Blog

Listening to the voices from current classrooms, the social-emotional needs that students are coming into classrooms are intense and demonstrate the importance of additional commitments for well-being and self-care. Schools and communities must recognize that teachers have ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) too. Similarly, they enter the profession as “wounded healers," being charged with filling needy hearts with hope. The levels of toxic stress and compassion fatigue are increasing...

We all know that children, especially when young, tend to be very open-minded and non-judgmental. It is during childhood that we should be teaching children how to express their needs by giving them a full vocabulary.

Elizabeth Perry provides an update on her advocacy efforts to increase awareness, prevention and healing of ACEs in the Canadian context through her #ACEs Canada organization.

In late 2018, Roberta Azzo, an operations program manager at Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center in Midlothian, Virginia, decided to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to infusing the hospital’s culture with a trauma-informed approach to care. This involves recognizing that trauma is widespread and that it can cause all kinds of troubled behavior, learning ways to de-escalate that behavior, and preventing practices that trigger patients and staff who have experienced trauma. The hospital...

In 2015, the pieces that became ACE Nashville began to fall into place. A five-year Community Health Improvement Plan included the support of mental and emotional health as one of its three goals. A core team of individuals from the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee and the Family Center, a non-profit focused on breaking generational cycles of child trauma, began to meet weekly. And a citywide “consensus workshop” in April of that year—drawing 44...

Lauren Szymonik kept posing the same questions to members of the Empower Action coalition in Marlboro County: “What is the data telling you? What is the data saying about education? What is the data telling you about trauma?” The numbers were clear: according to 2014-16 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys, 56% of the county’s 24,000 adults had experienced at least one ACE. In 2017-18, there were 212 cases of child maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, among the...

New ACEs Aware Grant Opportunity to Support Trauma-Informed Networks of Care The Department of Health Care Services in partnership with Office of the California Surgeon General and the today released a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a second round of ACEs Aware grants , with a submission deadline of December 21, 2020. The new grants will target California communities that want to build or execute a robust Network of Care to effectively respond to ACEs and toxic stress to meet the needs of...

The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) was created in December 2016 by representatives from diverse sectors, including education, mental health, justice, civil society, and government. We share a common commitment to preventing violence in all its forms and promoting healthy, just, and resilient communities. We inform and advocate for public policies and practices that incorporate scientific findings about the relationship between trauma, health, and well-being across...

Sadly, trauma anniversaries will be abundant. And, they can serve as triggers -- triggering the older trauma. We do best to plan ahead for anniversaries --- and this course at Rutgers on Dec. 9 from 9 --noon provides concrete strategies and a case study and powerpoints to use thereafter. Register here and it is right priced. Available to all -- social workers, HR personnel, educators, family. https://ssw-web.rutgers.edu/ssw/ce/index.php?m=catalog&cid=2328 See you there. Til then, stay...

... since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state”

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing the typical check-in on LinkedIn and saw where Lee had shared a post about a gentleman named Dr. Marcus Matthews. Dr. Matthews had released a new book entitled Urban ACEs without thinking and without hesitation I instinctively hit CONNECT. I had a sense we had some of the same ideas. In less than two hours of reaching out, we were on the phone sharing our hearts for students. I then asked Dr. Matthews if he'd like to get online and share, the link below are...

Last week we celebrated two very complicated days: Transgender Day of Remembrance and Thanksgiving. Two days in which we remember violence done to human beings from the birth of nation to today. Over forty Transgender people have been murdered in the US alone this year, over three hundred and fifty globally. I'm a graduate student at Boston University School of Theology, and I celebrated Transgiving. A day where Queer Survivors came together over Zoom to mourn and imbibe and find joy in the...