Tagged With "foster care"
Blog Post
2020 Sex and Perinatal Mental Health Conference
Sex & Perinatal Mental Health Conference on January 13th and 14th, 2020 at The California Endowment. This dynamic training will delve into areas such as postpartum sex, birth trauma, cultural attitudes about sex, gender and sexuality, gender affirming care, personal stories and more. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and wanted to introduce you to a few over the next couple of weeks. Two day training that will explore how sex and sexuality impact and interact with mental health...
Blog Post
A community-based approach to supporting substance exposed newborns and their families
This information brief highlights a community-based approach to supporting families and newborns affected by substance use. MA EfC developed this brief to address the profound intersection between the Massachusetts opioid crisis, Federal mandates for the development of Plans of Safe Care for substance exposed newborns, and, the MA EfC focus on increasing social connectedness as a means to reduce child maltreatment.
Blog Post
Aligning Systems for Health: 2019 Call for Proposals [rwjf.org]
By Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, November 1, 2019 Required Components Aligning Systems for Health will explore the degree to which health equity is impacted or results from current models of collaboration incorporating health care, public health, and social services. Gaps in health are large, persistent and increasing, and RWJF is committed to a system that meets people’s goals and needs and addresses these gaps that many populations face. Studies should include a focus on health equity by...
Blog Post
All hands on deck (from a distance): remote care for traumatized moms and babies
Dear colleague, Coronavirus is forcing providers and allied professionals serving mothers and babies to make unprecedented decisions. Should pregnant women needing care go through our hospital quarantine entrance? Should moms deliver without partners, family or doulas present? Be sent home early before key screenings or jaundice treatment are completed? To make matters worse, our systems aren't ready for basic remote care of mothers and infants now "socially distanced". Prenatal, post-partum...
Blog Post
AMAR Doula Program Celebrates Its First Graduating Class (The Burke Foundation)
Community Updates, December 19, 2019 With the support of the Burke Foundation, in early 2019 the Children’s Home Society of New Jersey (CHSofNJ) launched AMAR, a community-based doula program , to improve prenatal, labor, and postpartum support for Hispanic women in the City of Trenton. Now, the organization is thrilled to see the first group of trainees graduate from the program. New Jersey has the fifth highest maternal mortality rate in the country. To address this significant challenge...
Blog Post
Birth Equity Resources [CMQCC]
The resources listed below can be on THIS WEBSITE Copied from the website linked above: The following list of resources has been aggregated for those interested in learning more about birth equity . We strongly recommend reading multiple resources to get a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity and breadth of this initiative. We will be highlighting a new set of “top three” publications quarterly to encourage continued learning. Featured Publications: The US medical system is...
Blog Post
California Birth Equity Collaborative Improving Care for, by and with Black Mothers [CMQCC]
The California Birth Equity Collaborative is a CMQCC quality improvement initiative to improve birth care, experiences and outcomes for, by and with Black mothers and birthing people in California . Our team is comprised of partnerships among: CMQCC Black/Black women-led community-based organizations (CBOs) Participating hospitals State/national and local advisory groups Background: Since 1999, the reported maternal mortality data in California show a persistent 3-4x gap between Black...
Blog Post
CenteringParenting Recognized as Innovative Pediatric Intervention in New Report from The Center for the Study of Social Policy [globenewswire.com]
By Vandana Devgan, Centering Healthcare Institute, November 15, 2019 Centering Healthcare Institute (CHI) is honored to share that its pediatric group care model CenteringParenting®, has been recognized by The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) as an innovative pediatric intervention in its latest study. "Fostering Social and Emotional Health: Common Threads to Transform Everyday Practice and System" , released as part of the Pediatrics Supporting Parents (PSP) initiative, shares...
Blog Post
Childbirth Can be Another Source of Trauma for Women Who Were Abused [irishtimes.com]
By Arlene Harris, The Irish Times, February 7, 2020 While it may be an innate and mainly joyful event, many pregnant women feel anxious at the thought of going through labour and can suffer emotional and physical distress during the delivery itself. And there is one group of women for whom there is an extra level of trauma associated with the arrival of their unborn child – those who have been victims of sexual assault. Hazel Larkin is a sexual abuse survivor and over the coming months will...
Blog Post
Consequences of Military Sexual Trauma for Perinatal Mental Health: How Do We Improve Care for Pregnant Veterans with a History of Sexual Trauma?
