Tagged With "Mind Matters"
Blog Post
In Spanish: Handouts for parents about ACEs, toxic stress & resilience
The Community & Family Services Division at the Spokane (WA) Regional Health District has come through again, with a Spanish version of the parent handout (in English) that we posted last year , and which has been downloaded thousands of times. The English versions came about whiledoing a story about the trauma-in formed elementary schools in Spokane, WA .I interviewedp ublic health nurse Melissa Charbonneau who said that she'd been giving an...
Blog Post
Last Month's Early Childhood Mental Health Summit - Let's Put Our Learning into Practice Now
Just one month ago, on September 28, First 5 and partners pulled together a few hundred community members for an Early Childhood Mental Health Summit called " Building Relationships to Support Families in Times of Stress ." With the local wildfires distressing many families and children, community support is needed now more than ever. The event aimed to ensure participants: 1.) Expanded their understanding of Early Childhood mental Health as the capacity to form close relationships, manage...
Blog Post
Local Teachers Love Learning about ACES!
Grace Harris MFT, Parent Resources Director for Child Parent Institute reported that she recently presented to staff at several schools on ACES and Trauma Informed Care (TIC). When asked, less than 10% of school staff said they were aware of...
Blog Post
Mapping the ACEs science movement — How close are we to a tipping point?
[Note: This is most of a keynote presentation I gave at last week's sold-out National ACEs Conference in San Francisco. The energy at this conference was incredible. To all who attended, thank you for doing so. To those of you who weren't able to attend, we hope the posts about the conference give you some idea of the speakers and sessions.] We have come an extraordinarily long way in spreading the word about ACEs science. During the first National ACEs conference in Philadelphia five years...
Blog Post
MARC Booklet 2016: Features Sonoma County
Please find attached the 2016 booklet for the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) project, including Sonoma County and the other 13 communities that have been selected to participate in this 2 year learning collaborative. This is a great summary of the work happening in all 14 communities across the country. I am looking forward to working with you all as we tell your story to the world!
Blog Post
MARC Group Postings
Dear Sonoma County ACES Connection members, This morning I was reading the ACES Connection's MARC group postings and when I read the WA state proposal, I had to share. There seem to be many similarities to what we want to accomplish, although we are working on a smaller (local) scale - maybe we might learn from their statewide processes too? Very exciting! I particularly like how they are planning to bring their individual partners together into a more formal group and their shared decision...
Blog Post
Material from Building Community Capacity to Address ACEs- ACEs & Resiliency Community of Practice Session
Thank you to all who attended our Community of Practice Building Community Capacity to Address ACES on July 25th! Attached are the materials from our day together. Ellen and Oscar's Slides are attached.
Blog Post
Learning How to Convince Leaders to Create Trauma-Informed Programs, Systems and Environments.
How do you build a narrative around ACEs science, bolster it with data and convince your leadership that integrating it is critical for the community you serve? Representatives from San Francisco Bay Area health and social service agencies had an opportunity on December 5 to learn about ACEs science, find data sets to help them make a case for supporting ACEs education and resiliency programs, and then role play ways to deliver powerful messages. Donielle Prince, ACEs Connection Network’s...
Blog Post
SONOMA COUNTY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ACT (MHSA)2017-2020 Three-Year Integrated Plan & Annual Update for 2015-2016
To read the full report, click here : Mental Health Services Act Integrated Report 2017 - 2020 Or see attached for a printable version of the report.
Blog Post
Mindful-Based Practices, Therapeutic Activities, & Ways to Relax: For Teachers, Parents, & Children
Yoga is a great activity for children and adults and is easy to do just about anywhere! Children need to have multiple healthy ways to express their feelings and have opportunities for mind and body awareness. Yoga is beneficial because it is... Non-competitive Gender neutral Enhances motor skills and balance Improves listening skills in a fun approach Children can focus on what is happening in the moment A healthy way to express feelings Supports social and emotional learning and...
Blog Post
New 5 Year El Dorado County ACEs Collaborative Action Plan Workbook for 10/2018-10/2023
Attached is the 5 Year El Dorado County ACEs Collaborative Action Plan Workbook for 10/01/18-10/01/23. Action Plan updated as of 5_2019.
Blog Post
No Working Guidelines: What Next?
At our October meeting, we decided to not adopt our draft bylaws. (Working Guidelines) As someone who spent a lot of time and thought crafting a compromise consensus version for approval, I feel entitled to an opinion on the matter. I'm really glad we didn't adopt them. In drafting guidelines for Sonoma County ACEs Connection, one should begin by going back to first principles. Who are we? What are our values? What do we want to be? In reviewing the guidelines, I saw a lot of rules that did...
