Tagged With "Call to Action"
Blog Post
Ripple Effect: Two Philly Activists Share ACE Knowledge Close to Home
Anthony Ballard grew up with multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before those disruptive childhood experiences had a name. Ballard was raised, along with 11 siblings, in a North Philadelphia housing project by “a beautiful God-fearing mother and a loving father who suffered from alcoholism.” Ballard witnessed relatives who developed addictions or landed in prison; in his early 20s, he, too, abused alcohol. He got sober. He became a firefighter. And when he learned about ACEs a few...
Blog Post
Seed, Soil & Light: A Young Revolutionary's Journey (dailygood.org)
Three to four houses had recently burned down in Tommy Joshua’s North Philadelphia neighborhood. In an empty lot behind his home, Tommy came to figure out the origins. The youth of the neighborhood used that space to hop around on the furniture, play with the debris, and kick the wood. From an early age, Tommy questioned the suffering in the world. His earliest memories are of the broken school system, dysfunctional families, and homelessness. He turned to his mother for answers and she...
Blog Post
Study of Trauma Informed Transition at Hopeworks
Please check out this amazing research study about Hopeworks and our transition to a trauma informed model prepared by Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Education! Special thanks to Dr. Natasha Fletcher and New Jersey Health Initiatives for making this study possible!
Blog Post
Task Force highlighted at Atlantic Health Systems Summit
The development of the P hiladelphia ACE Task Force and other communities that are working on resilience are highlighted in this video clip of Leslie Lieberman, from the Health Federation, presenting a compact introduction on ACEs and their...
Comment
Re: PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL, EDUCATION COMMITTEE Hearing on Standardized Testing NOTES
Hello Nick, City Council reacted with much interest, and maybe a little surprise, and (I am hoping) eventually some follow through and action. Time will tell. Their questions to-date are all about statistics, or quantitative research learning. I take the fact that they are even asking questions, as a hopeful positive signal. Daun
Comment
Re: Philadelphia ACE Task Force 2019 Highlights
This has such a powerful action. I wish this were true today, across the US. Thank you. Karen Copied from the resolution - RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That this Council calls upon the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to recognize Secondary Traumatic Stress as a workplace hazard, recommend steps to address mental health injury as a psychological hazard in the workplace as they do with physical injury , and create a standard for Secondary Traumatic...
Blog Post
Local Affiliates Accelerate ACEs-and-Resilience Movement in Montana
In Toole County, Montana, deputy sheriffs call a school counselor, from their patrol cars, after responding to a traumatic incident—a domestic abuse call, an overdose, an arrest—that involves a child. “Handle with care,” they tell the counselor, and they give the child’s name. The counselor passes that information to teachers: a quiet heads-up that the student might be hungry or sleepy, tearful, angry or distracted by whatever happened at home. “My teachers love it,” says Mary Miller, chair...
Blog Post
Workplace Stress? Real-world workplace action steps for wellness in this Virtual Cafe [healthfederation.org]
Ayana Bradshaw, MPH is the Administrative Director for the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) and the Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI) at The Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. In this capacity she oversees all financial, administrative, operational, managerial, human resources and strategic planning components of the Center. Ms. Bradshaw has over 20 years of experience in multiple facets of public health, including but not limited to developing community health...
Blog Post
Wolf Administration Releases ‘Trauma-Informed PA’ Plan with Recommendations and Steps for the Commonwealth and Providers to Become Trauma-Informed [PA Governor Tom Wolf Press Release]
July 27, 2020 As a companion to Governor Tom Wolf’s multi-agency effort and anti-stigma initiative, Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters, the Office of Advocacy and Reform (OAR) is releasing the “Trauma-Informed PA” plan to guide the commonwealth and service providers statewide on what it means to be trauma-informed and healing-centered in PA. This plan is the result of four months of work from OAR and the Trauma-Informed PA Think Tank, formed in February. The think tank was made up of...
Blog Post
"It's All Connected": NJEA ACEs Task Force Reaches Beyond Educators
The March meeting of the New Jersey Education Association’s ACEs Task Force opened without an agenda. It was a virtual gathering with more than 50 people—educators, social workers, professionals in pediatrics, juvenile justice and child abuse prevention. The pandemic had landed emphatically close to home, with a governor’s order to close all schools on March 18, and participants were grappling with what that meant for their students, their families and themselves. So ACEs Task Force co-chair...
