Tagged With "Early Childhood"
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Re: "Addiction begins with solving a problem, the problem of human pain, emotional pain"
For most people with serious substance use disorders, understanding the connection between our habits and our histories of childhood trauma is essential to recovery. In a perfect world (hell, in a halfway decent world) drug treatment would be trauma-informed, yet some 90 percent of treatment facilities still operate as they did in the 1980s, marching every patient through the first five steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. For those who don't know, that means filling notebooks with self-lacerating...
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"Addiction begins with solving a problem, the problem of human pain, emotional pain"
In his groundbreaking book , In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction , trauma and addiction expert Dr. Gabor Maté writes, “There are almost as many addictions as there are people.” ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens read that quote as a springboard to asking Maté to define addiction and explain whether or not it is always rooted in adverse childhood experiences. Maté, along with filmmaker Michelle Esrick and Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond,...
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ACEs screening is about building relationships, says early adopter
Whether or not to screen for ACEs in primary care is an important debate—and I hear and respect the passion from both sides of the argument. I fall in the “pro-ACE assessments” camp, but with some important caveats. I think that assessments for ACEs are dramatically different from screening for autism or developmental delays. In my opinion, assessments for ACEs in primary care should be primarily about building relationships.
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Reimagining Healthcare as a Community Investment
At this point, COVID-19 has been a part of our lives for nearly six months now. While the most recent current events are not unfamiliar social problems, this pandemic has provided us with a stronger lens with which to see many of the underlying inequities within our communities. This article, “The Moral Determinants of Health,” explores these inequities by illustrating the systemic imbalances within the field of medicine and the amount of resources we allocate to solving problems as opposed...
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ACEs and Resilience Local Groups and Initiatives
This document provides a list of county-wide (mostly) groups and initiatives in Washington State addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma-informed approaches, toxic stress, and resilience. In many communities there are other local ACEs-related groups and initiatives. In most cases, the contact people listed can provide information about the work throughout their county. The purpose of this list is to encourage connections to and across the groups and initiatives, in order to:...
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Inside Girls Court, Washington State’s first therapeutic court model for girls (KUOW)
By Lila Shroff, July 2, 2020, KUOW. Over the past two decades, while juvenile incarceration rates have been decreasing, rates of incarcerated girls have either stayed the same, or increased . In response, the Kitsap County Girls Court opened in June 2019 as Washington state’s first court system providing service just for girls. A few months ago, I went to see Girls Court in action. [ Please click here to read more. ]
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Health and Wellness Town Hall: How ACEs Impact the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color
Health and Wellness Town Hall - August 5th, 2020 3-4:30PM PDT Adverse Childhood Experiences 101 Class How ACEs Impact the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color This event will be led by Alfred White. Alfred is the founder of The League of Extraordinary People. After nearly 40 years experiencing homelessness, Alfred swallowed a 1/4 ounce of crack cocaine in 2004 and nearly died. He awoke paralyzed and that is when he made the decision to seek help for his history of...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...
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New Resource: Trauma-Informed Nutrition Factsheet
A newly developed factsheet, “Trauma-Informed Nutrition: Recognizing the Relationship between Adversity, Chronic Disease, and Nutritional Health” has just been released. This factsheet is intended for Registered Dietitians (RDs) and was designed to support and describe the connection between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the impacts of trauma and its relationship to chronic disease, and trauma-informed nutrition practices. This factsheet was developed through a collaborative...
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Congress urged to address trauma in the 4th COVID bill
Now that the July 4 th congressional recess has ended, negotiations around the fourth major COVID relief bill are underway between the Congress and the Administration. How the chasm between Congress and the White House will be bridged is a path uncertain, with massive differences between the House and Senate complicating the work. As the pandemic rages across the U.S., there is now at least a consensus that action is needed. But no agreement exists on a payroll tax cut, unemployment...
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Why the dean of early childhood experts wants to get beyond the brain [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
By Ryan White, Center for Health Journalism, July 23, 2020 Harvard’s Jack Shonkoff, a luminary in the field of early childhood, has spent years showing that events in the earliest years of life have profound implications for how budding brains develop, and in turn, shape a child’s later potential at school and work. Now, Shonkoff says it’s time to connect the brain to the rest of the body. “The message now is to say that there is a revolution going on in molecular biology and genomics and in...