Sharing our recent editorial which includes a call for TIC in maternity care: "Nevertheless, there are ways in which VA may be able to augment the maternity care pregnant veterans receive to empower and facilitate more trauma-informed approaches to obstetric care. These include investing in programs to ensure peer support, possibly through use of mobile health technology; facilitating collaboration with maternity care providers through provision of handheld/electronic maternity records...
Blog Post
Doulas & Covid-19: A toolkit for doulas (DONA International)
Please the attached toolkit for more information. From the toolkit: Best practices when working with clients Given how new this virus is, we currently have very little data on how it might affect pregnant people and newborns. Guidelines from the CDC outline recommendations for how to support pregnant and laboring people with Coronavirus. (3) There is currently no evidence that the virus is spread from mother to baby in utero, or that it is transmitted in human milk. (4)
Blog Post
Effects of Preterm Birth
A baby born prematurely often spends that crucial time for attachment and development of neural pathways in the NICU
Blog Post
Family First Scholarships for 21st Annual Families and Fathers Conference
21st Annual Families and Fathers National Conference February 24-27, 2020 Hilton Los Angeles Airport 5711 West Century Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90045 I am honored to announce The Family First Scholarship supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as a Title Sponsor and State of California First 5 as a Co-Sponsor for the 21 st Annual Families and Fathers Conference, Next Level 2020! the terms "putting family first" and "it takes a village to raise a child" parallels with why we have...
Blog Post
Giving birth in rural Oregon [The Bulletin]
By Carol Cruzan Morton, August 16, 2019, The Bulletin Health care providers struggle to provide high-quality care in communities with fewer births overall Itzel Wiewel was determined to control the circumstances of her second child’s delivery. Her first daughter’s birth at an out of state hospital was fraught with complications, evoking fear and helplessness. Her daughter spent a week in neonatal intensive care. Wiewel had a different vision for her next birthing experience. As her due date...
Blog Post
Intimate Partner Violence Screening and Intervention: The American College of Preventive Medicine Position Statement (Abstract) [sciencedirect.com]
By Tanya M. Phares, Kevin Sherin, Suzanne Leonard Harrison, et al., American Journal of Preventive Medicine, December 2019 The purpose of this paper is to produce a position statement on intimate partner violence (IPV), a major sociomedical problem with recently updated evidence, systematic reviews, and U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines. This position statement is a nonsystematic, rapid literature review on IPV incidence and prevalence, health consequences, diagnosis and...
Blog Post
Midwifery Is Having A Net Positive Impact On Maternal Health [Forbes]
Midwifery is growing in the United States . It is already an enormous presence in Europe. Furthermore a recent study found that the more a state’s health care laws allow the integration of midwifery, the better the well-being (measured by healthy and monitored pregnancy, presence of birth complications, health post-partum) of mother and baby tend to be. As for the future, I always like to check the past first . The past tells us that midwifery has been the norm for all of history across all...
Blog Post
New ROOTS, Beyond Medicalization: Midwives and Maternity Care in America (Jewish Healthcare Foundation)
By Alyce Palko, April 30, 2020, Jewish Healthcare Foundation. Introducing the Jewish Healthcare Foundation's new ROOTS publication, Beyond Medicalization: Midwives and Maternity Care in America . Under the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is rapidly moving into a new era of healthcare delivery. Across the country, maternal healthcare policies are changing daily in order to ensure birthing families have access to safe care. Hospitals are making rapid decisions about whether birthing...
Blog Post
Obstetric Violence: The Silent Epidemic in Egypt’s Maternal Health System [Egyptian Streets]
I am certain every one of you can think of a pregnant mother who did not have her husband in the delivery room, couldn’t eat or drink at the hospital, was given an epidural, had to labor on her back and probably ended up meeting her baby via C-section without fully understanding the medical need for it. Obstetric violence is a systemic and institutional problem. It is so engrained in our social practices and health systems here in Egypt that we think it’s the norm; but in reality, this is an...
Blog Post
Penn Nursing Conference Stresses Need for Mental Health Awareness in Health Care [thedp.com]
By Anya Tullman, The Daily Pennsylvanian, October 21, 2019 A student-run conference in the School of Nursing Saturday drew nearly 200 students and community members to talk about incorporating mental health awareness into health care. The "Reimagining Mental Health" conference featured speakers from across the Philadelphia and Penn communities who discussed harm reductionist and trauma-informed approaches to health care. "Harm reduction" refers to the practice of medical professionals...
