Healing Horizons: Weekly News & Research - May 9, 2024

Healing Horizons
Written By Alison Cebulla

The latest news in trauma-informed care, positive and adverse childhood experiences, and psychological safety hosted by Bri Twombly and Alison Cebulla.

Here are the news stories and research we featured:

  • Push for better trauma-informed care of victim-survivors of sexual assault

  • Bexar County’s Reflejo Court Leads nation with Trauma-Informed Certification for Domestic Violence Cases

  • Mental health liaison program in Tennessee schools making impact after expansion

  • ACEs Informed Courts in North Carolina

  • New Community Healing Center In Rockford Aims To Curb Violence Through Mental Health Support

  • CSUF Prioritizes Intervention and Support With Holistic Safety Plan

  • IKEA: Trauma-informed design

  • Applying trauma-informed supervision in the library

    • https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2024/05/01/culture-of-care/

    • According to the 2022 Urban Library Trauma Study from Urban Librarians Unite, nearly 70% of respondents shared that they had experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons, while 22% indicated that they experienced similar behavior from coworkers. Library directors and managers can better support staffers by practicing trauma-informed supervision. This is when leaders nurture a healthy workplace culture and connect staffers with needed support and resources after a distressing incident with patrons or coworkers. This type of supervision is a significant protective factor in preventing an upsetting interaction from turning into a traumatic event.

  • Regional Nonprofit Hiring Social Workers for $770,000 Initiative to Bring Trauma-Informed Training, Counseling to Prince George’s County Public Schools 

  • Investment by maternal grandmother buffers children against the impacts of adverse early life experiences

    • https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-56760-5

    • Investment by MGMs protected their grandchild from the negative influence of experiencing multiple AELEs in their early life. No such effect was found for other grandparent types. Although the investment by MGMs was able to cut the negative effect of AELEs on children’s emotional and behavioral problems by more than half, not even the highest level of investment from MGMs seen in these data was able to fully safeguard grandchildren from the negative effects of AELEs.

  • Facilitating trauma-informed SEL with refugee youth in Uganda via an international research-practice partnership: Lessons learned from The Wellbeing Club

    • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773233924000159

    • Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice and Policy (June 2024). A research-practice partnership (RPP) between the University of California San Diego and the non-governmental organization (NGO), Africa Education and Leadership Initiative. The Wellbeing Club, an SEL curriculum that was originally designed in the United States for girls who were struggling with mental health and family stressors

  • Prevalence of Positive Childhood Experiences Among Adults — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Four States, 2015–2021

    • https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/pdfs/mm7317a3-H.pdf

    • Positive childhood experiences (PCEs), children’s experiences of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments, promote healthy child development and adult mental and relational health and buffer against negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences.

  • Childhood trauma and relationship satisfaction among parents: A dyadic perspective on the role of mindfulness and experiential avoidance

    • https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-023-02262-w

    • Researchers stated, We wanted to further our understanding of how childhood trauma not only affects individuals directly but also how it reverberates across generations, influencing family dynamics and shaping relational patterns. Hopefully, our work will shed light on key mechanisms that might down the line to help survivors heal from adverse interpersonal experiences they had in their childhood and prevent further impacts on their couple, parenting, and offspring.”

  • Prospective and Retrospective Measures of Child Maltreatment and Their Association With Psychopathology: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

  • Childhood maltreatment, shame, and self-esteem: an exploratory analysis of influencing factors on criminal behavior in juvenile female offenders

  • Reliability and validity of the short version of the childhood abuse self report scale in Chinese college students

    • https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-024-01734-5

    • The reliability and validity of the current scale for measuring childhood abuse in China are worrying. The development of the Short Version of the Childhood Abuse Self Report Scale (CASRS-12) helps to change this situation, but the effectiveness of the tool has not yet been tested in Chinese participants. This study aims to test the reliability and validity of the CASRS‑12 in Chinese college students.