Blog Post
ACE Impact Team Aligns Efforts to Help Newark Residents Reach Greatest Potential
Five years of convening Newark’s ACE Impact Team has taught Keri Logosso-Misurell a crucial lesson: Fight the urge to reinvent the wheel.
Blog Post
Pathway for Trauma is Pathway for Resilience: Fresno Network's Message Inspires Hope
In Fresno, volunteers from local churches were already working with the schools, mentoring kids and running weekend recreation programs. Community-based non-profits were in conversation with educators; pastors were talking to social-service providers. The problems were clear: nearly 30% of Fresno’s residents living in poverty (the rate tops 40% for Black residents), with a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest parts of this sharply segregated city. For several years,...
Blog Post
LAUNCH Together Supports Social Emotional Well-Being in Southwest Denver
As the COVID-19 pandemic blurred from days into months, the leadership team of LAUNCH Together Southwest Denver began hearing about the sense of anguish and confusion felt by directors of early-childhood learning centers: Should I re-open? Is that financially feasible? Is it ethical? And how do I decide, in a sea of fast-changing information about a virus scientists are still struggling to understand? LAUNCH Together SW Denver, a collaborative formed in 2016 to boost community capacity to...
Blog Post
"Who's in Your Canoe?": Ho‘oikaika Partnership Draws on Hawaiian Values to Promote Protective Factors
Title image: Jeny Bissell, Ho‘oikaika Partnership founder and Core Partner, gives a shaka at a Child Abuse Prevention Month mayor's proclamation and concert. A brochure from the Ho‘oikaika Partnership shows four people paddling a slender boat, their bodies silhouetted against an apricot-hued sky. The tagline: “When it comes to parenting, who’s in your canoe?” The image and the metaphor are intentional, says Karen Worthington, coordinator of the 60-member, cross-sector Ho‘oikaika Partnership...
Blog Post
Data-Driven, Cross-Sector: Bounce Coalition Boosts Trauma-Informed Change in Kentucky
Student suspension rates dropped. Teacher retention rose. Membership in the PTA swelled from zero to more than 200. More kids said in a survey that there was at least one adult at school whom they could talk to if they had a problem. The data—a comparison of the Bounce Coalition’s pilot school and one with similar demographics—told the Kentucky resilience-boosting group that they were on the right track. The Bounce Coalition formed in 2014; the catalyst was a grant from the Foundation for a...
Blog Post
Youth-Led Advocacy Creates Healing Opportunities in Baltimore City
After a shooting at a historic Baltimore high school in February 2019—a 25-year-old man, angry about the school’s treatment of his sister, who was a student there, shot a special education assistant with a Smith and Wesson handgun—conversation in the city centered on whether school resource officers should be armed. Students said that was the wrong question. When City Council’s education and youth committee, chaired by council member Zeke Cohen, held hearings on school violence following the...
Blog Post
'A Better Normal:' Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? -- Concerns and solutions
Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? A conversation about concerns and solutions. When: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2-3:30 pm PDT/5-6:30 pm EDT This webinar explores what it takes to ensure that equity is built into the process of screening and providing support for families who have experienced trauma and want help. REGISTER HERE Background At the beginning of this year, California, through the ACEs Aware initiative began rolling out universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),...
Blog Post
Ripple Effect: Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Partners with Schools and Service Providers to Build Trauma-Informed Community in Michigan
The week of the fall equinox was Mino-Bimaadiziwin Wellness Week at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy (SCA) in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, a pre-K through 5th grade school of about 130 students. “Mino-Bimaadiziwin” is an Anishinabe phrase meaning “to live the good life.” At the school, it started with “Mindfulness Monday”—students were encouraged to wear their favorite “thinking cap”—then segued to “Take care of our bodies Tuesday,” a “Love Your Community Wednesday" that included talking circles, and...
Blog Post
Spreading the Science: Michigan's NEAR Collaborative Aims to Infuse ACEs Science into State Departments and Agencies
Mary Mueller likes to call herself an “opportunistic infection.” What that means is that Mueller, project coordinator for trauma-informed systems in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), is determined to share the science of ACEs and resilience wherever she goes. After Mueller attended the state’s first ACE master trainer two day session hosted by the Michigan ACE Initiative , she wanted to bring the foundational science shared by ACE Interface back home—to her MDHHS...