Blog Post
Notes and materials from our first meeting of 2015
We had a good meeting last Wednesday. Allen Nishikawa greeted us with a mindfulness practice that helped us relax and be present. ACEs Connection staff Alicia and Jesus joined us and it was a pleasure to meet them in person! Karen Clemmer once...
Blog Post
Notes from 4/22/2015 meeting
Seventeen Sonoma County ACEs Connection members attended our monthly, in-person meeting on April 22. Once again, Allen Nishikawa greeted us with a warm, steamy hand towel so that we could truly “arrive” and be mindful. We agreed that, for...
Blog Post
Notes from our 9/23/15 meeting
Twenty of us attended the meeting. We were warmly greeted by Allen Nishikawa with a warms towel ceremony that allowed us to truly arrive and be present. The topics we discussed were the Paper Tigers viewings, Dr. Anda’s presentation at Hanna...
Blog Post
November 18, 2015 Meeting Notes
Fifteen members attended. Attendance was anticipated to be lower, because many members had prior commitments. Allen Nishikawa opened the meeting and introduced Elisabeth Chicoine, Manager of the Public Health Family Health Section. She announced that...
Blog Post
Oreos, Apples, Coconuts and Bananas: The Precarious Position of Interpreters. Basic ACES Training for Providers, Part Three
If you work with clients in health or human services, you will at some point work with an interpreter. Have you thought about the awkward position they occupy? Language is only part of the problem. They must be “white” enough to understand and navigate the bureaucratic culture, while being black/brown/yellow/red enough to understand the client’s worldview and concerns and to be able to gain the trust of the communities they serve. When I worked with refugees, I often served...
Blog Post
Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
Blog Post
Prevent Child Abuse - Sonoma County annual report 2014-2015
In case you missed picking up a copy of the 2014-2015 annual report from Prevent Child Abuse-Sonoma County, here it is. This year, it provides a snapshot of child abuse and neglect data, a two-page overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study,...
Blog Post
Proactively preparing teens and children for 13 Reasons Why, season 2 (Netflix)
By Tracie Dahl, LCPC, Middle School Therapist with Intermountain School-based Services (Helena, MT) 13 Reasons Why is about to drop its second season in just a matter of days. Since Season 2 is no longer adapting Jay Asher's 2007 YA novel and telling a completely new story, as service providers who work with young adults, we would like to know what we can expect from the upcoming string of episodes. We were more reactive than proactive when Season 1 came out and it’s easier to be more...
Blog Post
Proposed Changes to Sonoma County ACEs Connection Working Guidelines
Holly asked me to review the SCAC Working Guidelines we developed at the retreat and prepare a document for approval at the October meeting. I invite all members to send me any comments or suggestions regarding the current document. For the purposes of this vote, I am limiting proposed changes to only those issues where there is a discrepancy, disagreement or lack of clarity concerning an existing guideline. Any brand new guidelines should be proposed and adopted later. The current version...
Blog Post
Find out about events to observe the one-year anniversary of the October 2017 wildfires at SonomaCountyRecovers.org
You may have heard about a number of events that are planned around the county to observe the one-year anniversary of the October 2017 wildfires. A listing of these events can be found at SonomaCountyRecovers.org . The anniversary of our October 2017 fires is not just a typical day, it is a day where many may feel disillusioned and realize they are still working their grief. It is a day where while we might have to go to work, we have to remember to take care of ourselves and remember it is...
Blog Post
For the January Meeting: This is Who We Are
Over the last several months, Sonoma County ACEs Connections (SCAC) has been struggling to develop organizational guidelines and committees. We have attempted to adopt them on several occasions but have not been able to agree on a plan. This has been especially frustrating for some of us, because back in November of 2015, SCAC voted to adopt a group of committees. For a variety of reasons however, folks keep wanting to reinvent that wheel. I am proposing one more attempt to discuss our...
Blog Post
Free of Violation of Rights - Legal Imperatives That Could Address the Impact of ACEs
Last week, I took a call from a passionate suicide prevention advocate, James Gallant who wanted to discuss an approach for reducing ACEs. "Do you assess kids with disabilities for violations of their legal rights?" James asked. I was stumped at how to answer this, and didn't immediately see the connection to ACEs. But as James went on to share his expertise on the subject, I felt more compelled to find out what we are doing locally. James makes the case that kids with an ACE score of 1 are...