Blog Post
'They Took My Kid': Rural Docs Help Moms Fight Addiction [medpagetoday.com]
By Ashley Lyles, MedPage Today, November 19, 2019 Patient: I'd gotten pregnant again and I was using through my whole pregnancy, and I didn't receive prenatal care. He was born and he's fine and everything. The [Department of Social Services] let me bring him home. Then a week after I had him, I relapsed really, really bad. Then, I got really messed up and they took my kid. Reporter: The opioid epidemic has taken a toll in rural areas, especially on pregnant women. Doctors and healthcare...
Blog Post
Through a Trauma Lens: The Need for Doulas
Trigger warning: trauma, doctors, hospital, birth, sex It is very important to me to approach all of the work that I do from a trauma-informed perspective. Whether it is asking for consent before touching a student in yoga class, offering self-regulation skills to those I work with, or preparing clients for potential triggers*, I do my best to incorporate my on-going learning in the field of trauma into my professional practices. Recently, I began taking trauma classes for professionals...
Blog Post
Trauma-Informed Care as a Universal Precaution: Beyond the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire [jamanetwork.com]
By Nicole Racine, Teresa Killam, and Sheri Madigan, JAMA Pediatrics, November 4, 2019 Experiences of childhood adversity are common, with more than 50% of adults reporting having experienced at least 1 adversity as children and more than 6% exposed to 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). There is currently a controversial debate in the medical field as to whether the ACEs questionnaire, which asks about abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18 years, should be...
Blog Post
Upcoming screening of Paper Tigers in Tacoma!
Tickets are still available to see the moving documentary, Paper Tigers! The movie will be shown on December 17th at 7:30pm at the Cinemark Point Ruston & XD. Click here to reserve your seat. Event Info Join us for a screening of an amazing documentary that captures insights about the hidden epidemic of childhood trauma plaguing our schools and communities. Watch how one school systematically tackled this very challenging problem by understanding [how] "trauma threatens brain...
Blog Post
We Have to Better Understand What Foster Parents Need [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Ross Hunter, The Chronicle of Social Change, October 11, 2019 As a new leader in the child welfare space, I thought it would be worth my while to do some listening before I made any big changes. So I went on a tour all over the state of Washington. I talked to caseworkers, foster parents, birth families, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and anyone else I could find who had an opinion. I got an earful. “Everything is broken.” “I had a great experience.” “The caseworker never called...
Blog Post
We Need to Help Relatives Navigate Their Child Welfare Options [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Jenny Keefe and Nikeyah Flagg, The Chronicle of Social Change, November 21, 2019 A new data project focusing on foster care capacity has illustrated a growing reality across the nation’s child welfare system: relatives are increasingly stepping up to provide care for children removed from their parents. The newly released data, compiled and analyzed by The Chronicle of Social Change, shows that the most recent surge in youth entering foster care is over. It also finds that a majority of...
Blog Post
When the trauma of a difficult birth leaves mothers devastated, alone (centerforhealthjournalism.org)
While there has been extensive media coverage looking at the health risks faced by mothers before and after they gave birth, as well as the heavy toll of postpartum depression. But less remarked is the emotional trauma and devastation that mothers can face from a difficult labor and delivery. These kinds of birth-related traumas may be far more common than realized: 18 percent of mothers report experiencing post-traumatic symptoms from childbirth, according to one estimate from the 2008...
Blog Post
ACEs Research Corner — May 2020
[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Williams AB, Smith ER, Trujillo MA, et. al. Common health problems in safety-net primary care: Modeling the roles of trauma history and mental health. J Clin...
Blog Post
Experts Fear Increase in Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders [nytimes.com]
By Pooja Lakshmin, The New York Times, May 27, 2020 After going through a harrowing bout of postpartum depression with her first child, my patient, Emily, had done everything possible to prepare for the postpartum period with her second. She stayed in treatment with me, her perinatal psychiatrist, and together we made the decision for her to continue Zoloft during her pregnancy. With the combination of medication, psychotherapy and a significant amount of planning, she was feeling confident...
Blog Post
Creating Change Together: from the desk of APPPAH's Board of Directors & Diversity Committee
Association of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health (APPPAH) Dear APPPAH Community, During this time of great change and upheaval, APPPAH stands in solidarity and support for equity, racial justice and social transformation in all areas of our society. We especially support the voices of all the Black and Indigenous mothers, fathers, babies, grandparents and extended families who have been living with the burden of racism and inequality for too long. In our organization, we have...