  • Deloitte’s 2024 Women@Work Report

    • https://www.deloitte.com/content/dam/assets-shared/docs/collections/2024/deloitte-women-at-work-2024-a-global-outlook.pdf?

    • Gathered feedback from approximately 5,000 women across 10 countries. Two-thirds of women feel uncomfortable discussing mental health at work or disclosing it as the reason for time off. Many women surveyed express concerns about discrimination or layoffs, with one in 10 reporting negative experiences discussing mental health at work. This year’s results show a link between working hours and mental health: While half of women who typically just work their contracted hours describe their mental health as good, this declines to 23% for those who regularly work extra hours.

Transcript:

Alison Cebulla 0:03

Hi, everyone. Welcome to healing horizons where each week we share the latest news and research and trauma informed care, positive and adverse childhood experiences and psychological safety. I'm Alison Cebulla.

Bri Twombly 0:15

And hi everyone. I'm Bri Twombly. I'm in 10. Collective, we are really trying to just help to create a world where we genuinely care for one another. We want you to consider hiring tend to help implement trauma informed care and psychological safety based programs as well as policies to help you to be able to better care from your for better care for your employees. And in turn for the children, families and adults that you're partnering with and serving. You can find more out about us on our LinkedIn page, or going to 10 dot 10 to dash collective. And Ellison is it.com are we.com.com. I was like second guessing myself. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:02

Classic.

Bri Twombly 1:04

Too many endings. Now.

Alison Cebulla 1:06

I know. I know. I'm great. So let's get into the news. Today is Thursday, May 9 2024. And as always content advisory we will be talking about trauma, which sometimes includes violence. Although I must say we do have some very interesting, we have some violence, we do have some violence for you all today, unfortunately, because that's what causes trauma. But we have some really interesting interesting ones today, too. I want to say fun, that's not a word you normally use with trauma, but you know, there's a couple that are so stay tuned. So there's nice

Bri Twombly 1:46

innovative things happening innovative.

Alison Cebulla 1:53

Um, so, um, push for better trauma informed care of victim survivors of sexual assault. So this one, this is a piece from Australia. And we'd love to see what's going on and other other countries. So inadequate care for sexual assault survivors can be re traumatizing. And so this was one in which a young woman shares her story of, of sexual assault, which is very unfortunate, and how the process of getting treatment was somewhat re re traumatizing, just not enough care, the softness of the characters wasn't, wasn't there. So she is working to to create better trauma informed processes to help survivors of sexual assault. And so she has. Yeah, so this one was interesting, because they did mention that trauma informed can be just a buzzword. It's the de McLeod, the founder and director of Goldcoast center against sexual violence, said a lot of services say they're trauma informed, and they're not. So we talk about that a lot. This is a term that comes with some cache and some funding these days. So a lot of organizations are using it. But you know, what does it really mean? They noted that there's no regulation around whether a company organization is properly trained, or actively teaching trauma informed care principles. So there are currently multiple government backed initiatives working to develop a consistent trauma informed strategy for first responders. And so we really feel that when they do that, they should make sure that survivors voices are being centered. And we will, we will be watching this because we really need something like this in the States. And it's something that I have talked to my former boss from paces connection, Jane Stevens, who's the founder of pieces connection, one of the original trauma informed care, like big groups in the US about how a certification is just, it's just needed. Now, we need now that more people have caught on to what trauma informed care is there needs to be some sort of regulatory agency to to say, Yeah, this is trauma informed, this isn't. So it's great that they're having these conversations. And of course, it's always tough in these types of contexts where you're talking about violent assault, but um, it that's a good conversation to have.

Bri Twombly 4:42

Yeah, I think helping people to shift that it's not like one three hour training, and then you're trauma informed, like being trauma informed is like, really a mind shift. You're changing attitudes and beliefs that you have. You're changing policies, you're changing the way that programming is happening the way that you're interacting with employees. Is and families. It's not just a quick three hour we checked the box type of thing. It's a ongoing commitment. And that seems to be missing a lot from people's understanding of what being trauma informed means.

