February 2018

If you haven't heard or read about this new memoir, I highly recommend exploring it. I haven't read the book yet but plan to right away - I heard the author Tara Westover on Fresh Air and just read a thoughtful piece about it on Longreads (link here: An Education in Doubt . The author survived a childhood full of family violence with a mentally ill father - there's much more to it, but I think it sounds well worth reading from the perspective of ACEs and reslience.

If cops provided first aid to individuals they shoot, regardless of the reason for the shooting, would that change the festering hostility towards law enforcement in America’s at-risk communities? Soon after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Tulsa last September , a Los Angeles officer told criminologist Lawrence Sherman that SWAT teams in his city were trained to provide immediate medical help to anyone injured during police actions—even those shot by police themselves.

After last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the young survivors underwent a routine that has become all too familiar: Teams of crisis counselors were dispatched , vigils and funerals were held, and local officials debated what to do about the physical aftermath of the massacre: inspecting the school’s buildings and deciding when (and if) the campus would re-open for classes. The psychological damage may be harder to assess. Among kids exposed to traumatic violence, short-term...

Humans tend to normalize behaviors of close intimates, tucking certain responses and behaviors into folders labeled “Just the way he is” or “So typical of her.” We do that because, in the moment, we chose to stay in the relationship, even though the sailing isn’t always smooth; some of the time, we fail to recognize that we’re actually excusing behaviors that should never be tolerated. People with insecure attachment styles whose emotional needs weren’t met in childhood do this more often...

Relapse has always been a harsh reality of addiction, but as the opioid black market fills with powerful synthetics, relapse on heroin and similar drugs grows increasingly dangerous. Fatal overdoses nearly doubled between 2015 and 2016—the majority of which are attributed to opioid-based drugs. We are bombarded daily with news headlines—some factual, some fictitious—announcing the newest therapy, or the latest hysteria-provoking scare (does death by fentanyl dust at the grocery store sound...

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Marvel has finally picked up on the rumblings-turned-shouts-in-the-streets for better representation in their tentpole movies, and releases Black Panther this weekend. I saw it. And fellow white people… you gotta see it too. Us, especially. I’m addressing my fellow pasty brethren because already, some of us are shaming our damn ancestors (or, let’s be honest, making them proud) by posting racist, and eye-rollingly easy to debunk, crap on Twitter about...

For many educators, this is a time of confusion and frustration as we watch continued attacks on federal funding for education — including after-school programming. We watched with concern earlier this year as the Trump Administration shortsightedly sought to eliminate funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program for fiscal year 2018. This essential program funds after-school and summer programs for almost two million youth across the country, especially those from...

Exercise may help the brain to build durable memories, through good times and bad. Stress and adversity weaken the brain’s ability to learn and retain information, earlier research has found. But according to a remarkable new neurological study in mice, regular exercise can counteract those effects by bolstering communication between brain cells. Memory has long been considered a biological enigma, a medley of mental ephemera that has some basis in material existence. Memories are coded into...

Our Trauma-Informed journey began with the Henrico Department of Social Services (DSS) in the fall of 2012 when we approached their leadership with a proposal to partner with the Greater Richmond Trauma-Informed Community Network (TICN) to create a Trauma-Informed Child Welfare System. We began by developing a TIMELINE of activities (please note we set out to complete things in one year - little did we realize at the time that the process is always ongoing!). The first step on the timeline...

In early February, the National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Policy Council hosted a webinar on its most recent policy focus on preventing unnecessary removal of children from their families. Three former foster youth – Dani Townsend, David Hall and Nico’Lee Biddle – presented the group’s findings from their survey on the subject and recommendations that will be shared with federal stakeholders. Hall shared a few highlights from the survey, which included responses from 200 current and...

The Trump administration wants to allow insurance companies to offer more policies that have limited health benefits and that can reject customers if they have pre-existing medical conditions. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says the plans , which don't meet the legal requirements for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, will allow consumers who can't afford insurance now to find cheaper plans. "It's one step in the direction of providing Americans with health...

Facing persecution in Myanmar, some Rohingya people have left for the United States, where many are finding new homes—and new challenges—in the Midwest. The Rogers Park neighborhood on Chicago's North Side is home to about 400 Rohingya families , one of the largest concentrations in the country. Ninety miles north in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are about 5,000 Burmese refugees, including about 600 Rohingya families (the others are Karen and Chin). Burmese people make up Wisconsin's largest...