Blog Post
Providing in a Pandemic: The Challenges of Rural Maternity Care Just Got More Difficult (Daily Yonder)
By Mikhal Ben Joseph, June 24, 2020, Daily Yonder. Rural moms already faced a host of obstacles to get good prenatal care. Rural nurse midwives and doulas are trying to fill the gap . (Part of a series.) Mothers all over the country faced new hurdles when Covid-19 turned birth plans upside down: fathers not allowed to attend prenatal care visits, temporary closure of health clinics and OB/GYN offices, concerns over mother-to-baby transmission of the disease. In rural America, it made the...
Blog Post
What's Missing in the Effort to Stop Maternal Deaths [nytimes.com]
By Austin Frakt, The New York Times, July 13, 2020 According to the best data available , as summarized in a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States could prevent two-thirds of maternal deaths during or within a year of pregnancy. Policies and practices to do so are well understood; we just haven’t employed them. A first step is measuring maternal death rates, which is harder than you might think . The death needs to be directly related to the pregnancy or...
Blog Post
COVID-19 amplifies racial disparities in maternal health Advocates, lawmakers are working to make changes to curb maternal deaths (rollcall.com)
By Sandhya Raman, May 14, 2020, rollcall.com. Days before her death, Amber Isaac tweeted about her negative experiences receiving pregnancy care at her local hospital in the Bronx. Isaac, a 26-year-old black woman pregnant with her first child, raised concerns about "incompetent doctors." She worried about her low platelet count and felt her concerns were not being heard at Montefiore Medical Center, where her mother Renita Isaac has worked for 25 years, her partner Bruce McIntyre told CQ...
Blog Post
Congressional Briefing: Advancing Respectful, Accountable Maternal Care in Medicaid
Plan to attend! Webinar Registration - Zoom Sep 15, 2020 02:00 PM EST The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world and has the worst outcomes of any high-resource nation, particularly for Black and Indigenous women. Medicaid pays for nearly half of all births in the U.S. In the midst of the overlapping pandemics of systemic racism and COVID-19, there is a continued urgent need for respectful care and accountability so that everyone has access to the...
Blog Post
Feasibility and Acceptability of Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (Journal of Women's Health) in Prenatal Care
By: Tracy Flanagan , Amy Alabaster , Brigid McCaw , Nicole Stoller , Carey Watson , Kelly C Young-Wolff . doi: 10.1089/jwh.2017.6649. Epub 2018 Jan. PMID: 29350573 / PMCID: PMC6065513 / DOI: 10.1089/jwh.2017.6649 Introduction: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common among pregnant women and contribute to increased risk for negative perinatal outcomes, yet few clinicians screen prenatal patients for ACEs. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of...
Blog Post
Free 2020 Virtual Trauma-Informed Care Conference
Each year, STAR hosts a Trauma-Informed Care Conference to help educate the next generation of leaders and build a strong network of Trauma-Informed professionals in the state of Georgia. The conference will be held on Saturday, October 3rd from 10:00am- 1:00pm EST and Sunday, October 4th , 2020 from 2:00pm-5:00pm EST conducted virtually via Zoom.
Blog Post
COVID-19: Trauma-Informed Perinatal Care and Maternal Health [psychologytoday.com]
By Ann Diamond Weinstein, Psychology Today, September 28, 2020 The experience of life during the pandemic and the impact of COVID-19 guidelines for perinatal care have changed the maternal-fetal experience of pregnancy and birth, as well as the maternal-infant experience during the postnatal period. The neuroception (1) of danger and the potential threat to one’s own life and that of loved ones has been sustained since the magnitude and lethalness of the pandemic was fully appreciated.
Blog Post
In Her Words: Managing Mental Health [nytimes.com]
By Corinne Purtill, The New York Times, October 10, 2020 Over the course of her pregnancy, a woman receiving medical care in the United States can expect to be stuck with needles and prodded with ultrasound wands, to be asked to pee in countless cups and to gamely submit to any testing, measuring, monitoring or poking that might yield data on her body or the fetus. When it comes to mental health, however, the medical care juggernaut comes to a screeching halt. In the United States, many...
Blog Post
New Resource: Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic One-Pager (English & Spanish!)
English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance have co-created a newly developed resource, “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe...