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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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Recording available for Health and Wellness Town Hall: How ACEs Impact Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color
If you missed The League of Extraordinary People's first Town Hall, or would like to watch it again, it is available here ! Health and Wellness Town Hall: Adverse Childhood Experiences 101 Class How ACEs Impact the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color This event will be led by Alfred White. Alfred is the founder of The League of Extraordinary People. After nearly 40 years experiencing homelessness, Alfred swallowed a 1/4 ounce of crack cocaine in 2004 and nearly died. He...
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Ann Penn-Charles casts a wide net to reduce generational trauma in Washington State coastal tribes
You could say that Ann Penn-Charles, a native of La Push, Washington, was a natural resilience builder even before there was an ACE Study. La Push is a Native American reservation on the western edge of Olympic National Park, where the Quileute Nation ancestors of “Miss Ann”, as she is known, have lived for generations. Although she faced hardships growing up on the reservation, including having her first child when she was a junior in high school, she was able to graduate with the support...
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Does VP Candidate Kamala Harris know about ACEs? You bet!
Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, has a lot in common with the vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris—Jamaican heritage, surname, home state—and a commitment to addressing ACEs and toxic stress. As reported in the New Yorker article by Paul Tough, “The Poverty Clinic,” Dr. Harris told Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, about ACEs in 2008 and in response, she offered to help. District Attorney Harris then introduced her to professor of child and...
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National Governors Association Chooses Delaware to Participate in Adverse Childhood Experiences Learning Collaborative [Delaware.gov]
Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families | Featured Posts | Date Posted: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 WILMINGTON, Del. – Governor John Carney on Wednesday announced Delaware was one of four states chosen by the National Governors Association to participate in a learning collaborative focused on recognizing and responding to adverse childhood experiences. The State of Delaware will join teams from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wyoming in the Improving Well-being and Success of...
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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.
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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,...
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Introducing the Transform Trauma with ACEs Science Film Festival & Follow-Up Discussions
Transform Trauma with ACEs Sciences Film Festival & Follow-Up Discussions The following weekend watch parties and follow-up discussions are co-hosted by ACEs Connection, The Relentless School Nurse , and The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy & Practice (CTIPP) . We appreciated the filmmakers for making these films free to watch for our members and for the public programming of PBS. The films we’ll feature are as follows: Portraits of Professional Caregivers Whole People Part 1...
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Introducing the Transform Trauma with ACEs Science Film Festival & Follow-Up Discussions
Transform Trauma with ACEs Sciences Film Festival & Follow-Up Discussions The following weekend watch parties and follow-up discussions are co-hosted by ACEs Connection, The Relentless School Nurse , and The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy & Practice (CTIPP) . We appreciated the filmmakers for making these films free to watch for our members and for the public programming of PBS. The films we’ll feature are as follows: Portraits of Professional Caregivers Whole People Part 1...
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Reimagining Resilience online workshop - early bird price thru Fri Sept 4
Reimagining Resilience - Using a Trauma Lens - an online workshop which helps adults build positive relationships with children who have experienced trauma. An online course offered over three 75-minute sessions. In addition there are short videos that will be sent to registrants before each class. Tues, Sept 15, 22, 29 4:00-5:15 pm All times are Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). Early Bird Registration is $75 through Friday, Sept 4. Registration deadline is noon, Friday, September 11. The...
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Webinar - Protecting Our Children: COVID-19's Impact on Early Childhood and ACEs
Septembre 10, 2020 10:00 - 11:00 AM PT National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) "This webinar will bring together experts to provide insight on early childhood development, ACEs and COVID-19's impact on children" To register: https://www.nihcm.org/events/upcoming-events
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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...
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Survey for ACEs Connection: PCEs, ACEs, and Health Outcomes
ACEs Connection, we need your help ! We are performing a research study to better understand the relationship between positive childhood experiences (PCEs), ACEs, and health outcomes in adulthood. All we need is 5-10 minutes of your time and your honesty to complete the following anonymous survey. With your help we can find a better way to combat ACEs and to support the development of children into resilient adults. Just a little bit more about the survey: This survey is sponsored by the...