Alison Cebulla 5:13

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I'm just I mean, I'm just what I'm thinking of is like you take a training, so you understand the brain science of trauma at the bare minimum. And that is going to impact you know, the ways that you could potentially interact with people in your care. But if the, if the policies aren't, haven't changed, and the structures haven't changed, there's only so much that one individual can do. Yeah, absolutely. So okay, um, Bexar County's reflejo core leads nation with trauma informed certification for domestic violence cases. Okay, another certification piece of news. So in a notable advancement of criminal justice reform, Bexar County's roughly half court has been certified in trauma informed care becoming an example for courts across the nation dealing with domestic violence cases, this specialized court focuses on first time offenders working to uncover and address the root causes of their actions to prevent future violence. That sounds great. Where is San Antonio? Okay? Texas, okay, great. So, um, the initiative isn't mandatory applicants must express a desire to change on their own accord, participants must apply and plead their case to be accepted. Once those first time offenders complete the one year requirement, their case is dismissed and expanded, giving them what the judge says is a true second chance. It is a recognition that the path to a safer community often lies within the bounds of understanding and rebill habilitation. 28 people have completed and 27 people have not reoffended. That's incredible. Yeah, this is so good. And they're they're also doing something similar to this in Bakersfield, California and having really strong results. I think when it comes to domestic violence, the evidence shows that trauma informed programming in which you help the perpetrators of violence, understand their own trauma, these programs work, they prevent violence in the future. So love to see this one. And to hear that it's having. That's really those 27 out of 20. Yeah.

Bri Twombly 7:44

Yeah, huge. And it's understanding like, what is at the root of that behavior? Like, why, why am I responding in this way? How come I'm using these coping skills? Like what are they getting my needs met? Understanding that what's going on in my brain was going through my body, and then Oh, this isn't actually helping me to meet my needs, what could I do instead? Be more helpful. And right, that's more mental health treatment, rather than you're going to go be in prison for a certain amount of time and not get any of that support to like, actively help you to understand what's going on, reflect in change. So, right, I really liked that one. A

Alison Cebulla 8:29

lot. Yeah, that one's great. And, as per usual, we post the list of these articles on our website. So we have blog posts for each episode. So go ahead and check that out after we're done and take a closer look. That's a really exciting I especially in Texas, no offense, Texas, but I'm surprised. Okay. Man mental health liaison program in Tennessee schools, making impact after expansion. So some Tennessee students grades and attendance have improved after receiving services through a statewide program designed to address mental health issues in schools, and additional 24,000 students have had access to the behavioral health liaisons this year, thanks to the new funding from the state behavior health liaison said the main mental health issues in schools this year have been anxiety, suicidal ideations and self harm. However, with the right treatment, many students have been discharged from the program after accomplishing their therapy goals. So, okay, so we're looking at strengthening protective factors and early intervention. So really acknowledging that and I mean, student mental health has been front and center in the news this year. I really think probably a combination of the pandemic. And then just the fact that standard of standard of living costs have increased so much and like the wealth disparity has increased so much that it's just hard for a lot of families to even get by that has such a huge impact on on children.

Bri Twombly 10:09

I was just thinking to last week, we talked about Milwaukee schools, right, how they reduced the the number of mental health liaisons within their district. And what's right about this expansion in Tennessee based on kind of the data that they've seen, the need that was recognized, and then just the impact that it's having, and how that's helping. And I think there can just be access barriers for families for accessing mental health. There can be stigma that's related to mental health, it's mental health awareness or acceptance month right now. We'd like for children. So just thinking about those things and how when you can integrate different services with intellect, the one hub, in this case like school that most children are accessing on a daily basis, you can remove some of that you can help to remove some of the stigma that may be associated with mental health. So

Alison Cebulla 11:08

yeah, I guess I my, my thought goes to, you know, but yeah, why are these kids having such high anxiety? Because again, like, a lot of these interventions are treatment focused. But I think we do and this it's always a tough question to answer because it's so systemic, and so large scale, but it's like, why are we creating anxious kids? We shouldn't be creating just anxious kids in our society. Like, that's to me, we're failing. Yep.

