Tagged With "Cracked Up"
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District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture [thenotebook.org]
“The world of thinking about trauma, the importance of school climate and social-emotional learning is 20, 30, 40 years behind the world of instruction." Joanna Schwartz, a 2nd-grade teacher at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, was about to take a scheduled break and desperately needed a place to have peace and quiet. But the only place she could find was a broom closet. A few years earlier, in another school, Schwartz said teachers were baffled by a 3rd grader who continually fell...
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Dr. Lee Pachter & Dr. Tina Cheng of Philadelphia ACE Taskforce Comment on Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases in JAMA
Dr. Lee Pachter from the Department of Pediatrics, St Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Dr. Tina Cheng from the Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, are both members...
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Philadelphia ACE Task Force Workforce Development Work Group Meeting
The Workforce Development Work Group met on Wednesday, January 20 th at Friends Center in Philadelphia, PA. The group began with updates of recent work, including work that had been done in 2015, which was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. This work was focused on encouraging graduate level programs incorporate ACE-related information into their curricula. The work resulted in local and national environmental scans as well as a training in trauma-informed care for Temple...
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Philadelphia ACE Task Force Workforce Development Work Group Meeting
The Workforce Development Workgroup of the Philadelphia ACE Task Force met on Wednesday, May 18 th at the United Way. There were several members in the room who were either new or who have not been able to attend meeting recently so the group caught up on current work. The group began with an update from the subcommittee that is working to develop focus groups with teachers and administrators in from the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) to better understand how they are using...
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Philadelphia ACEs Connection Meet-Up
What is a Meet-up? A local get-together to converse on ACEs and Trauma Informed practices and events around Philadelphia. Meet-ups are informal and are either a round-table forum, panel discussion or a guest speaker Location :...
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Philadelphia ACEs Virtual Connection Meet-Up: "Education"
On Tuesday, August 19 th , 2014, the first day of my Advanced Level Field Placement as an M.S.W. Student at Temple University, I participated in the second Philadelphia ACEs Virtual Connection Group “Meet-Up” at the Friends Center...
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Philadelphia devotes $4.4 million to 'holistic' anti-violence programs [witf.org]
(Philadelphia) -- Mayor Jim Kenney announced on Thursday that the city would dedicate more than $4 million to "interrupting" violence on neighborhood streets. Flanked by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, members of City Council and anti-violence advocates, Kenny introduced a set of new programs that will focus on gun violence as a public health problem. He said the city would seek to promote a more data-driven and "holistic" approach to stanching the city's rising homicide rate.
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Philadelphia’s Homeless Deserve Better. So do SEPTA Police. [philadelphiaweekly.com]
Before that damp and rainy Tuesday night, most of the passengers waiting for their trains at Suburban Station had never met Kenny Solomon. We didn’t know about the car accident that permanently damaged his body, or his recent fall at Suburban Station down an entire flight of steps. We also didn’t know anything positive about Mr. Solomon or his likes and dreams. But his introduction to us, and anyone who happened to be in the vicinity that night was resounding. But the scene that unfolded on...
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Philadelphia's new Green Light Fund ED is not interested in reducing poverty. He wants to end it. [www.generocity.org]
Omar Woodard is staring at his palms as he sits quietly in a café chair. He knows what he’s trying to say, but he seems tangled up on a thought. The stretch of silence is very much out of character for the amiable young nonprofit director from 20th and Cecil B. Moore. He’s a lingo-savvy conversationalist who, in just six months as executive director of GreenLight Fund Philadelphia , has learned how to talk shop with the best of Philly’s impact intelligentsia. These lulls are typically where...
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Philadelphia’s New Top Prosecutor Is Rolling Out Wild, Unprecedented Criminal Justice Reforms [Slate.com]
Philadelphia’s newly minted district attorney, Larry Krasner, was meeting constituents in a packed church in West Philadelphia earlier this month to discuss his plans for the job. The meeting was unique in that it quickly revealed to community members what local civic leaders and officials have already learned about Krasner: He is making good on his promise to revolutionize the job of district attorney and, in the process, offering an extraordinary experiment in criminal justice reform at...
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Philadelphia Urban ACEs Research
This page lists research about ACEs in the Philadelphia area. If you know of any other research, please let us know in the comments section. Adverse Childhood Experiences of Low-Income Urban Youth (Philadelphia) Findings From the...
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Philadelphia will pilot a trauma-informed facility for arrested youth
The City of Philadelphia will begin testing trauma-informed facilities as an alternative to holding cells for arrested youth. Those facilities, which will be “child-centered” and “service-oriented,” will be funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2018 Mayors Challenge . Philadelphia’s city-led social enterprise incubator FastFWD was funded by way of the Mayors Challenge in 2013 . The 35 finalists for the 2018 challenge have received grants of “up to $100,000” to test public prototypes of their...
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Philly.com- Is Poverty a Crime?
I just posted this over in the larger ACEs Connection site but I wanted to link it here as well since Philadelphia ACEs Connection is linked in the Philly.com article! This is a fantastic piece written on Philly.com's the Public's...
