Category Archives: Child abuse

Oregon psychiatrist testifies before Senate Finance Committee on the impact of childhood adversity and toxic stress on adult health

May 11, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Community prevention programs, Legislation, Solutions 3 Comments

ABenningtonDavis

Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee  in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to  the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to have experienced high levels of childhood adversity. She told the senators that the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study), first published in 1998 by Drs. Vincent Felliti and Robert Anda, found exactly this correlation.

At the April 28 hearing titled “Mental Health in America: Where are we now?,”* Bennington-Davis addressed the need to look to people’s experiences in childhoods to improve health, knowing that mental illness and substance use disorders, along with other

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When teen dating violence goes online

May 4, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs Tags: , 5 Comments

Athatsnot

By Jennifer White, Senior Attorney for Legal Programs, Futures Without Violence

This year, a film named Audrie and Daisy was part of the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and will be available on Netflix later this year. The film tells the stories of two high school girls in different parts of the country whose kinship is the result of a common tragedy: both girls were sexually assaulted by boys they thought were friends.

Both girls were tortured by their communities and schools, particularly over social media. Both girls tried to take their own lives. The film highlights our failures as a nation to protect our young people, it illustrates a fundamental misapprehension about gender-based violence, it demonstrates our inclination to blame victims rather than believe them, and it vividly depicts the power and pervasiveness of social media as a weapon.

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Cherokee Point Elementary School youth leaders learn about Child Abuse Prevention month

March 27, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education 2 Comments
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Jennifer Hossler and the youth leaders of Cherokee Point Elementary School in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, CA.

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Some days at work are better than others. A recent visit to Cherokee Point Elementary School in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, CA, was one of the best days I’ve had in awhile!  I had the chance to speak to a small group of youth leaders from the third, fourth and fifth grades. As a representative of the Chadwick Center for Children & Families, I came to talk with them about Child Abuse Prevention (CAP) month, which is coming up in April.  We are collaborating with Cherokee Point in an effort to bring awareness to the community about CAP month, resilience, and protective factors.

Admittedly, I was nervous!  Talking to kids about child abuse is hard, and to be honest, can be a little

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Johnna Janis makes documentary “Invisible Scars” to heal her and others’ childhood trauma

March 26, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Solutions 8 Comments

Invisible Scars“It’s about so much more than childhood sexual abuse,” says Johnna Janis about her feature documentary, Invisible Scars, a remarkable film about her own sexual abuse and her journey of recovery.

Janis produced and directed the film with long-time friend, Sergio Myers, an award-winning filmmaker and owner of 7Ponies Productions. Together, they took on topics many would consider too triggering or taboo to address and did so without sensationalizing sexual abuse or trivializing trauma. The result is a personal, powerful and informative movie.

Invisible Scars, which has been a six-year labor of love, will have a red-carpet premiere March 29 at the Harmony Gold Theater in Los Angeles, CA. It received an Award of Merit at IndieFest 2015.

What started in 2010 as a “small little project” about one woman’s healing journey “expanded” when Janis learned about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study).

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No risk in trying new approaches to find children most in danger

February 18, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Solutions 1 Comment

ACW

By Marie Cohen at Chronicleofsocialchange.org

In my last column, I discussed the new approaches to identify and target high-risk families for special attention in child welfare. Los Angeles and Allegheny County, PA, as well as New Zealand are working on risk assessment algorithms. Rapid Safety Feedback (RSF), which has been implemented in Florida and is being adapted to other states, targets for special attention families with characteristics associated with high risk to children.

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Miracle at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution Forest

February 4, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Solutions, Trauma 12 Comments
By
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Cindy Sanford

Juan (name changed), convicted of aggravated assault at 21, has been in solitary for five years. He has seen and experienced it all: brutal cell extractions, hunger strikes, flooded pods and endless hours spent screaming at his cell door.

By the time I met him, he’d racked up over 80 misconducts in numerous prisons and earned the enmity of most of the officers forced to deal with him. Hardly your model inmate.

Yet from our very first visit, I was struck by the humility and sadness in his eyes. Somehow, despite his “bad-boy” reputation, I sensed there was more to him, something worth saving.

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8 things judges need to know about teen dating violence

February 2, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Trauma Tags: 4 Comments

Ateendating

By the Hon. Marshall Murray
Judge of the Circuit Court of Milwaukee
Member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

One of the most important duties for any court system is to ensure that youth in the community are protected. As the former Presiding Judge of the Milwaukee Children’s Court and Presiding Judge of the Milwaukee County Domestic Violence Courts, I have seen many young people who were survivors of teen dating violence. They included children who were both male and female, heterosexual and LGBTQ, and from every ethnic background imaginable. It was, and is, very sad to me that while these children are supposed to be focusing on the challenge of adolescence, they were instead grappling

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Momentum grows for trauma-informed movement in Tennessee

January 14, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment

Atennessee

A little less than two years ago, a group of ACEs activists from Memphis came to a meeting of the Philadelphia ACEs Task Force and made a site visit to the 11th Street Family Health Services for “information and enlightenment,” according to Chris Peck, a member of the six-person delegation. Since then, these and other leaders in Tennessee are poised to take what they have started in Memphis statewide, demonstrating that ACEs research has the power to galvanize communities and even whole states to make fundamental changes to benefit children, adults, and families.

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Report: Juvenile Justice System must substantively revamp treatment of girls

October 9, 2015 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Education 4 Comments

By Sarah Barr, JJIE.orgGenderInjustice_infographic_web_midquality

Juvenile justice reformers risk leaving girls behind if they fail to consider how traumatic experiences push girls into the system, says a new report.

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California high school health clinic asks students about their childhood trauma as a way to improve their health

October 6, 2015 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Community prevention programs, Solutions, Trauma 8 Comments
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Elsie Allen High School student Anabel (l), and Erin Moilanen, school health clinic nurse practitioner (r) __________________________________

When students show up for an appointment at the Elsie Allen Health Center, which is located on the Elsie Allen High School campus in Santa Rosa, CA, one of the first things they do is answer questions about the trauma they’ve experienced during their lives.

That’s because research has shown a direct link between adverse childhood experiences — ACEs – and the adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) — which has been replicated by 29 states — also show that ACEs create mental and physical health risks that continue to crop up over a person’s lifetime if not adequately addressed.

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