Blog Post
"NEAR Science in Partnership with Communities": Local ACEs Collaboratives Grow Across Minnesota
The third annual gathering of Minnesota ACEs collaboratives—“Growing Resilient Communities: Collaboratives Addressing ACEs”—began with a sober recitation of inequities: We acknowledge that the wealth of this country was built on stolen land and with enslaved and underpaid labor of African American, Native, and Immigrant people…We acknowledge that the recent global uprising, which was sparked by the murder of George Floyd right here in Minnesota, paired with the COVID-19 pandemic, makes for a...
Blog Post
“Unite in a Common Cause”: Minnesota Tribal Communities Use NEAR Science to Address Trauma and Promote Healing
As the Minnesota trainers expected—and welcomed—the ACE trainings in tribal settings began late and lasted for hours: multiple generations of people from the White Earth and Fond du Lac communities gathering around simmering Crock-Pots of food, sharing stories, standing in line to talk with the trainers afterward. Once, a White Earth elder was the only person to show up for a presentation, recalls Linsey McMurrin, Director of Prevention Initiatives and Tribal Projects for FamilyWise Services...
Blog Post
100% Community Initiative Builds Vital Services So New Mexico Kids Can Thrive
The deaths of several New Mexico children in recent years—a 13-year-old whose father was accused of fatally torturing him; an eight-year-old who was kicked to death by her mother; a girl raped, strangled and stabbed by her mother’s boyfriend the night before her 10th birthday—drew horror, outrage and scrutiny of the state’s child welfare system. Those incidents drove child welfare and public health specialists Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello to examine the data. Cappello and...
Blog Post
Listening, Learning and Showing Up: Central Oregon's TRACEs Focuses on Root Causes of Trauma
TRACEs’ work group on youth and children in foster care spent a good portion of the last year’s monthly meetings examining holes in the system: How would foster families be affected by changes in funding from the Oregon Department of Human Services? What would it mean for kids if Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) positions were cut? Most important, what did foster children and youth, their families of origin and their foster families need in order to thrive? “We put together a...
Blog Post
Nashville’s Purposeful Twist on ACEs: All Children Excel
In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...
Blog Post
Empower Action Model Provides Framework for Strategic Coalitions in South Carolina's Marlboro County and Beyond
Lauren Szymonik kept posing the same questions to members of the Empower Action coalition in Marlboro County: “What is the data telling you? What is the data saying about education? What is the data telling you about trauma?” The numbers were clear: according to 2014-16 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys, 56% of the county’s 24,000 adults had experienced at least one ACE. In 2017-18, there were 212 cases of child maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, among the...
Blog Post
Pennsylvania has nearly the worst education ‘opportunity gaps’ in country (philadelphia.chalklbeat.org)
Screenshot from Research for Action’s dashboard ranking states based on “opportunity gaps” shows Pennsylvania at the top of the list for being among the most inequitable. Research for Action Author: To read Dale Mezzacappa's article, please click here. Pennsylvania ranks nearly the worst in the nation for educational opportunity gaps based on race and income levels, according to a new report finding a large difference in access to a quality education between students of color and white...
Blog Post
Child USA shares urgent call to action; needs our help.
CHILD USAdvocacy continues working closely with survivors, legislators, and advocates on the ground to pass a child sex abuse revival window for civil claims. The Pennsylvania House and the Senate have passed different versions of window legislation. The House has passed HB2 , which is a legislative window, and HB1 , which is a window via constitutional amendment. The Senate passed SB1 , which bundled the window with two other unrelated constitutional amendments. We support a stand alone...
Blog Post
Trauma-Informed Principles Rebooted
One of the biggest questions that Andi and I get whenever we talk about a trauma-informed approach is something along the lines of “Ok I get ACEs and toxic stress, but what can I do about it in my organization?” We get it–this approach can seem overwhelming because it is literally a lens through which you see everything. We often say that a trauma-informed approach is less about what you do and more about how you do it. So how in the world do we even begin the work of operationalizing our unders