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Earlier this month, the Kansas City Star published a story about a local police officer who, with a lot of back up, saved three children from needless foster care. But let me tell you what it took to achieve that result. On one level this very good story—written by Cortlynn Stark, an intern for the Star—-is inspiring. On another level it’s frustrating. And on still another, it’s outrageous. [For more on this story by Richard Wexler, go to...

In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to...

Resilient Sacramento has recently made explicit, their commitment to doing trauma-informed education & engagement that centers race, and other forms of structural oppression, as sources of trauma. The resources shared in a recent Resilient Sacramento meeting are described here for the entire ACEs Connection community. Please add your resources to the comments!

It was almost a ritual, but one that regularly disrupted the parenting class at a San Francisco-based child abuse prevention organization. Every time a siren blared in the streets below, a female participant bolted out of the room to seek safety in the windowless interior rooms of the multilevel labyrinthine white Victorian that houses Safe & Sound . Molly Jardiniano And it didn’t just happen in the parenting class. “When she heard the fire trucks, she said she would become paralyzed,...

One of the biggest shifts when acquiring a trauma-informed lens is to realize that there is no therapist, guru, healer, fantasy rescuer or parental stand-in who can heal you from trauma. The old paradigm was that someone, an expert, would perhaps hand you a Kleenex, and then offer you wisdom and insight metered out in 50-minute increments. Maybe the expert took the form of a religious figure and you traveled to an ashram to sit at his feet. Or maybe you believed that fast-talking salesman...

New research has shown that older adults who exercise above current recommended levels have a reduced risk of developing chronic disease compared with those who do not exercise. Researchers at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research interviewed more than 1,500 Australian adults aged over 50 and followed them over a 10-year period. People who engaged in the highest levels of total physical activity were twice as lively to avoid stroke, heart disease, angina, cancer and diabetes, and be in...

Permanency, especially reunification with birth parents , is the priority for most child welfare systems. But reunification may be associated with lower educational achievement, according to a recent study based on Wisconsin data. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin found that young adults who aged out of foster care had “significantly higher odds” of graduating high school and enrolling in college than those who reunified, and that earnings were...

“Chronic absenteeism is a community health issue. Why are youth absent from school? And from the conversation?” You could hear a pin drop as one member of the Newark youth team confidently asked this question of everyone in the room. He and his Next Generation Community Leaders (NGCL) teammates then presented the project they will launch next month: a youth-led study to better understand chronic absenteeism in the Newark city schools. As the statewide grantmaking program of the Robert Wood...

Rob’s Kids, Inc. was formed by our family to help your family. We are passionately committed to making a difference in the lives of children who struggle with Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We are proud to provide funding and sponsorship to psychiatric professionals, along with resources and education to families, with the goal of providing a safe place, where kids can find a home away from home.

What should be the cost of a terrible mistake? On Nov. 4, 2013, two young people’s lives tragically intersected on a bus in Oakland, Calif. That afternoon, Oakland’s 57 bus carried Richard and Sasha home after school. Each had had very different life experiences that led them to this moment, including their race, class, education, upbringing and gender identities. Dashka Slater’s “ The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives ” tells the stories of Richard...

Some U.S. cities have been using two strategies to blunt the force of the federal government’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The first: instituting policies (loosely called “sanctuary policies”) that limit cooperation of local jails and police departments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—thus cutting off a primary pipeline to deportations. The second is providing legal aid for immigrants in deportation proceedings. In New York, one such program has led to a 1,100...

I t was just a hair past 7 o’clock in the evening at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, and Richard Carranza was a little late to the party. The cafeteria was bulging with parents, translators, and a handful of staff. The recently minted chancellor of the New York City public-school system had planned to arrive at 6 to talk to a handful of community activists in advance of a town-hall-style meeting. The topic at hand: diversity in the city’s public schools. Or, to put it more pointedly,...