Cissy's note: This is one of the best articles I've read in a long while. I discovered it this morning, thanks to @Jane Mulcahy It's written by Fintan O'Toole and published in The Irish Times . Here are some excerpts: Continue reading...
Thursday, January 31st, 6:30-8:30pm at The El Dorado County Office of Education, Building B, Room 2, Placerville Join us to watch Resilience, the documentary film that explains the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the new movement to treat and prevent Toxic Stress. After the film we will discuss and share ways to build resiliency in ourselves and the children in our lives. This event is brought to you by Foster and Kinship Care Education of The El Dorado Center at Folsom...
In the interest of keeping a dialogue about ACEs on track, let’s be clear that all of us collectively allow unsafe childhoods, filled with adversity, to remain a standard feature of these United States. We do not control the actions of one broken person doing harm to one child, but we do influence the surrounding environment that is the single biggest predictor of whether the harm will come. Change will arrive only when we who are ultimately responsible for the situation demand it. What on...
Rob Lowe, Opinion contributor Published 7:00 a.m. ET Jan. 13, 2019 | Updated 6:01 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2019 Forty million Americans work as an unpaid family caregiver. The mental, physical and emotional stress they face is overwhelming. It's time to help. Right now, 40 million Americans are doing truly selfless work by serving as unpaid family caregivers for a loved one. About 25 percent of those caregivers are millennials, who often feel forced to choose between their careers and caring for...
Efforts to improve the health and education of California’s children would get a giant funding boost under Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget, a prospect that’s generating a swell of excitement among child advocacy groups. The governor’s first budget proposal, released Jan. 10, offers numerous supports aimed directly at bolstering childhood health, including $105 million to pay for developmental and mental health screenings for low-income children, almost $110 million to expand home visiting...
Current conversations about the benefits of providing higher education in correctional facilities revolve primarily around the notion that a postsecondary credential will improve a formerly incarcerated person’s chances of finding employment post-release. There is copious research that demonstrates this phenomenon. This idea that the provision of higher education in prisons is worthwhile solely because it serves an economic good is incomplete and, in fact, is reductionist. This can remove...
A new study confirms what many have long suspected—when food companies target Black and Latinx youth with their advertising, they nearly always focus on fast food, candy, sugar-laden drinks and other unhealthy choices. Titled “ Increasing Disparities in Unhealthy Food Advertising Targeted to Hispanic and Black Youth, ” the study was released today (January 15) by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity . In it, researchers from the University of Connecticut , Drexel University and the...
In communities across the nation, complex care management teams are deploying “non-traditional” health care workers — including individuals with lived experience or skills that transcend the traditional bounds of health care — to better connect with high-risk patients. The New Faces of the Complex Care Workforce series showcases how these workers are helping in innovative ways to address the needs of adult Medicaid beneficiaries with complex health and social needs. In the first of these...
W hen the rains of Hurricane Harvey finally dissipated in late summer 2017, the potential for health hazards lingered on. At least 25 million gallons (95 million liters) of sewage floated through the streets of Houston and surrounding areas. Chemical and other industrial plants pulsed out millions of pounds of dangerous air pollution. Soggy homes grew mold and harbored bacteria and fine particles that snaked into residents’ lungs. A full year after the storm, a survey found that one in every...
Six-year-old Jada feels a persistent expectation of danger. She overreacts to provocative situations and has difficulty managing her emotions, which often flare up without warning. To her teachers, Jada appears touchy, temperamental, and aggressive. She is easily frustrated, which makes her susceptible to bullying. When something happens at school that triggers Jada, she may lash out in fury. How can teachers manage a kid like Jada who may have suffered trauma, but whose emotional reactions...
Last month, Congress passed the First Step Act, a prison-reform bill intended to reduce recidivism. Do you think this bill will actually change the realities of mass incarceration? It’s important but insufficient, in terms of the actual number of people in jails and prisons. We’ve gone from 300,000 people in jails and prisons in the 1970s to 2.2 million people today. We have to radically reorient ourselves and start talking about rehabilitation, restoration and how we end crime. And if we do...
The U.S. has some of the best perinatal care on earth, but kids die before the age of 1 here at a higher rate than the most of the developed world. A big part of the problem is that high-risk pregnant women and newborns aren't getting the right care during their time of need. That's a problem lawmakers across the country are increasingly trying to address. Indiana, for instance, recently passed a law establishing a system that rates hospitals on the complexity of neonatal and maternal care...
New York is now the 15th state to ban sexual orientation "conversion therapy" for minors. The state legislature voted Tuesday, and the bill passed 54 to seven in the Senate and 123 to three in the Assembly, according to NBC News . Conversion therapy laws prohibit licensed mental-health practitioners from subjecting minors to treatment that aims to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. For years, scientific and human rights organizations have discredited conversion therapy for...
AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- Texas spent more than $55 billion in 2017 to help children faced with maltreatment. That’s according to advocacy group TexProtects, who released a report Wednesday highlighting the costs of adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs. ACEs include child abuse, child neglect and household dysfunction. “The research is clear, we know that trauma early in life can change the architecture of a child’s developing brain,” said TexProtects CEO Sophie Phillips. “Therefore,...
F or Duke University sophomore Mila de Souza, including social-emotional learning in schools should be common sense. By that, she means it should be second nature for schools to support students’ mental health, teach children how to work well with others, and become a place where both educators and scholars can learn to value one another’s diverse experiences. “I feel a lot of schools are focusing on just education and making sure these students are able to pass tests, but not really...