Blog

By Stephanie Sy, Lena L Jackson, and Casey Kuhn, PBS News Hour April 24, 2020 COVID-19 is ripping through the Navajo Nation, infecting and killing people at rates that are above U.S. averages. Located across three states, the Navajo population is already vulnerable, with a high prevalence of underlying disease, a lack of infrastructure and limited access to care and supplies. Stephanie Sy reports on how the Navajo community has taken on the challenge of caring for its own. Read the Full...

Barbara Rubel is a suicide loss survivor and leading thanatologist. Thanatology is the scientific study of death. As a thanatologist, Barbara Rubel specializes in suicide loss survivor grief and educating professionals about traumatic loss. The third updated and revised edition of her book, But I Didn’t Say Goodbye: Helping families after a suicide, just launched on Amazon.

I read a short story last week that was about emptiness and love. That funny thing that happens sometimes, happened, and three different people wrote to me within about 24 hours about… emptiness and love. They were feeling -- and I think a lot of us are feeling it -- a harsh, empty, loveless feeling that keeps swooping into their consciousness during this quarantined period, sounding the alarm that something HUGE is missing from our lives. One woman even said “I know you’ll think I’m crazy...

Taking Care of Our Eyes- “Grabbing” vs “Taking In” an Image https://youtu.be/No2e2rQlkuw

By Trauma Informed Parent Steve Gross is a clinical social worker and a pioneer in the field of using playful engagement and relationships to overcome the devastating impact of early childhood trauma. He is the founder and Chief Playmaker of Life is Good Playmakers; a foundation that works to "harness the power of optimism to create healing, life changing relationships for kids in need." For more information, visit: h ttps://www.lifeisgood.com/kidsfoundation/about-playmakers.html

By ANYA KAMENETZ , April 24th ,2020 Three-quarters of U.S. states have now officially closed their schools for the rest of the academic year. While remote learning continues, summer is a question mark, and attention is already starting to turn to next fall. Recently, governors including California's Gavin Newsom and New York's Andrew Cuomo have started to talk about what school reopening might look like. And a federal government plan for reopening, according to The Washington Post, says that...

Dear ACEs Connection Community, Wanted to share some of my new work out in Children and Youth Services Review on the factors predicting whether Child Welfare Services-involved youth receive special education. I find that foster youth have a higher probability of receiving special ed vs. children in the care of an adoptive/biological parent. Given current school closures, supporting foster families educating kids with special needs will be critical. You can access the article for free (until...

By CONNIE RICKETTS, Apr 14, 2020 Each year April marks Child Abuse Awareness/Prevention month and proclamations are read and adopted throughout our county to ask members of our communities to take a stand — to stand up for the rights of children to live free of abuse and neglect. In Texas, more than 50,000 children are in the temporary managing conservatorship of the state child protection system. Every eight minutes in Texas a child is a victim of abuse and neglect. In 2019, 708 children...

By Ingrid Gould Ellen, Kacie L. Dragan, and Sherry Glied, Housing Matters, April 22, 2020 In 2015, the New York City Housing Authority transferred six public housing properties to private developers for rehabilitation and operation as subsidized housing. The repairs and improvements included fixing elevators, installing new lighting, fixing stairway handrails, upgrading heat and hot water systems, installing emergency generators, repairing roofs, renovating bathrooms, and installing new...

By Liz Willen, The Hechinger Report, April 20, 2020 Social studies teacher Karen Rose stepped out of New Rochelle High School last month for what will likely be the last time. And while that makes her sad, it’s not what bothers her most after 34 years in the classroom. “My biggest worry is the kids I’ve gotten no response from,” said Rose, who is retiring in June and never expected to end her career struggling with online teaching. “I’m calling and emailing them constantly. Maybe their...

By Chuck Taylor, April 23,2020 Dear Editor: In the late nineties, the Kaiser institute completed a study called the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) study. The findings of the study demonstrated an association between physical, mental, and emotional health problems over a lifespan with childhood trauma such as abuse, witnessing domestic violence and neglect. The study showed that the more ACEs a person endured, the higher their probability of heart disease, cancer, lung disease and...

By Clyde McGrady , Posted April 23, 2020 at 6:30am Brooks Robinson got a phone call from his cousin Jennifer. She couldn’t stop screaming. “She’s gone. She’s gone,” she yelled into the phone. Jennifer was calling to tell him their 34-year-old cousin Santayana Harris had just died of pneumonia, a symptom of COVID-19. He couldn’t believe it. Just a day earlier, he’d lost another cousin, Flora Robinson, to the same virus. It was a second blow, but not the last. Brooks comes from a close-knit...