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In the weeks before they leave the juvenile detention center, incarcerated children in Connecticut meet with counselors from the Wheeler Clinic, a nonprofit that works with high-risk youth as they transition back into their community. They talk about social connections, they talk about family support. They also talk about vaccinations. “If their immunizations aren’t up to date, they can’t go back to school,” says Kim Nelson, senior vice president for services at the Wheeler Clinic. That’s a...

The opening quote in Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha's gripping book, What The Eyes Don't See, struck me right in the heart: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." so says Dr. Suess. Caring is something that may be in short supply during our current political climate. Grappling with caring, too much or too little is worth a moment of self-reflection. We have to know what we care about, and lead with our "why," in order to make an impact. Dr. Mona...

Trauma recovery takes hard work, which survivors often wish could go faster. A new client recently asked me, “Should I be exercising? Doing yoga? Meditating? What can I be doing physically to help me heal or recover more quickly? What else can I do to get through all of this?” It was a great question, so today, I’m going to address it in case you’ve been wondering too. Trauma impacts how we think, and how our body responds, and healing can’t be hurried. But understanding trauma’s nature can...

Don’t get me wrong: of course I care deeply about the mental and physical health of children, including my own son’s. I don’t want students to suffer in silence and shame. But I am very concerned about just how this topic will be taught in schools.

Despite having two children, Jessica F. only received $478 a month from Massachusetts’s cash assistance program, known as Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the amount that a parent with one child typically gets. She was denied an extra $100 a month thanks to a “family cap,” a rule from the 1990s, yet still on the books, that bars families from getting increased benefits to cover any children that are born while they’re already enrolled in the program. She had her youngest...

Sarah Hemminger grew up in Indiana understanding the debilitating power of social isolation. When she was a girl, her father discovered that their pastor was dipping into church funds and reported it to the congregation. Instead of doing something about the pastor, the community shunned her family. Sarah and her siblings would sit at parties and neighborhood events and nobody would talk to them. She spent eight years of her childhood ostracized. She also learned what it looks like when...

Curled into a ball in the corner of a basement in Mosul's Old City, Ahmad Shaker was trapped. When Iraqi forces began advancing on the historic district on the west side of the Tigris River in June of 2017, the remaining ISIS fighters took hundreds of civilians and locked them in basements and cellars, using them as human shields while fighting from the rooftops. Try to leave and we will shoot you directly, they said. In Ahmad's case, they locked the doors. As an international coalition of...

The Finger Lakes (NY) Resiliency Network (FLRN) is a Trauma-Informed year long Learning Community that provides education, training, consultation, resources and support to providers who are committed to and invested in becoming trauma-informed. The FLRN was designed to foster organizational growth and development; challenging current practices and utilizing support and shared experiences with other schools and organizations committed to becoming trauma-informed. This network will provide the...

Gazing from one size of the room to the next, one could see educators, parents, social workers, and other individuals of all sectors. There was a certain tangible livelihood, an excitement, a hunger for information. Individuals were approaching one another with wide eyes, eager to connect. After speaking with Teri Barila of CRI and Rick Griffin of Jubilee Leadership Academy, organizers of this past 2018 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference, I hear how amazed they were at the vibrancy of the...

Crunching numbers to help predict human behavior is common practice in insurance, banking, and public policy. We are always looking for the perfect algorithm to help improve decision-making. But when those decisions involve the fate of families, and the potential removal of kids from their parents, data-driven predictions become the subject of intense debate. That was on vivid display last Tuesday at a panel in New York City on the use of so-called predictive analytics for investigating...

Like so much else in Canada, the debate over guns typically happens more quietly than it does in the United States. But on rare occasions, a tragic moment will come along and propel the issue to the top of the public agenda. When that happens, the country abandons the decibel range of polite discourse and begins to argue—loudly—about gun control. That’s what happened this week after a lone gunman, Faisal Hussein, allegedly opened fire in Toronto’s Danforth neighborhood Sunday night, killing...

CHICAGO — I was on my way home from dropping my kids off at preschool when a police officer called to ask if I was aware there was an outstanding warrant for my arrest. “No, no,” I told him. “I didn’t know that.” I needed to call my husband, but my fingers were shaking. I don’t remember if I was crying when he answered, only that he was saying he couldn’t understand me, that I needed to calm down, to tell him what had happened. [For more on this story by Kim Brooks, go to...