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Up to 30 percent of teenage girls in some parts of the United States say they have intentionally injured themselves without aiming to commit suicide, researchers have found. About one in four adolescent girls deliberately harmed herself in the previous year, often by cutting or burning, compared to about one in 10 boys. The overall prevalence of self-harm was almost 18 percent. [For more on this story by Emily Baumgaertner, go to...

Out-of-home placement is sometimes necessary to meet the developmental needs of infants and young children through safe, stable and nurturing primary caregiving relationships. Foster parents may include caring and committed adults who have been trained to take on the fostering role with or without the possibility of adoption. Some of these parents might also be kinship caregivers (related family members), or fictive kin (individuals who may be close to the family such as friends). Federal...

If a family has no means of transportation, consistent prenatal care becomes extremely difficult. If a mother is homeless, she is less likely to attend a child wellness visit. If a one-year-old is hungry, brain development is detrimentally impacted. And if a toddler is experiencing trauma at home, he or she cannot focus on learning. While there is significant evidence around the value of investing in early childhood to improve physical, social, and emotional development later in life, more...

CINCINNATI: If your car was heading for a ditch, would you steer back onto the road or let it crash? As a certified trauma therapist, I have seen how timely intervention in the life of a suffering child can avert a tragedy. Unless Gov. John Kasich intervenes to stop the scheduled execution of Robert Van Hook, all Ohioans may soon participate in the end result of too many missed opportunities. Many studies confirm the detrimental effects on brain formation when children suffer traumatic...

A woman named Mirian and her 18-month-old son reached Brownsville, Texas, early this year after fleeing Honduras, where the military had teargassed their home. She made her way to a port of entry and asked for asylum, according to court records . Mirian had her identification, her son’s birth certificate, which listed her as his mother, his hospital birth record and his vaccination records. Border officers took the records, then told her they would be taking her boy, she said in a sworn...

When educators and coaches make kids feel like they matter, it reduces delinquency and destructive behavior. A new study led by a University of Kansas researcher reveals the importance of non-family adults in mentoring youth. "If you are made to feel useful and important to others, especially in this case by a non-kin and education-based mentor, then you are more likely to have a reduction in delinquency and dangerous behavior," said Margaret Kelley, associate professor of American Studies.

When it comes to funding for children and youth , the bulk of grantmaking dollars tend to go toward things like early learning programs and other education initiatives. But some would argue that many of these grants only offer Band-Aid solutions and don’t get to the root of the problem of children growing up in poverty. That’s why a funding effort targeting childhood trauma caught our attention in the five-county area surrounding Austin, Texas. St. David’s Foundation, a big health conversion...

Sometimes in addiction treatment, just getting free from using drugs or alcohol can hijack all our attention. I cannot stress enough how important it is to recognize trauma’s role when we talk about addiction treatment and recovery. The article “ The Link Between Trauma and Addiction ” by the Maryland Addiction Recovery Center made this point so well. I want to follow up from a trauma-informed care perspective. There is always a reason someone is using. When a pattern of addiction behavior...

Teaching self and mutual respect to eliminate bullying

Summer is upon us, which means an increase in street crime and ice cream consumption. However, neither one causes the other; they are both highly correlatedwith summer’s heat, which brings more people out of their homes and onto the streets, where some eat ice cream and some get mugged. Correlation is not causality. Here are two more facts to ponder: American children take lots of standardized, machine-scored, multiple-choice tests, and they are getting fatter. Is this just another...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday blocked Kentucky’s closely watched plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job as a condition of coverage. The state had been poised to start carrying out the new rules next week and to phase them in fully by the end of this year. Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, ruled that the Trump administration’s approval of the plan had been “arbitrary and...

On August 5, 2012, six people were gunned down by a white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, including Satwant Singh Kaleka, the temple’s president. In the aftermath of the shooting, Singh Kaleka’s son, Pardeep, reached out to Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist-turned-activist, to help him find answers amidst his confusion and heartbreak. Out of this meeting, Serve 2 Unite was born. The organization works primarily with Milwaukee-based schools, bringing together...