Blog Post
Maternal Mental Health
Like many of you, I’m a bit out of sorts and somewhat disoriented right now. Our collective mental health is deteriorating during Covid-19. Recent stats report an increase from 20-40% of adults struggling with mental illness since the advent of the pandemic. Maternal mental health is particularly at risk. Helping children with distance learning, navigating exposure to the news, trying to keep life a bit “normal”, keeping family members fed and supplied, juggling career and income loss, all...
Blog Post
SAVE THE DATE - DECEMBER 2020 WEBINAR: "Supporting Patients in Pregnancy: ACEs and Maternal Health" [acesaware.org]
"Supporting Patients in Pregnancy: ACEs and Maternal Health" 1.0 Continuing Medical Education/Maintenance of Certification Credit Available* Wednesday, December 2, 2020 Noon – 1 p.m. Register for the Webinar This webinar will provide information for women’s health providers about the importance of ACE screening in improving maternal and child health. Speakers will share resources for providers looking to introduce ACE screening in their practice, examples of how to create a healing...
Blog Post
New nonprofit breast milk bank launches in San Diego (sandiegouniontribune.com)
San Diego — Every year, about 260 of the tiniest premature babies in California hospitals develop an often-fatal bowel disease known as necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC. Nobody knows what causes NEC, but a common factor in many cases is the use of formula to feed these very low-birth-weight babies because the mother’s breast milk is not available. Replacing that formula with pasteurized breast milk in every California hospital newborn intensive care unit could be a positive step in reducing...
Blog Post
New nonprofit breast milk bank launches in San Diego (sandiegouniontribune.com)
San Diego — Every year, about 260 of the tiniest premature babies in California hospitals develop an often-fatal bowel disease known as necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC. Nobody knows what causes NEC, but a common factor in many cases is the use of formula to feed these very low-birth-weight babies because the mother’s breast milk is not available. Replacing that formula with pasteurized breast milk in every California hospital newborn intensive care unit could be a positive step in reducing...
Blog Post
How Docent Health Navigates Maternity Patients to Better Outcomes [chcf.org]
By Padma Nagappan, California Health Care Foundation, January 19, 2021 Lupita was six months pregnant with triplets when her water broke. The quiet 36-year-old farmworker suddenly had to leave her four children and enter Bakersfield Memorial Hospital for three months so doctors could watch over her during an unpredictable third trimester. She had recently separated from her husband, so her 17-year-old was tasked with taking care of his younger siblings until she returned from the hospital.
Blog Post
Prematurity: Transdisciplinary Approach to Understanding Early Trauma in Babies
Nearly one in 10 people born in the United States is premature (birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy), and its complications are the number one cause of death in babies. Those who survive premature birth often have long-term health issues. Surprisingly, the United States has one of the worst premature birth rates among high-resource nations (Source: March of Dimes ). Research has also shown that the countries with the highest prematurity rates also have high rates of depression and alcoholism...
Blog Post
My ACEs Affected My Birth
High blood pressure. In your third trimester of pregnancy, you do not want to hear these three words, especially if you are planning to have a home birth. My blood pressure nearly caused me to have an induction for my first birth and transfer to a hospital birth for my second birth. I wish I had known of the ACEs test so I wouldn't have felt so lost and guilty. For my first birth I was clueless. I did not understand why this was happening to me because I ate a healthy diet, went to boxing...
Blog Post
Depression, anxiety 'extremely high' among new mothers since start of social distancing [healio.com]
By Joe Gramigna, Healio News, February 19, 2021 Prevalence rates of clinically relevant depression and anxiety have been “extremely high” among postnatal women during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to study results published in Journal of Psychiatric Research. “There had been no data published examining mental health in new mothers during COVID-19 at the time of study,” Victoria Fallon, FHEA, CPsychol , of the department of psychology at the University of Liverpool in the UK, told Healio...
Blog Post
A Better Normal Friday, March 26, 2021: PACEs and HOPE with Dr. Christina Bethell
Please join us for our next installment of A Better Normal, our live webinar series in which we imagine and create our society as trauma-informed! You may have seen we changed our name recently from ACEs Connection to PACEs Connection. Please join us to learn all about the groundbreaking research of Positive Childhood Experiences and how this is going to transform the work we are all doing. >>Click here to register<< PACEs and HOPE Live Event Friday, March 26, 2021 Noon PT / 1pm...