Bri Twombly 11:39

Yep. And I think a lot of the times when people talk about school, like related to trauma, there can be this kind of like misconception that like school is a safe place for kids, they don't experience trauma. And right, like when you're at school, you can experience bullying from peers. There's so much now with social media, and all of the studies on the impact that that is having for kids mental health. Last week, we also talked about the study that came out in Miami Dade specific to black girls, school, and like the sexual harassment that they were experiencing. So just thinking about all of those things that are also happening in schools that have direct impacts on the children's mental health, as well.

Alison Cebulla 12:35

Yeah, absolutely. All right.

Bri Twombly 12:40

Okay, um, so there are some aces and formed courts in North Carolina. And one of the big pieces that they are doing with these courts is trying to help people to recognize the impact early trauma can have on brain development. So there has been a it's kind of a two year effort that is working with a few of North Carolina universities to help provide instruction training to some of the district court judges, especially those who are working directly with families. One of the kinds of components of this is what is called BB court. And BB courts exist in a few other states, like Florida has them Michigan has them. There are some other states as well, that have them. But really how they are kind of operating in North Carolina, is that if there's a child, and the parents, parent or parents or meet primary caregivers, are really struggling, struggling, then they are removing the child in an attempt to prevent further trauma. They have the kind of infants or toddlers living with foster family while the parents are getting kind of needed services. And kind of the parents or caregivers again, are able to continue to have relationships have to opportunities to see their kids to stay involved in their lives. While they're doing things like parenting classes, child parent therapy, maybe their own therapy, their own kind of substance use treatment as well. And really, the goal is to be able to reunite the parents or the kind of primary caregivers with their kids. The data shows so far, that the courts are able to help kids to be able to reunite with their parents sooner, and then that the kids are less likely to be removed a second time. So we're thinking about baby courts. I like it because there's kind of that focus on that parent or caregiver or child dyad that they're trying to send or that relationship. They're trying to kind of reduce additional exposures help to strengthen some of those kind of protective factors as they're moving forward and help the healing within that dyad for them, I also think that you know, when You're removing a child from their primary caregivers, that is often a traumatic experience in and of itself, for the child. So just curious about kind of like, how they're addressing that how that's being talked about and thought about, kind of within this model, and then again, just go into that kind of concept of like prevention. So like, what are again, those systemic things, those intergenerational things that are happening, that can lead to that maltreatment, or neglect that results in kids being removed? And how are we starting as a society to address some of those things? So there are fewer children who even need to have conversations about being removed? From their

Alison Cebulla 15:42

Yeah, the really exciting news this week, to have that introduced to North Carolina. Yeah, really good.

Bri Twombly 15:50

There is a new community healing center in Rockford in Rockford, Illinois, that is aiming to curb violence through mental health support. And so it is really designed to try to prevent violence with trauma informed therapy, group counseling, and other kinds of mental health support. One of the things that is unique and cool about this is it's designed to be on the go. So it's not necessarily here's the center, this is where we are come in and see us at our center. But more thinking about what's going on in the community. Where do we need to position ourselves maybe to make the largest impact, again, to remove some of those access barriers for people thinking about people who may need support, but may feel kind of afraid or worried about reaching out for that support. They have what they call trauma outreach specialists. And they're helping to make connections with people in the community, helping to learn what resources people may need, and then helping to connect them with kind of those resources or programming that they may need. This is one of a dozen of these that are operated in the state by live free Illinois, which is a nonprofit social justice organization that's dedicated to reducing gun violence and mass incarceration. Another thing that I really liked about this one is one of the trauma outreach specialists for the center, Mr. Harrington, he's a really big kind of hip hop artist who likes to focus on using writing and self expression as a form of therapy. So right, like therapy isn't always sitting down, just talking back and forth like this expressive, moving up the body thinking different kinds of artistic ways, can be really healing. So his first initiative that he's going to do with the center is going to be to run a creative writing class that allows people to really be able to kind of express their emotions and experiences on paper, their, their thinking outside of those kind of very westernized, traditional ways of healing for people. So yeah, I just love that I love that they're trying to address those barriers that people may have to access in that they're using some of those expressive therapies. Amazing.

