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LeAnne Simpson’s 6-year-old daughter had thrown plenty of tantrums before the pandemic. But after a few weeks of lockdown, minor frustrations that used to lead to short-lived outbursts were now setting off writhing-on-the-floor freakouts . “First, she’d get so frustrated she couldn’t talk,” Simpson said. “Then she would start screaming, drop to the floor and roll around flailing her arms, often kicking or hitting me if I came close to her.” Simpson tried every tantrum-defusing strategy she...

In 2017, Children’s Hospital of Richmond (CHoR) at Virginia Commonwealth University took a huge jump in a new direction. Its CEO assembled 50 leaders from every unit and across disciplines to work on infusing a trauma-informed approach into its entire 182-bed hospital environment. Brittany Corker Kiefer What sent them down this path was a fervent belief that something was missing in standard care. “Being admitted to the hospital can be traumatic enough, without even factoring in past...

During this extraordinary period of time, there is both an opportunity and a heightened need to examine our societal role in keeping families safely together. In this issue of insights, we provide a framework for prevention and family strengthening strategies that is guided by data on disparities in child welfare involvement, includes innovative county approaches, and offers perspectives from stakeholders including those with lived experience. Our goal is to help inform the many state and...

Six new communities have joined ACEsConnection.com. Details about each of them are below as is information about starting and growing your community initiatives and joining the Cooperative of Communities . 16 Strong Project 16 Strong works with adolescents to empower resilience to ACEs through educational workshops, school partnerships, and community outreach. We strive to continue conversations that help young people recognize and navigate the challenges they are facing as a result of ACEs.

Looking for someone to present to your community? The PACEs Connection Speakers & Trainers Bureau is a service that provides PACEs Connection members a Database of PACEs speakers and trainers for hire. This Bureau helps us keep track of resources available and enables our communities to easily search for speakers and trainers themselves with the interactive tool. The Speakers & Trainers listing contains information on the member’s credentials, experience, sector specialties, and...

I am Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz from Kansas and I just wanted to stop by and share what ACEs Connection has meant for me, my life, and my work. ACEs Connection is a hub for people to find one another. There are all these amazing people that stand ready, who are employed for by ACEs Connection, to connect me to people across the world, and find answers and possibilities. So ACEs Connection, on my trauma informed journey, has been a vital kind of staple I remember early on, just having so many...

By Erika D. Smith, Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2020 As a Black man and a nurse practitioner working at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Long Beach, Walter Perez hears a lot of cringeworthy stuff from his Black patients. Like how the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines won’t be safe because Big Pharma is cutting corners to make more money. Or how the medical establishment wants to use Black people as guinea pigs to test those vaccines. Or how the vaccines could actually prove...

By Corey Jones, Tulsa World, December 2, 2020 Oklahoma’s social supports have eroded over time as budgets shrink, but a legislative task force is establishing framework to better coordinate and revive help for children and families across the state. The Oklahoma Trauma-Informed Care Taskforce on Tuesday released its second report in two years, which establishes a strategy to better leverage existing resources as it works to develop pilot programs and an overall plan in 2021. The goal is to...

By Roy S. Johnson, Al.com, December 4, 2020 Danielle Lacey Chavers rolled the dice. Though she didn’t fully grasp the depth of the consequences. Not even as she rounded the corner inside a gated Trace Crossings community in Hoover and saw a fire truck leaving the cul-de-sac where her family lived. Or as she saw an ambulance and a phalanx of police cars in front of their home. Or realized it was a drug raid. The oldest of Chavers’s two sons, Jeremy, a teenager who had picked his younger...

By Vanessa Grubbs, California Health Care Foundation, December 2, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has been wreaking havoc across the US for eight months, and new cases and deaths are reaching alarming and record-setting heights. For many Americans, especially people of color with low incomes, the effects of the pandemic are far more personal than the devastating numbers that dominate news media reports. To better understand the scope of the pandemic’s impact on the health care experiences of...

After the U.S. education system fractured into Zoom screens last spring, experts feared millions of children would fall behind. Hard evidence now shows they were right. A flood of new data — on the national, state and district levels — finds students began this academic year behind. Most of the research concludes students of color and those in high-poverty communities fell further behind their peers, exacerbating long-standing gaps in American education. A study being released this week by...

By Evelyn Kwong, The Toronto Star, December 6, 2020 Thirty-one years ago, 14 women were murdered at Montreal’s École Polytechnique, simply because they were women. Today, as they remember the victims of the anti-feminist attack on Dec. 6, 1989 — Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault and...