Blog Post
FREE Train-the-Trainer to enhance resilience and meditation skills in a post-fire Sonoma County
A new coalition, the Sonoma County Resiliency Collaborative, is offering a free train-the-trainer taught by the Center for Mind Body Medicine. The training program is about the neuroscience of trauma (including new studies about the difference between men and women) with a focus on environmental disasters and trauma and the various techniques to heal from trauma, mainly training a cohort in different forms of meditation. If you weren’t able to join us on July 26 to hear about this...
Blog Post
How a story about childhood trauma in Paradise became one of community trauma [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
My project for the Center for Health Journalism’s California Fellowship was focused on childhood trauma, zeroing in on a town in Northern California. In the fall, that town — Paradise, California — burned in a harrowing wildfire. The story quickly changed to one of community loss. The story of trauma in two counties My initial project was about Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. ACEs are one way to quantify how much childhood trauma a person has experienced before the age of 18. Through...
Blog Post
How collaboration helps clinic in San Mateo County, CA, tackle ACEs in children
Dr. Elizabeth Grady is a pediatrician at the South San Francisco Clinic, a community clinic of San Mateo Medical Center. She and Susana Flores , a senior public health nurse with San Mateo County Health, spoke with me about how the clinic and other health agencies in San Mateo have been able to craft ways to work together to prevent and heal toxic stress in children. Grady also talked about how she and Flores have been working with the Resilient Beginnings Collaborative (RBC), a group of...
Blog Post
Request For Proposal Resource Family Training Services
You are invited to participate in a County of Sonoma solicitation. Review this information and use the URL below to login and bid on this solicitation. RFP Resource Family Training Services Description: The County of Sonoma is pleased to invite you to respond to a Request for Proposals for Resource Family Training Services. The Family, Youth & Children’s Services (FY&C) Division within the County of Sonoma Human Services Department is seeking a single qualified entity to provide a...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
SCAC meeting notes for 8.28.19 community meeting
*BOLD BLUE text = hyperlink to more information *pdf attached ACEs Enthusiasts Community Meeting *4th Wed of each month August 28, 2019, from 3:30 to 5:00 Location: Child Parent Institute / Sonoma County ACEs Connection About us: We bring the community together to prevent, heal, and treat ACEs while promoting resiliency. Sonoma County ACEs Connection has a fresh focus in 2019 with an emphasis on community, while seeking opportunities to leverage and coordinate with others. Please join us!
Blog Post
Simple Resilience Tips
(This is a written version of a presentation I gave at our January Meeting.) For the past year, Sonoma County ACEs Connection worked to make more people aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences. But especially after the big fires, it feels important to also talk about resilience. I want to start a discussion about simple resilience techniques that anyone could apply in their work, social and/or personal life. This is not new information, because the best resilience methods have been used by...
Blog Post
Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
Blog Post
Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
Blog Post
Sonoma County ACES Connection MARC Proposal
Members have asked to see the proposal as submitted. Here it is for your reference.
Blog Post
A National Agenda to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences
What are ACEs and Why Do They Matter? In 2016 1 , nearly half of U.S. children – 34 million kids – had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) and more than 20 percent experienced two or more. The new brain sciences and science of human development explain how ACEs can have devastating, long-lasting effects on children’s health and wellbeing. These events resonate well beyond the individual child to have far-reaching consequences for families, neighborhoods, and communities. ACEs...
Blog Post
ACEs gets a day at the (Sacramento) Capitol!
No matter where you are, be sure to follow the events of the day on twitter: Follow @acestoohigh and #4CAKidsDay17 to get live updates all day.
Blog Post
ACEs gets a day at the (Sacramento) Capitol!
No matter where you are, be sure to follow the events of the day on twitter: Follow @acestoohigh and #4CAKidsDay17 to get live updates all day.
Blog Post
ACES Science 101 (FAQs)
What are ACEs? ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children's developing brains so profoundly that the effects show up decades later; they cause much of chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence. ...
Blog Post
After 5-year journey to integrate ACEs science, Santa Rosa, CA, pediatric clinic is trauma-informed, from head to toe
Dr. Meredith Kieschnick was among the first physicians in the U.S. to hear the term, "adverse childhood experiences". That was in 1998, early on in her career as a pediatrician, when the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) published its initial findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine . “I attended a conference at which (Dr. Vincent) Felitti spoke,” she recalls. Felitti, at that time director of the Health Appraisal Center at Kaiser Permanente...