Alison Cebulla 18:10

We looked at a lot of the I took a trauma informed care class in grad school at Boston University. And she did a really good job of like, all the creative types of trauma healing, we looked at all of them, including hip hop, and there's so many, there's so many good ones. It's like, yeah, no, you don't have to just sit down and just talk to a therapist, you can actually, you can actually have fun. See, here's a fun one.

Bri Twombly 18:36

Yes. And I think to like gray, there's so many of those connections with the mind and the body, when we're actively moving our body when we're doing that we're helping with those connections and that healing for our brain and our body. Not just talking and trying to heal through our brain. Yeah, totally. So awesome. Um, okay, our next one is from Cal State Fullerton. And they're a police department and their Counseling and Psychological Services have come together to implement a new holistic safety plan that kind of has an aim to enhance safety for the community by prioritizing intervention and support. And they're hoping that this may become a model for the California State University system. So what they did was they created a tiered safety response system that really tries to emphasize community and to try to connect students to campus resources. So they have a mobile crisis team, and then they also have what they call Campus Safety Specialists. And so the mobile crisis team gets activated when a student calls either counseling or psychological services or the police department's 24 hour dispatch center. There's a licensed mental health professional and then a campus safety specialists who go to the call together. They're able to then kind of assess us help to connect with counseling any other kind of mental health support, kind of within a safe environment for the individual who's calling. The mobile crisis team is available Monday through Friday from 11 to 7:30pm. Which I think is a little bit of a barrier there, because it's only available at those times and you can't go a mental health crisis. So there's that piece, they do have some I'll talk about, like more 24/7 services that they have with that. So they do have other things available. But I think that time restriction is a little bit of a limitation. They also hire to mobile crisis therapists who are responsible for responding to student crisis and mental health emergencies on campus. So they'll do things like provide crisis interventions, as well as stabilization, case management, short term therapeutic interventions, and then helping to link students with on campus as well as off campus Mental Health Partners. They really want to try to divert students from being hospitalized, be able to love to hear yes, and be able to provide support to students who are discharged from the hospital coming back to campus. Trying to reduce criminalization of students in distress, again, understanding what is going on, and what is the need, and addressing that rather than punishing. And then again, just that linkage with the different resources that are available in the community. The Campus Safety Specialists are available 24/7 They have specialized training in de escalation, CPR, first aid, mental health awareness, defensive tactics, diversity, equity and inclusion practices. And they will be responding again along side a licensed mental health professional. So yeah, with this one, again, just really that like, what's going on with the person, what do they need? What do they need in this moment? And providing that support, giving them kind of what they need, rather than just saying you're doing X, Y, Z? Here's your consequence of that. Is my thinking of college aged kids. Yeah, I'm still developing.

Alison Cebulla 22:22

This sounds amazing. I'm like, Who? I want to know who created this? It sounds really good.

