Blog

"Tangible items can be reminders of the value of people’s unique stories, of building relationships with students and colleagues, and of our mission as educators to teach acceptance and respect. At the end of four days in Montgomery, Alabama, I carried home one penny and a rock. The invitation to Montgomery had come from Teaching Tolerance after I was accepted to join its advisory board. The board meeting schedule included three packed days of training, excellent speakers and shared...

As child abuse survivors, we work really hard to do the best we can with our children. We want them to have what we didn’t. So we try to create a healthy, nourishing environment to help our kids grow and thrive in the best way possible. But after working all day, sometimes there isn’t much left of us for our children. That used to bother me a lot. I felt like I wasn’t giving my kids 100% of what they needed from me. Finally, I realized I was trying to give them what “I” felt they needed, not...

Let me start with a radical statement: I love data. One of my favorite activities in my role as chief strategy officer at Children & Families First , a large non-profit child and family services agency, is turning columns of numbers into sets of colorful graphs. But even more satisfying is watching someone engage with the data as it reveals previously hidden meaning. Since 2014, Children & Families First has been collecting adverse childhood experience (ACE) data from the people we...

Many understand a lot about ACES/developmental trauma and the impact on brain development and behavior. This understanding may shape the way one deals with a child or adult that has experienced adversity. However, many lack the knowledge about how to integrate trauma informed principles THROUGHOUT a system. Please join "HERE this NOW" on Thursday, September 28, 2017, for a training to understand how to infuse trauma informed thinking in every facet of a system - individual, family, group,...

"Mindfulness meditation is everywhere these days. From the classroom to the board room, people are jumping on the mindfulness bandwagon, hoping to discover for themselves some of its promised benefits, like better focus, more harmonious relationships, and less stress. I too have started a mindfulness meditation practice and have found it to be helpful in my everyday life. But, as a science writer, I still have to wonder: Is all of the hype around mindfulness running ahead of the science?

"The Trump administration plans to stop accepting refugee applications from children with U.S.-based parents from three violence-riddled Central American countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — according to the summary of a presentation the State Department made recently to refugee organizations. The decision to end the Central American Minors program, which began in 2014 and is the only refugee program aimed at helping people from that region, could put hundreds of families split...

"Around the country, local governments are soliciting donations for everything from dog parks to public defenders. Is this a practical response to budget cuts or a sign that publicly funded services are in trouble? Earlier this year, when the new sheriff of Travis County in Texas announced that her officers would not cooperate with federal immigration investigators (part of an ongoing battle over sanctuary city issues), Texas Governor Greg Abbott retaliated by slashing the county’s criminal...

"A new study found immigrants reported fewer potentially health-harming adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse, violence, or divorce, than native-born Americans. The findings, which will be highlighted in an abstract presentation during the American Academy of Pediatrics 2017 National Conference & Exhibition, suggest immigrants may experience different forms of stress early in life than do those born in the United States. The abstract, "Adverse Childhood Experiences Among...

"Native American students make up 1.4 percent of the students in Washington state public schools. And they have the lowest graduation rate of any ethnic group, with just 56.4 percent earning a high school diploma in four years. “I was that young person, I dropped out of school. I was one of those statistics of Native women dropouts,” says Dawn Hardison-Stevens, who is a member of the Steilacoom Tribal Council. Hardison-Stevens, who at the time was a young mother with a 3-year-old and a...

"The 2017 Building Trust and Mutual Respect to Improve Health Care call for proposals (CFP) will fund empirical research studies to help us better understand how to build trust and mutual respect to meet vulnerable patients’ health care needs. For this CFP, we would define vulnerable populations in a number of different ways, including the economically disadvantaged, diverse racial and ethnic populations, the uninsured, older adults, homeless individuals, and people with complex health and...

"Over the past 18 months, four foster care “hackathons” have explored how technology could be optimized to streamline child welfare systems and better serve youth and families. During that time, events in Washington, D.C., New York City, the Silicon Valley and Los Angeles have been instrumental in spurring changes to the child welfare systems there. The hackathon series kicked off in May 2016 at the first-ever White House Foster Care and Technology Hackathon in Washington, D.C. Hosted by the...

Compassion fatigue has been described as the "cost of caring" for others in emotional and physical pain. It is characterised by deep physical and emotional exhaustion and an uncharacteristic inability to feel empathy for others. Compassion fatigue is also called "vicarious traumatisation" or secondary traumatisation, where the emotional residue or strain of exposure to others who are suffering, or reliving traumatic incidents, impacts you and over time can become overwhelming, possibly even...