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Freedom From Trauma – Powerful & Profound Practices To Heal Trauma & Consciously Create The Body, Mind, Spirit You Truly Desire
We are living in complicated and stressful times. What needs to be healed seems more palpable than ever. It feels like the call to release what no longer serves has never been louder and we are feeling that tug at our core. While the founder of The League of Extraordinary People, Alfred White, has been gaining more clarity everyday on this, he was invited to be part of an event, more like a movement, to help others find freedom from what has been holding them back. It is a free, online...
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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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Free 2020 Virtual Trauma-Informed Care Conference
Each year, STAR hosts a Trauma-Informed Care Conference to help educate the next generation of leaders and build a strong network of Trauma-Informed professionals in the state of Georgia. The conference will be held on Saturday, October 3rd from 10:00am- 1:00pm EST and Sunday, October 4th , 2020 from 2:00pm-5:00pm EST conducted virtually via Zoom.
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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...
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'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),...
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NOW AVAILABLE ON DEMAND: The Repressed Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Adult Well-Being, Disease and Social Functioning: Turning Gold into Lead (Dr. Vincent J. Felitti) [avahealth.org]
The ACE Study reveals how typically unrecognized adverse childhood experiences are not only common, but causally underlie a number of the most common causes of adult social malfunction, biomedical disease, and premature death. Moreover, it enables one to see that the Public Health Problem is often an individual’s attempted Solution to childhood experiences about which we keep ourselves unaware. A renowned physician and researcher, Dr. Vincent J. Felitti is one of the world’s foremost experts...
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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...
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“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...
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"A Better Normal" Community Discussion: Suicide Awareness and Community Cafes
Join us on Friday November 6, 2020 from noon to 1:00 PST as we come together and join Satya Chandragiri MD, Bonnie O’Hern RN, Denise PNP, & Michael Polacek RN for a discussion around the tender issue of suicide. Together we will discuss ways people and providers can support each other and encourage communities to take action to support one another around suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and the layers of culture and structural barriers to care. A special emphasis will be on...
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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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How 5 women are working to turn a Seattle building into a place of healing for people (The Seattle Times)
By Sarah Jean Green, October 27, 2020, The Seattle Times. Carolyn Presnell began serving her second, 15-month stint at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in October 2015, after pleading guilty to selling cocaine to an undercover Seattle cop, then leading police on a high-speed chase and crashing her car in Seattle’s Meadowbrook neighborhood. Fast forward to today: Presnell is the director-in-waiting of the 1426 Project, a collaborative partnership of local nonprofits, governmental...
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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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Whole People Watch Weekend on ACEs Connection (Dec. 11th - 13th)
The Transform Trauma with ACEs Sciences FREE Film Festival continues this weekend. Please join us to watch parts 1, 2, and 3 of the PBS Whole People series at your convenience, on ACEs Connection, by clicking play on the videos below: Whole People | 101 | Childhood Trauma | Episode 1 (27 min) Preview: Whole People | 102 | Healing Communities | Preview | Episode 2 Whole People | 102 |Healing Communities Episode 2 (27 min) Whole People | 103 |A New Response | Episode 3 (27 min) This is one of...
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Sonoma County field nurses use ACEs science to educate families
Santa Rosa, CA, resident Lisa Marden watches her 15-month-old baby gleefully play with magic markers and relays how she’s been coping with feeling anxious. (We're using a pseudonym to protect the family's privacy.) “I’m just super stressed out with everything, and as soon as I eat anything, I get nauseous, so I’ve been eating snacks instead of meals,” she explains to Liz George, a field nurse with the Maternal/Child Field Nursing team of Sonoma County, CA, who has been seeing Marden on home...
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Whole People Film Discussion on Tuesday, December 15th at 7p.m. EST
ACEs Connection, the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy & Practice ( CTIPP), and the Relentless School Nurse will be hosting a Zoom discussion on Tuesday, Dec, 15th at 7p.m. EST about parts 1, 2, and 3 of Whole People. We hope you can join us: Pre-Registration Link Quotes from Childhood Trauma (Part 1 of Whole People): If you have yet to watch the Whole People series, you can still do so by visiting the PBS website. There is no cost to watch. 101 | Childhood Trauma | 102 | Healing...
