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Tammy Ambre (l) and Keri Bechelli of One Hope United __________________________________________ One Hope United attempts to lead those affected by childhood trauma down a Healing Path. That’s the name of a three-year-old program that has brought a different approach to helping people with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The program operates out of One Hope United’s office in Gurnee, IL, north of Chicago, and three others in the metropolitan area. “It’s...

For two decades, there's been evidence that people who suffered childhood trauma — violence, sexual abuse or family dysfunction — are much more likely to have a chronic health problems and engage in risky behavior. Now, 14 community health centers around the U.S. are acting as laboratories for an experiment to see if screening and then treating people for trauma can improve the results from treatment they get for their diabetes, heart disease, pulmonary disease or other ailments.

Summer and after-school programs could more easily feed children under legislation approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee. By voice vote, the committee approved the bipartisan Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act , which reauthorizes and modifies federal child nutrition programs. It won the support of a wide range of public health, agriculture and education groups. The bill, which sets standards for summer meal and after-school programs, would streamline the...

For nearly a decade, Child Trends has been tracking how states fund child welfare activities . I love talking about child welfare funding, but I’ve noticed others’ eyes glaze over when I announce, for example, that states spent over $28.2 billion on child welfare activities in state fiscal year 2012 (the latest data available). Numbers are so abstract. Those funds meant something major, though, to the 678,932 children who were victims of maltreatment in federal fiscal year...

When you walk into the office of the 28-year-old mayor of Ithaca, New York, you get an instant taste of what it means to have a young person running your city. An LED display mounted above the couch in his office flashes text messages that are sent directly to the mayor, Svante Myrick. The messages aren’t censored and are posted instantly for anyone within eyesight to read. Share Photo by Blake Fall-Conroy, used with permission. "Could you please pave James St.? The holes are really...

Close to 40% (38%) of formerly suicidal Canadians have reached a state of complete mental health, not only being free of symptoms of mental illness, suicidal thoughts or substance abuse in the preceding year, but also reporting almost daily happiness or life satisfaction, and social and psychological wellbeing according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto. The study will appear online this month in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. "We found that...

W e live in the era of, “yes, I can”. We tell ourselves that whatever we want to achieve, if we work hard enough, we can do it. Achieve more, be the best, push to the top, reach your goals, have no limits. Yes, you can! But sometimes all this “yes, I can” results in something very different indeed: a severe case of “no. I really, really can’t”. And when you really, really can’t, you have probably burned out. Burnout is a big problem in the UK...

On Monday night, DeRay Mckesson stopped by "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." The activist and organizer best known for his work within the Black Lives Matter movement was on to discuss Campaign Zero , an anti-police brutality initiative started last year. While there, Mckesson did a rundown of where we're at as a country on race and gave a quick primer on privilege. Race can be a really tricky thing to discuss. It's one of those issues that immediately puts people on the defensive and...

One of the primary goals of Los Angeles County’s child welfare system is keeping kids out of lock-up. But in this pursuit, the county took a surprising step: It used a predictive analytics tool as part of a program to identify which specific kids might end up behind bars. The process wasn’t incredibly complicated: It involved administering and assessing a questionnaire about a child’s family, arrests, drug use, academic success, and abuse history. But the goal was...

I just heard a story that I adore. It comes from  Ali Raza Khan , an  Ashoka  social entrepreneur and education reformer in Pakistan. Last year, he challenged 6,000 poor students across 74 charity government vocational schools to create ventures within a month. He went to them and said, "I believe in you. You can all start businesses and citizen groups and you can all succeed." He said this to all the students in all the schools, none coming from privilege. [For more of this...

Each year, tens of thousands of American students are still paddled, spanked or otherwise struck by school faculty as corporal punishment, finds a new report by the Brooking Institute . Federal data shows 166,807 students received corporal punishment in the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent year for which data is available. Of those, 28,569 were in Texas. The Brookings Institute report, released Thursday, also finds a dramatic racial disparity in the application of corporal punishment,...

In 2014, almost one in seven Americans received nutritional benefits, popularly known as "food stamps," through the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program. The program, which lifted 4.7 million people out of poverty in 2014, is one of the only federal assistance programs available to healthy adults without dependents, and the evidence increasingly indicates that it was a crucial stabilizer during the Great Recession, when many states actually dropped needy families from the welfare rolls. But...