Blog Post
Antidote for Sonoma County homelessness: Homes, job training [PressDemocrat.com]
Mateo Swaim-Brouwer, 21, shoveled gravel in the hot sun Tuesday at a home under construction on a Cotati cul-de-sac. It was manual labor, without pay, rewarded only by a pizza lunch break with his co-workers. Swaim-Brouwer, wearing a neon green Habitat for Humanity T-shirt, was happy to be there. A simple matter of payback, he said, recalling the six months he and his mother were homeless, living in a shelter and on the streets of Santa Rosa. The two-bedroom wood-frame home, beige with white...
Blog Post
Be the Spark: Igniting trauma-informed change within our communities
Authors note: This piece is co-authored by @Lara Kain and @Christine Cissy White. Though we had never worked together or met, we were asked to co-present on creating t rauma-informed changes in communities by the Attachment Trauma Network for the first national (now annual) Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Summit in Washington, DC. This article is an expanded essay version of that presentation). Be the Spark Oprah Winfrey helped mainstream discussion about...
Blog Post
Materials from our Building Resilience on a Solid Foundation: Community of Practice Event
Thank you to all who attended our Building Resilience on a Solid Foundation: Community of Practice. Attached are the materials from our day together. Also, here is the link to Got Your ACE Score? , which has the 10-question ACE survey, an explanation of what it means, and a resilience survey. You can register for our April 25 th Community of Practice event featuring Eddy Zheng at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/o...-tickets-31517247937
Blog Post
Child Parent Institute April 2019 Parenting Newsletter
I recently read that, “According to a [2007] report by the A.C. Nielsen Company, parents spend only 39 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children.” Yikes. That’s less time than it takes me to watch one meaningful episode of This Is Us. Although the report is over 10 years old, I wouldn’t be surprised if this statistic were worse now, given the exponential growth in use of smartphones and social media within the last decade. It makes me wonder how many minutes of...
Blog Post
Community Profiles from selected CA ACEs Initiatives and Programs
CA communities and organizations from across the state shared information about their trauma informed and resilience building initiatives at the Child Adversity Policymaker Awareness Day on July 11, 2017 in Sacramento. The event, organized by 4CA ( California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity) , educated state legislators about the impacts of child adversity across the lifecourse and strategies for preventing ACEs, healing trauma and creating resilient communities. A series of twelve...
Blog Post
Culture of Health Leaders [cultureofhealth-leaders.org]
Culture of Health Leaders are people working in every field and profession who want to use their influence to advance a Culture of Health where every resident has a fair opportunity to live a long, healthy life. This kind of leader isn’t defined by a fancy title or a corner office. They’re working on the ground, applying their skills and experience to solve urgent issues that impact their community and beyond. They get their hands dirty—running a business, leading a nonprofit, building things.
Blog Post
CYW releases "Children Can Thrive: A Vision for California's Response to ACEs"
The Center for Youth Wellness released a new report “Children Can Thrive: A Vision for California’s Response to ACEs”. This report is a follow up to last November’s Children Can Thrive Summit. ...
Blog Post
Do You Have a Story to Tell? Speak at the 2018 Fall Trauma-Informed School Conference
Beyond Consequences is excited to announce that our Call for Proposals for the 2018 Fall Trauma-Informed School Conference has been extended. If you have a great story to share about your experience in working with students who’ve had adverse childhood experiences, we would love to hear from you! Here are some examples of sessions that fit in at our nationally recognized conference: Administrative/School-Wide Track • Mindfulness Instead of Suspension • Special Education Law & Advocacy •...
Blog Post
Trauma & Resiliency Summit in the Columbia River Gorge
Hello all! The Columbia River Gorge is hosting a Trauma & Resiliency Summit on October 20th & 21st, 2016 in The Dalles, OR. Registration is made free to attendees through MARC Grant funding. If you are in the area please join us! And please note that registration is only available prior to the event as we have a limited amount of space. Claire
Blog Post
Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
Blog Post
Two Truths and a Lie: ACES Training for Providers, Part One
Note: I was asked to repost this blog on the Sonoma County site, so if you have already read this, there is no new content. There is a game in which you tell people two truths and a lie and folks must guess which one is the lie. Want to play? One: I lived and worked on a seaplane for several months. Two: for a time, I built musical instruments for a living. Three: I helped several women escape domestic violence. To help you figure out which one is the lie, let me tell you a...