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8th Annual October Resilience Month Reflection
Written by: India Flinchum, Whitman College Community Fellow Program The Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) of Walla Walla, hosted its 8th annual “October is Resilience Month” (ORM) event in October, 2020. The aim of the yearly ORM series is to build resilience, encourage community-engagement, and inspire self-reflection among members of the Walla Walla community. Through community events and CRI-hosted learning modules, CRI welcomed the general public once again, opening its arms to...
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Join Special Guest Father Paul Abernathy for a Zoom Discussion on March 16th, at 7p.m. EST to discuss the Whole People Documentary Series and Trauma-Informed Community Development
On behalf of ACEs Connection , the CTIPP (The Campaign for Trauma -Informed Policy & Practice), and the Relentless School Nurse , we want to invite you to the streaming of parts 4 and 5 of the Whole People documentary series on the weekend o f M arch 12th through March 14th, 2021. We will stream both parts on ACEs Connection in the Transforming Trauma with ACEs Sciences Film Festival community. The documentary viewing will be followed by a discussion with special guest, Father Paul...
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Recording Available: Adverse Childhood Relationship Experiences Town Hall: The Connection Between Childhood Trauma and Chronic Illness
The League of Extraordinary People is excited to share the recording from today's Town Hall! You can watch it by clicking here . The Town Hall was led by our Founder, Alfred White. You can find Alfred and more of our work online!
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Moving beyond “Paper Tigers” to a science of hope: Q & A with CRI's Rick Griffin
Rick Griffin knows a lot about hope – how to understand it, instill it, develop it. Griffin is the director of training and curriculum development for the non-profit Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) in Walla Walla, Washington. Walla Walla’s Lincoln High was the subject of a 2015 film, “Paper Tigers,” by the late Jamie Redford, about how the school principal, Jim Sporleder, adopted an ACEs-informed approach that positively transformed the school as well as the surrounding community.
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American Psychologist Special Issue: Adverse Childhood Experiences: Translating Research to Action [apa.org]
The American Psychological Association has published a special issue focusing on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In this special issue you will find a variety of articles addressing ACEs and the impact they have on us from biology to policy. From the American Psychological Association, " The goal of this special issue is to publish articles that encompass the range of work being conducted in research, practice, programs, and policy in psychology and allied disciplines. This emphasis is...
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Starts May 20 - Reimagining Resilience online workshop
Teachers in Sound Discipline schools are invited to attend for FREE! Choose the 'Teacher Appreciation' tickets at checkout!
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Apply Now for Free Vroom Materials and Assistance and Get Started Brain Building
The Washington State Department of Health, Essentials for Childhood Program is offering free “starter sets” of Vroom TM print materials and technical assistance on how to use Vroom . This is suitable for any organization that serves or reaches families of young children (from prenatal through age five) in Washington State, even if early learning isn’t your primary focus. Vroom Materials are intended to raise awareness about the importance of brain building and the simplicity and fun of...
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Two Opportunities to attend Reimagining Resilience Online - Register ASAP
Reimagining Resilience 1: Using a Trauma Lens
TWO Online Opportunities - Clock hours available!
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Your input needed! Survey, focus group, interview - your choice!
Hello, I am reaching out to you as someone who has registered for an Essentials for Childhood ACEs and Resilience Community of Practice gathering in the past three years. We would like your help so we can provide the best support and build resilience in local communities and set the future direction for the Community of Practice . There are three ways you can provide input: Take and share the survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ACEsandResilienceCoP21 Sign up now to join one of the 2...
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Special offer - Discounted Program Fee - Online Workshop Series - Reimagining Resilience 1: Using a Trauma Lens starts September 23
After the last traumatic 2 years, this course gives teachers, parents, and other adults working closely with kids the skills they need to make sure that every child knows that they are safe and that they matter.
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FREE WEBINAR - The Impact of Mind Matters: Preliminary Evidence of Effectiveness in a Community-Based Sample
Becky Antle, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work and esteemed University Scholar at the University of Louisville, won The Dibble Institute’s national competition to evaluate Mind Matters: Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience in 2019. As a result, Dr. Antle and her colleagues have conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the impact of Mind Matters on a host of outcomes related to trauma symptoms, emotional regulation, coping and resiliency, and interpersonal skills for at-risk...