May 2019

It’s no secret that our foster care system is overburdened. More than 250,000 children enter foster care each year. We don’t have enough foster families to meet this demand, and we don’t have enough adoptive families either. At the end of 2017, 123,000 kids around the country were still waiting to be adopted into a family. But what if the only answer isn’t recruiting more foster and adoptive parents? Are there other things we can do? What if the answer is recruiting more communities to get...

Illinois is one step closer to becoming a trauma-informed state. Senate Resolution 99 and House Resolution 248, sponsored by state Sen. Julie Morrison and Rep. Karina Villa, designates May 15 as Illinois’ Inaugural Trauma-Informed Awareness Day to highlight the impact of trauma and the importance of prevention and resilience through trauma-informed care. Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a proclamation recognizing May as Mental Health Awareness Month and May 15 as Trauma-Informed Awareness Day in...

When Sterling Witt was a teenager in Missouri, he was diagnosed with scoliosis. Before long, the curvature of his spine started causing chronic pain. It was "this low-grade kind of menacing pain that ran through my spine and mostly my lower back and my upper right shoulder blade and then even into my neck a little bit," Witt says. The pain was bad. But the feeling of helplessness it produced in him was even worse. "I felt like I was being attacked by this invisible enemy," Witt says. "It was...

My venture into the #Twittersphere has taken me across the ocean to the lovely country of Scotland. While I have not yet had the privilege of visiting, I have connected with a pioneering group of people who have a collective goal to make the entire country ACEs aware. And guess what...they are succeeding in ways that America should take note and follow in their able footsteps. Imagine an entire nation of 5 million people becoming aware of childhood adversity and the impact on our health and...

Each additional type of adverse childhood experience increases a person’s risk of relapse during medication-assisted opioid treatment by a whopping 17 percent. And each visit to a clinic that integrates trauma-informed practices based on ACEs science reduced the relapse rate by two percent, which can carry a person perhaps not to zero, but to a minimal risk of relapse.

Please welcome these 11 new initiatives from AZ, CA, CO, FL, KS, KY, MI, MN, NM, NY, UT, and VA to ACEs Connection . We also have a private community for ACEs Connection community champions, facilitators, and managers.* ACEs Connection Community Champions, Facilitators & Managers * Chisago County (MN) ACEs Initiative Colorado ACEs Connection Durango (Colorado) ACEs Connection Dutchess County (NY) ACEs Task Force Fairfax County (VA) Trauma Informed Community Network Fighting ACEs in Palm...

There are some great trauma-sensitive camps and other summer programs that are being planned for children impacted by parental addiction. We’d love to create a list for people who contact us looking for these opportunities, but WE NEED YOU! Let us know about programs available in your area, whether a workshop, weekly meeting, or weekend camp by emailing info or the website URL to nacoa@nacoa.org. We will post this list on our website and social media. Thank you to everyone who provides...

The Hogg Foundation has awarded $11.5 million in grants to 11 Texas organizations for the Communities of Care initiative. The initiative supports collaborative approaches to well-being in the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area. The grants will strengthen efforts to transform the environments where people live, learn, work, play and pray, bringing a population health approach to support resilience, mental health and well-being for all members of a community, and with a focus on children...

On May 1, 2019, the Brookings Institution’s Braiding and Blending Working Group hosted Braiding and blending funds to promote social determinants of health , a public event on how to establish more flexible funding strategies to improve community health and economic mobility. This has proved to be a particularly popular event, with almost a thousand attendees and viewers so far. If you were not able to attend or view the webcast, video recordings of each of the panels are now available on...

Mental Health Awareness Month is an annual observance in the United States dedicated to raising awareness about mental health. For recognition of this, Tugg EDU is discounting our best selling mental health titles . We’re offering 20% off our psychology and mental health documentaries, such as PAPER TIGERS , RESILIENCE , LIKE ANY OTHER KID , LIYANA , and I AM EVIDENCE . This discount expires at the end of the month, May 31, 2019. Please take advantage of this offer by plugging in CAP2019 at...

In the largest study to date, a German research team has confirmed that deep brain stimulation of the brain’s reward system provides relief for treatment-resistant depression . Investigators from the University of Freiburg and their colleagues from the University Hospital Bonn discovered the technique provides acute and long-term benefits. Researchers used thin electrodes to stimulate a deep-seated part of the reward system in the brains of 16 patients. The intervention led to a significant...

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Region 5 in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is pleased to announce the release of a set of Trauma-Informed Care virtual training cases for health care providers developed with funding support from the Office on Women’s Health. Please see the attached brochure for details. We are pleased to share access to these cases which are now available, free of charge at Trauma-Informed Care Training Cases. The 42 Trauma-Informed Care...