Yesterday while I was on the road I made good use of my time (and played with my new Bluetooth earpiece) and returned several phone calls. One call was to one of the most awesome moms I have met in this gig … the mom I wrote about in this post. In a nutshell, her son has serious attachment and trauma issues as a result of repeated medical procedures. He’s not yet three years old, but he’s quite angry. He sees his mother as both the... more

Part One Part Two Part Three

Concluding this series on how better services would be provided to our children if the juvenile justice systems and child welfare systems worked together, the final point is:

Attorneys... more

Part One Part Two

Continuing with the series addressing the difficulties in establishing collaboration between child welfare systems and juvenile justice systems, the second point addressed by the author of this article states:

Youth... more

In the previous post, I addressed the difficulty state and federal governments have in getting the juvenile justice systems and the child welfare systems to play well together and make what is in the best interest of the child their first (collective) priority. Continuing my discussion of the article written by a Children’s... more

There are some final thoughts I would like to share from the article entitled: The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead.

The authors of the ACE Study have come to completely embrace the concept that negative early childhood experiences have a profound impact upon one’s adult life—both physically and emotionally. Furthermore, the authors point out how rarely the medical/professional... more

Continuing with my discussion about the ACE Study… it is interesting to note what the authors of the study consider to be their two most significant findings: that adverse childhood experiences are “far more common that recognized or acknowledged”, and that such negative early childhood experiences “have a powerful relation to adult health a half-century later.”

If you read the breakdown of the categories studied,... more

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study is an ongoing evaluation of the effects of less-than-optimal childhoods on adult mental and physical health. I am fascinated by this study, for it is proving to be a good indicator of the price our society pays for not addressing the needs of our children when they are still children! How many of us have lobbied and begged and pleaded and cajoled and threatened and sued our schools and mental health professionals in an attempt to get them to sit up and... more

I receive a steady stream of electronic newsletters. There’s the Children’s Bureau Express and the publication that originates from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute. The Child Information Gateway has an e-newsletter. And here’s one called the NRCFCPPP (National Resource Center... more