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Philly District Attorney initiative is a 'one-stop' for jobs, social services [phillytrib.com]
Robert Mayweather wasn’t pressed to find a job Thursday night at the YMCA in West Philadelphia. However, he’s glad he satisfied his curiosity to “see what was going on.” Mayweather was one of a few hundred people who passed through the doors of the YMCA for the District Attorney’s Office’s One-Stop Job and Resources Hub. The hub opens up on the first Thursday of each month, in a different neighborhood each time. The goal of the event is to connect city residents in under-served neighborhoods...
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Philly entrepreneur uses mindfulness to turn own stress in to help for others [philly.com]
C a l m C la rity is a Philadelphia-based "mind hacking" start-up that aims to help everyone from corporate executiv es to stu dents learn mindfulness, reduce toxic stress, and boost productivity. Not surprisingly, its...
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Philly should reduce reliance on institutional placements for youth [philly.com]
October marked the second anniversary of the tragic death of 17-year-old David Hess, who was killed during an assault by staff in his bedroom at the now-closed Wordsworth residential treatment facility. Two years later, we continue to uncover examples of abuse, isolation, and substandard education in facilities that are supposed to provide treatment and supervision to youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Rather than provide trauma-informed care, institutional...
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Podcast Episode, "The Power of Peer Learning and Capacity Building: Improving Access to Quality Early Care and Education in Philadelphia"
The Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing (NOW) at Vital Village Network is excited to share the fourth episode of In the Arena with NOW , a podcast series that lifts up the voices of community leaders who are “in the arena” -- in classrooms, playgrounds, Congressional halls, hospitals, and neighborhood streets -- working to make sure that all children and families can live healthy, thriving lives. In our fourth episode, The Power of Peer Learning and Capacity Building , we speak with...
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Philadelphia ends practice of billing parents for the time their children spend in detention [WashingtonPost.com]
The city of Philadelphia announced Friday that it will stop billing parents for the cost of their children’s incarceration, just hours after a front-page Marshall Project story in The Washington Post highlighted the practice in the city and across the nation. Heather Keafer, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, said the decision to stop charging parents will go into effect immediately. The agency already said late Thursday it plans to end its contract with Steve...
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Request for Applications: Building Agency Capacity for Program Evaluation
PLEASE SHARE! THIS INITIATIVE IS OPEN TO ALL TYPES OF NON-PROFITS! The Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, The Barra Foundation, and The Philadelphia Foundation will support eleven nonprofit organizations to receive...
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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...
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San Francisco Dept of Public Health Trauma-Informed Systems Initiative
I thought you might be interested in taking a look at the 2014 year in review from the SF Dept of Public Health's Trauma-Informed Systems Initiative. It's attached, below. The Department made the commitment to train all of its 9,000 staff...
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Some Philadelphia Neighborhoods Are Walking a Line Between Boom and Bust [NextCity.org]
Meet Diane Richardson, achiever of the American dream. A Penn State graduate and the owner of a business that helps homeless veterans, Richardson followed a common trajectory for a child of the civil rights-era black middle class: She grew up in working-class neighborhoods alongside mostly black neighbors, and attended college, which was followed by a few years of working and saving while living with her parents. Then marriage and the search for a home of her own. Like her parents, she...
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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!
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Supporting Older Trauma Survivors as They Heal Their Pasts, Grow Their Futures
Marie-Monique Marthol handed out the cards to older adults at meetings of her local civic association. With the pastor’s permission, she left some at a neighborhood church. She stacked them in restaurants, community centers and even at the laundromat. On the front, the cards read, “Time never runs out for change. Let go of fear and guilt. Focus on healing and growth from ACEs.” The flip side said, “Healing from your past; giving to your future.” They were slogans fine-tuned through months of...
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The Art of Recovery
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Transcending Trauma - Council for Relationships
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Re: The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline; The Girls' Story
Hi Tina, I just looked and I can't post on Michigan's group but please feel free to copy and paste it in there. You are always welcome to share/copy the stuff I put up. Best, Alyson Originally Posted by Tina Marie Hahn, MD: Hi, Alyson, I am looking to spread information that is relevant to all groups to other groups. I think this would be great for the Michigan page. We need to understand that there is a lot of sexual abuse of young girls and boys in all communities rural or urban and I...
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Re: What Philadelphia can learn from its history of citizen-led park projects [Spoke Magazine]
Thanks for posting this Leslie- I think looking at models of how other groups have tackled large issues in Philadelphia can be very helpful as we build our strategy to create a trauma informed city. To me, a few things specifically caught my attention: Planting compelling visions in people’s heads As we begin to engage with more people outside of the trauma sphere, what are the ‘renderings’ of a trauma-informed city we want people to see? In some ways this will be more difficult because the...
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Re: Children and Toxic Stress: The Discussion Continues
In case you haven't seen this: the Vermont legislature is considering a bill that would set up ACE screening in the state's health care system.
