts, often just for them to get broken and wounded again — all while remaining “unattached” for the sake of their assured departure from your care — is a nearly impossible job for most to fathom undertaking. And all that aside, how do you even begin to explain to a 3-year-old that they have a “new daddy” or “new mommy” in a way that doesn’t completely wreck their perception of what it means to...
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Moving into Adulthood: Implementation Findings From the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation
This report from MDRC presents program implementation and participation findings from an evaluation of the Youth Villages Transitional Living program, which is designed to help youth who were formerly in foster care or juvenile justice custody,...
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National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children: Building a Coordinated Response
The National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children training was presented as part of the Drug Endangered Children’s Initiative, a collaboration between the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office, Plymouth County Outreach and the United Way of Greater Plymouth County’s Family Center which is funded by a federal grant from the Office for Victims of Crime.
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National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being [Adverse Childhood Experiences in NSCAW # 20]
Why We Should Assess for ACEs in kids in the child welfare system. I don't know exactly how old this brief from the Administration on Children and Families from HHS is but the graphs say it all. However I will add a few points: 1....
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Native American Children Protected in Groundbreaking Foster Care Settlement [youthtoday.org]
By Bette Fleishman, Youth Today, May 8, 2020 For decades, we have repeated and recapitulated: Our nation’s foster care system is broken. New Mexico, which receives the lowest markers of child wellbeing and the second-highest level of childhood poverty, has, not coincidentally, one the worst child welfare systems in the nation. It is largely coercive and punitive, and disproportionately targets low-income children of color. Further, 23 Native American tribes and pueblos are located in the...
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Native American Children Protected in Groundbreaking Foster Care Settlement [youthtoday.org]
By Bette Fleishman, Youth Today, May 8, 2020 For decades, we have repeated and recapitulated: Our nation’s foster care system is broken. New Mexico, which receives the lowest markers of child wellbeing and the second-highest level of childhood poverty, has, not coincidentally, one the worst child welfare systems in the nation. It is largely coercive and punitive, and disproportionately targets low-income children of color. Further, 23 Native American tribes and pueblos are located in the...
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State, University researchers seek solutions to disproportionate foster placements among Native kids [wakemag.org]
Minnesota has put more Native American children in foster care than any other state in the nation. Despite being one of the least-represented minorities in Minnesota, nearly one in every 10 Native children is in the foster system, compared to only one in every 100 white children. One of key individuals who has spearheaded research into this issue is Professor Priscilla Day, director of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Day has focused on...
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Nebraska Supreme Court rules in favor of gay couple in foster care case [www.rawstory.com]
A former state policy that banned gay couples from becoming foster parents was the same as a “whites only” employment sign, the Nebraska Supreme Court wrote in a ruling released on Friday that affirmed a lower court’s decision. The ruling comes four years after three same-sex couples filed a lawsuit against Nebraska, arguing that a 1995 state policy prohibiting gay couples from being foster care parents and adopting wards of the state is unconstitutional. Follow here for the full article.
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Needed: A New Vision of Foster Care [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
The number of children in foster care has increased for the third straight year. Foster parent shortages have been reported in at least 24 states , with children staying in offices and hotels. The move by some states to close residential programs will only exacerbate these shortages. At the same time, many current foster homes are failing to provide the nurturing and attention that their wards so desperately need. Yet child welfare leaders are surprisingly devoid of bold and creative ideas...
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New California Laws May Prevent the Overmedication of Foster Kids (elevaterehab.org)
In the past, lawmakers didn’t think twice about how doctors treated foster children suffering from emotional traumas such as abandonment and abuse. Nobody controlled how often practitioners prescribed psychiatric drugs that had serious potential for doing more harm than good. Today, investigations into California’s foster care system shed light on the doctors who fuel medication problems by inappropriately prescribing narcotics to the state’s most vulnerable children – ultimately leading to...
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New Resource! Secondary Traumatic Stress in Child Welfare Practice: Trauma-Informed Guidelines for Organizations
The Chadwick Center for Children & Families at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego has just released a set of trauma-informed guidelines with concrete strategies for approaching secondary traumatic stress (STS). While these guidelines were created for intended use within child welfare systems, they may be easily adapted into other child-and family-serving organizations. These guidelines were created as part of the Chadwick Trauma-Informed Systems Dissemination and Implementation Project...
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New Tool Kit Helps Child Welfare Leaders Utilize Data to Support Expectant and Parenting Youth [CSSP.org]
Being a parent is hard at any age, but it can be even harder for younger moms and dads. And harder yet for young parents in foster care. To support these young parents and their families, systems leaders—ranging from child welfare to education to juvenile justice—need reliable data to guide policies and practices. Yet, according to Tammi Fleming, senior associate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative : “Data on expectant and parenting youth in foster...
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New Tutoring Program Aims to Help Students in Foster Care Stay in School [ny1.com]
Rajiv Goswami invited two people to his high school graduation: his tutor, Dylan, and his mother, who needed permission from a judge to attend. "This was the milestone I had to pass," Goswami said. Rajiv spent the past four years in the foster care system and by donning a cap and gown, he was beating the odds. Just a third of city kids in foster care get their high school diploma. Follow here to watch the New York 1 news report by education reporter Linsey Christ.
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New UCLA Research Center Will Focus on Preventing Entries into Foster Care, Needs of Foster Youth (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
Thanks to a $10 million philanthropic donation , the University of California, Los Angeles will establish a new research center dedicated to addressing the complex needs of children in foster care, particularly related to the educational system. The Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families aims to be a hub of collaborative research with the goal of strengthening vulnerable families and helping to prevent many children in Los Angeles County from entering the foster care system.
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New York Expands Eligibility for Kin Who Want to Foster Children [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Rachel Nielsen, The Chronicle of Social Change, November 14, 2019 When caseworkers remove children from their homes and place them into foster care, it can be jarring and traumatic. A new law in New York aims to ease the transition by enabling a wider circle of family members and even non-relatives to become the kids’ foster parents. That law, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed in late October, broadens the definition of relatives. Previously, only certain blood relatives of a parent of a...