Tagged With "human rights"
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Webinar of interest? The human side of how COVID is impacting our Children, Families, and Communities
I am interested in attending a training/webinar/have conversation OR offer a webinar on how this Pandemic is impacting our Children, Families, and Communities. I have been searching for this information and cannot seem to find, so I am open to collaborating and providing a webinar. The coronavirus has shattered the system that protects children, leaving some confined in troubled homes or lingering in foster care. The social/emotional effects have yet to be fully seen on how this is damaging...
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Stand Together for Peace
Fall is traditionally a time of transition. As we watch the leaves on the trees change color we find that transformation is all around us. We continue to struggle with the effects of a global pandemic while educators and students begin a new school year, and an important election looms. We have all been forced outside our comfort zone by current events, but the silver lining is that we have moved into a place of growth, personally and also in the world. Today, we have a tremendous...
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Greater Richmond Trauma Informed Community Network, first to join ACEs Cooperative of Communities, shows what it means to ROCK!
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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Hanna Boys Center Alumnus Runs for Rohnert Park City Council!
Before coming to Hanna, Walter Linares was living in a small townhouse in San Francisco with 16 people, from three different families. His father died when he was seven, leaving his mother to support Walter and his three siblings. “My mom was working 16 hour shifts to provide for us and while she was at work I was babysitting my siblings and shouldering a lot of responsibility from a very young age.” Without supervision and left to themselves, Walter and his siblings were “running a bit...
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"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...
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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...
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Upcoming Webinar: Learn How to Start an ACEs Initiative in Your Community
Are you curious about starting an ACEs Initiative in your community? Join one of these upcoming webinars to learn how to start an initiative. I'm Alison Cebulla, the Community Facilitator (CF) for the Northeast USA, Mid-Atlantic USA, and Canada for ACEs Connection. You are welcome to attend these webinars no matter which region you are interested in starting. After the webinar, I will put you in touch with the CF in your region who will help you get started if you choose to move forward. All...
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Prevention is Essential: Collective Impact Coalition Promotes Safe, Stable, Nurturing Relationships and Environments for All Maryland’s Children
When members of Maryland’s State Council on Child Abuse and Neglect (SCCAN) began in 2006 to examine what their state was doing in the realm of prevention, they discovered a gaping hole. Many participants in the 23-member Council—people working in child welfare, mental health, law enforcement and advocacy groups—knew about ACEs and about the corrosive effects of early childhood maltreatment. But they discovered, through informational interviews across different sectors and an environmental...
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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...
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"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...
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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...
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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...
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From Wildfires to Childhood Trauma, a Resilience Cooperative Transformed the Way Clinics Face the Unthinkable
What helped Sonoma health center staffers navigate one catastrophe after another was what they had learned about trauma in the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative.
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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...
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The 'war on drugs' was a war on people of color
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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Santa Rosa Attorney Takes On Racial Disparities Within Sonoma County Government | Sonoma Magazine
The daughter and granddaughter of leading farm labor advocates, Alegria De La Cruz is taking on the next role in her family's long campaign for social justice. https://www.sonomamag.com/santa-rosa-attorney-takes-on-racial-disparities-within-sonoma-county-government/
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Youth Detention Facility finds culture of kindness more effective than punishment
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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Free Peer Support Specialist Certification Training
The new Peer Support Specialist Certification Program Training will be offered Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10:00am to 12:00pm. This training program has been developed to prepare peers with lived mental health experience for Peer Support Specialist Certification in Sonoma County. (Peer support specialists are also known as mental health consumer advocates, peer providers, peer counselors, peer mentors, peer navigators, and peer advocates.) Classes will be held over Zoom and all...
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Policing in schools: Redefining public safety to be supportive & healing, instead of punitive & criminalizing
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
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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Webinar explores Oregon bill declaring racism a public health crisis
For anyone who thinks Oregon — long regarded as a liberal, progressive state — was a welcoming place for Blacks and other minorities in the past, a recent webinar sponsored by Oregon health care organizations was a chilling wake-up call. In June 1844, Oregon’s provisional government passed its first Black Exclusionary Act , with language stating that any Black person who set foot in Oregon “would be publicly whipped 39 lashes.” From that time forward, Oregon, like most states, amassed its...
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California PACEs Connection initiatives spark new connections in regional meeting
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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Resource: Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic One-Pager (English & Spanish!)
English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance co-created “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe economic consequences resulting from...
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Regenerative Relationships: Climate Crisis Resilience (jennisilverstein.com)
By Jennifer Silverstein, LCSW, jennisilverstein.com, Blog 2021. “Every time I rescue a bee, it matters. If I didn’t rescue it, the hive may not have enough bees, and then there’d be less honey, and less flowers, and less fruit, and when people go shopping there would not be enough for them to eat.” – Dani, 7 years old I have spent 7 years teaching her about the interdependence of all life, and our place in the web of living beings. Yet upon hearing her articulate the values I so carefully...
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Sonoma County: The American Rescue Plan and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (ARPA) (sonomacounty.ca.gov)
ARPA Town Halls: Join us to gather input on where and how Sonoma County might best invest ARPA dollars. Each virtual Town Hall will be hosted by the supervisor for that district and will include an overview of ARPA funding along with small group community conversations. Please make sure to register by clicking on the links below. September 23, 6 - 8 pm (District 3 - Supervisor Coursey) : Register Now September 30, 5:30 - 7:30 (District 5 - Supervisor Hopkins) : Register Now October 4, 5:30 -...
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How indigenous tattoos draw a link to the past
Tribal members in Northern California are reclaiming traditional tattoos, especially facial tattoos as a means to connect with their cultural history, a panel of experts in indigenous tattoos told a diverse group of 45 people in attendance at the community event at the Museum of Sonoma County. Those who attended were surrounded by displays of indigenous art, ceramics, and paintings. A spectacular hand carved canoe, used for traditional voyages, tracing ancestral journeys through the Pacific...
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How We Heal from Adverse Childhood Experiences
It’s not time, but an integrated recovery plan that heals.
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Dan Press traces how legal work for Native Americans led to advocacy to uproot trauma
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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July Meeting Minutes
*Mindful Moment *Welcome and Introductions *What Happened to You? Book Club *PACES and Resilience West County Schools *Pathway to Income Equity coalition *Steering Committee *SCPC ARPA update *SCPC Social *Action items/Future Agenda items In attendance: Elizabeth Smith-Community Manager, Elizabeth Vermilyea-Deputy Director CPI, Sandra Bodley-GHAC, Carla Denner- Elizabeth led the group in a mindful moment. Carla and Elizabeth Smith shared that they have been attending "What Happened to You?"...
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World Mental Health Day: Mobilizing the Human Family Through the CRC & the PACEs Movement
Awareness about health outcomes are as much about the long-term impact caused by adverse childhood experiences as they are by positive childhood experiences. By providing education on trauma-informed awareness and resilience building frameworks, the CRC Accelerator certification is a tool for both.