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Re: Children and Toxic Stress: The Discussion Continues
Sorry for this spammy post, but: I think that a greater effort needs to be made to change public attitudes as well. Obviously this needs to start with the professions, as noted above, but it can't be limited to them. One of the hardest things about growing up with trauma is that you feel defective and isolated, and other people often treat you that way, too. As a traumatized child it gets harder to establish and maintain productive/trusting relationships, even though traumatized children...
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Re: Fostering Resilience
Gregory~ I'm just replying as a parent ~ I work on allowing my son to come up with his own ideas on solving problems (real or unfactual problems), encouraging him to be in his creative side ( drawing, listening to music, both of which he enjoys) after difficult times he may be experiencing, and being consciousness on how I handle life adversities with my actions ( as even though he's a teenager, I'm sure he's still absorbing actions like a sponge :) ....and when I mean I work on it....it...
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Re: Developing a Trauma-Informed Public Policy Guide
This is a very exciting project! Thank you for tackling such an important process and opening it up to all members! A question that is coming up in our city/county ACEs Connection groups is how to effectively engage local Board of Supervisors through awareness building, advocacy, and funding for trauma-informed systems change, with the additional intent of advancing to statewide policy change. Since your project addresses many issues of system/organizational change, I also wanted to make...
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Re: Philadelphia Physicians Present ACEs to Medical Licensing Board
This is where the work needs to be done. Also whenever I evaluate a CME, I often use California Audio Digest, I always say that I want to hear about ACES and toxic stress. There was a month ago a CME on toxic stress though it focused on Poverty and I have been hearing more and more people at least mention ACEs and the ACE score. It is hard for me because I keep going to small rural communities and I think in these areas unlike the huge academic centers (though the ACEs are through the roof...
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Re: Philadelphia ACE Task Force Workforce Development Work Group Meeting
Hello Caitlin, Sorry, I couldn't attend. Is this blog considered the meeting minutes for the 'Philadelphia ACE Task Force, Workforce Development Work Group' meeting? As a current member of the Philadelphia ACE Task Force, can I get a copy of the approved Bylaws/Rules of Procedures (Robert's Rules of Order?) and all of the meeting minutes since the inception of the Task Force and for all of it's Work Groups so I can get up to speed on how we got to where we're at in this collaborative...
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Re: What does a "trauma-informed" Philadelphia look like?
Wow, Shoshana! The very thought of what you propose is thrilling! So do we start top-down or bottom-up? I have mixed feelings and experiences: In my old career of Performance Development and Training I know that top-down is typically ideal to gain traction and pull-through of any new initiative BUT it is fraught with political/bureaucratic snags...in my work with teaching meditation to kids and to Student Assistance Counselors (SACs) I can say that they are where the proverbial "rubber meets...
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Re: Anything happening with Mindfulness/Yoga in Philadelphia Area Schools?
Trauma-sensitive yoga is different in that it takes the traumatized person into careful consideration in every aspect of the work, from the set up of a classroom/studio to the poses that are performed to the language the teacher uses. The focus is on integrating and empowering, allowing those impacted by trauma to 'reclaim the body' and feel as if they can make choices about what happens to them---beginning on the mat. The sort of guru of trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed yoga is David...
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Re: Charter Schools, ACEs, and Trauma
Daun, I heard they were coming up with an ACEs test since the ACE's left out some categories that are more prominent in the urban community. I cant remember if this was going to be added to ACEs or if there was going to be one just for that population. Is this true??
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Re: Charter Schools, ACEs, and Trauma
Just read through the links up uploaded! " In all, over 37% of Philadelphia respondents reported four or more ACEs. The findings from this study suggest the need for services that address the unique environmental stressors experienced in urban neighborhoods to mitigate their impact on individuals and prevent ACEs." When finding out this number, were you expecting the number reported or believed it was going to be different?
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Re: Philadelphia ACEs Connection Meet-Up
Will the July 29th meet-up happen at the Friends Center as well?
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Re: Register Today! Building Community Resilience Advocacy Event
This looks like a great event, Leslie! I hope someone will do a write-up about it! Cheers, Jane
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Re: Rep. Sappey to introduce trauma informed education legislation [DailyLocal.com]
Quoting: "This bill would instill trauma-informed and focused policies, procedures and practices inside the classroom, such as requiring newly elected school board members, educators and other school staff members who have direct contact with children to complete training on trauma-informed approaches to education." Hmmm, great start towards the goal ! Meanwhile, we must all realize that State "requirements" imply a large cascade of change at ground level. We all need to acknowledge, up...
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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...
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Philly school board hearing report: speakers seek fewer police, more support services [thenotebook.org]
Teachers, counselors, parents, and national activists added their voices to students’ call for “police-free schools” at a general public hearing held by Philadelphia’s Board of Education on Thursday. The board holds two of these hearings annually, as the City Charter mandates; the only agenda for the meetings is to hear speakers. At the hearing and at a virtual “rally” held during the hour before, members of the Philadelphia Student Union and their allies repeatedly said that reform of the...