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Texas PACEs Connection (TX)

An online platform to foster communication and collaboration across communities and sectors in Texas with the goal of promoting ideas, policies and practices that reduce and prevent childhood adversity, build resilience in individuals and families, and help those affected by trauma to heal and thrive.

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Hogg Foundation Awards $11.5 Million to Address Well-being in Houston Area [hogg.utexas.edu]

The Hogg Foundation has awarded $11.5 million in grants to 11 Texas organizations for the Communities of Care initiative. The initiative supports collaborative approaches to well-being in the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area. The grants will strengthen efforts to transform the environments where people live, learn, work, play and pray, bringing a population health approach to support resilience, mental health and well-being for all members of a community, and with a focus on children...

Texas Lawmakers Want To Send Fewer Moms To Prison [npr.org]

For the eight-and-a-half years she spent in prison, Kristan Kerr looked forward to one thing every month: a visit from her daughter, Chloe. Visit by visit, she watched Chloe grow from a toddler to nearly a teenager. "I just watched her grow all the way up," Kerr says. "One visit, she couldn't read, and then the next visit she was reading something to me." Convicted for aggravated robbery in 2011 – she was the driver — Kerr says she wasn't making good choices back then, and it meant missing...

Texas lawmakers are prioritizing mental health for school safety. But advocates worry about stigma. [texastribune.org]

Mental health is at the forefront of gun violence prevention conversations among Texas legislators this session, but advocates for people with mental illness are wary of that focus. After the Santa Fe High School shooting in May that left 10 dead and 13 others wounded, Gov. Greg Abbott held a series of roundtable discussions around school safety that resulted in proposals like more resources for school safety personnel and closing gaps around mental health access. He named school safety as...

Virtual Screening of Broken Places on March 21st & Registration for ACEs Connection Members!

Please join us on Thursday, March 21st for a special virtual screening of Broken Places , the latest U.S. documentary on early childhood trauma and resilience. The film will be offered via a private Vimeo link with passcode to all registered members of ACEs Connection, for free, accessible in the United States and internationally. REGISTER TODAY: To register, please visit : https://goo.gl/forms/apdoINwgtQmydEXK2 The viewing portal for the film will open on Vimeo at 6am EST and close at 11pm...

Mississippi in the bottom tier of states in supporting babies and toddlers [hechingerreport.org]

The first three years of a child’s life are the most critical for brain development, yet Mississippi has done too little to support this cognitive evolution. The state needs to improve its policies to ensure children are in good health, have stable homes and have access to early learning opportunities. Those are the findings of a new report, the State of Babies Yearbook 2019 , released by the nonprofits Zero to Three and ChildTrends. The authors of the report analyzed state policies and...

Nine Simple Trauma-Informed Gestures for Educators

The promotion of trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed schools has grown tremendously in education. Broadly speaking, trauma-informed schools maintain a framework whereby the entire school staff maintains awareness of the impacts of toxic stress and trauma, and strive to ensure that all students feel safe, supported, and connected. Such awareness and motivation among educators and caregivers to promote such a framework presents multiple opportunities to change the lives of students and help...

Confronting and Combatting Bias in Schools (leaders.edweek.org)

Claiming a city—or a school—is inclusive doesn’t make it so, said Angela Ward, the supervisor of race and equity programs in the Austin Independent school district . Building environments where everyone feels valued and supported takes a commitment to challenging, thoughtful work, she believes. Ward, 46, also oversees the district’s restorative practices, an alternative to traditional forms of discipline that teaches students to talk through their problems and experiences. The aim is to...

THE BUILD HEALTH CHALLENGE 2019 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

To read the announcement and all details, click HERE and see below key dates. BUILD is looking to support dynamic collaboratives driving sustainable improvements in community health. Are you ready to BUILD with us? For this new third cohort, BUILD is looking to support up to 17 innovative collaboratives across the US t hat include a community-based organization, hospital or health system, and public health department working together in dynamic ways to address upstream challenges and drive...

One state. One year. (Partial) Cost of ACEs = $5.2 billion.

In looking at the impact of childhood trauma, you can’t get much clearer than this: In 2017, ACEs among Tennessee adults led to an estimated $5.2 billion in direct medical costs and lost productivity from employees missing work. That’s just one year, according to the new report, “ The Economic Cost of ACEs in Tennessee ," released on Feb. 1, 2019 by The Sycamore Institute in Nashville, Tenn. And to provide some perspective, $5.2 billion is one-seventh of the state’s annual budget . This $5.2...

What I learned reporting on housing and economic inequality after Hurricane Harvey [centerforhealthjournalism.org]

“Forgotten.” In the months after Hurricane Harvey slammed the Texas Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, that was the word I heard repeatedly from renters, homeowners and disaster case managers in small towns and rural communities. The help that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state leaders promised hadn’t arrived. They feared their communities would be left behind, overshadowed by larger cities like Houston. In some cases, their homes looked as if Harvey had just hit — not the year...

Article of the Year, Spanking is an ACE

Child Abuse & Neglect Article of the Year 2017 Child Abuse & Neglect, The International Journal, is pleased to announce the winner of its ‘Article of the Year’. The papers shortlisted for this title have demonstrated outstanding contribution to research on child welfare and we wish to recognise these scholars and research topics within the community. The papers selected for this title were voted on by the editorial team and editorial board (33 votes) of Child Abuse & Neglect. For...

How Houston has Virtually Ended Homelessness Among Veterans [psmag.com]

Inside an abandoned warehouse on the northern end of downtown Houston is an encampment where approximately 20 homeless people stay each year. The ground is covered with cardboard, old newspapers, and plastic bottles of water coated in grime. On one wall, a mural reads: "Look for the Beauty Within the Most Frightening." At the moment, there's no one here. The people who live in this "community," as retired Houston Police Sergeant Steve Wick describes it, have been asked to clear out for the...

Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.

When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...

Expecting Care [texasobserver.org]

W hen Arianna walked into a church basement in Austin to take a free pregnancy test, she thought of it as a lark, a way to kill time during the long, dull days of life as a street kid. About a month before, she had run away from the Austin Oaks mental health facility and was now living with her boyfriend in an alley near the Texas Capitol. The idea of being pregnant was laughable. “It was just laughs and giggles while we were waiting in line,” she said. Afterward, she remembers one of the...

How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness (kqed.org)

If teachers and parents want children to develop resilience and strength, a better approach is to teach them self-compassion, said Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself . How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation When a student develops self-compassion, the seat of motivation shifts . Neff said that there is an empirical link between self-compassion and growth mindset (the belief...

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