Bri Twombly 22:29

Yeah, so many of these I want, I just want to know all the details, all the all of them every single last one, yeah, they're so interesting that I just want to know, kind of where they came up with these things, if they're using kind of like curriculums or models or like what the interventions are. Just want to dig deeper, and just so many of them. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 22:48

for those of you listening who are not who don't create public health, or related interventions, social service interventions, typically what we do tend collective, is we'll do a literature review first when we want to design something, and you can hire us to to help you out with this. And we will look and see what are the best practices in this particular issue that we're trying to solve? And based on what exists and what frameworks exist, and what the research literature shows, and what what programs have been successful the past, then we will create a program based on all of that information. So when we see something like this, this seems really well thought out and planned. It makes us really want to nerd out on like, what what is this based on? What is the literature saying about this? And what frameworks are they using? It's just sounds so well done? Yeah. Yeah.

Bri Twombly 23:45

Yep. And then this next one that you're gonna talk about, is just an area that I want to just continue to learn more about. It's a newer thing. And yeah,

Alison Cebulla 23:54

this was the fun one. Because design can be really fun. And so this is something that we didn't know really existed or could exist, but IKEA, the furniture maker is doing trauma informed design now. So this was featured at a live oak Texas store. This past week, a couple of weeks ago, they opened an in store model of a permanent supportive housing unit, AKA a small home built with sustainable materials and using the principles of trauma informed design. And so we do recommend that you check the images out of these homes. It's like I'm like I want to live there. Um, the five principles of trauma informed design our views of nature, varied lighting strategies, residential finishes. I don't know what that means. With minimal clutter and autonomy and control. So that's interesting. There's a lot to dive into there this because this is a new a new thing for us. But so the model, which is located inside the retailers live of Texas store reflects what IKEA describes as an empathy based approach to creating spaces that consider the needs of individuals who have experienced trauma. To bring the model to life, IKEA worked with the west east Design Group, a San Antonio based architecture and interior design firm that specializes in projects addressing homeless facilities, child advocacy centers, and affordable housing communities. IKEA also collaborated with town twin village, a local organization committed to ending chronic homelessness through a combination of tiny homes, apartments and RVs love to see it. After the install phase of research is completed IKEA plans to use the findings to construct a small home built with trauma informed design principles that will be donated to a local permanent supportive housing community in San Antonio. So they'll then measure the outcomes from individuals living in the space and gather data, which will aid in advocating for a trauma informed approach. I have a lot of I have a lot of questions. So I think you know, we'll just be watching this and maybe trying to learn what we can about trauma informed design. Because those things don't just inherently speak to me, the lighting the views of nature, yes, that's, we know, you know, nature reduces stress and and when it comes to trauma, we want to try and reduce stress, the lighting strategies, that totally makes sense to me, I actually tend to be at this very moment, I'm very overwhelmed with the lighting in here. I don't like direct overhead lights, and I don't really like bright lights. And that can be the case for a lot of us. So that I totally understand. I'm curious how autonomy and control plays out? Is it just saying like people need to have their own housing space rather than to? Is that kind of what saying?

Bri Twombly 27:10

Yeah, so I think it's really thinking about like, what is like individual choice versus like, this is just how the majority of people think things should look or a majority of people feel comfortable or safe in this type of space. Because safety feels and looks different for all of us. Okay, so I think I think that's what it's thinking of. I also before I spoke about the residential finishes, I just wanted to make sure that I was like thinking about the right thing. So I did bring it up just to like check in. So it is really thinking about like, moving more towards like, resin residential, like home feeling versus like institutional space. That makes sense. So like, just when you're going into psychiatric hospitals, when you're going into dip Department of Human Services, just like the feelings that those can have in making sure that like materials that are selected for the floor, or the wall colors, those types of things are not feeling institutionalized.

Alison Cebulla 28:15

Amazing. Wow. Okay, thanks for for looking that up. That makes so much sense. People don't want to feel like they're in a psych ward. No, I don't. Yeah. So love to see trauma informed care in design. And, and so we'll be we'll be watching, you know this and I'm sure we'll see a lot more of it. So, applying trauma informed supervision in the library. So, according to the 2022 Urban library trauma study from urban librarians unite, nearly 70% of respondents shared that they had experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons, while 22% indicated that they experienced similar behavior from co workers from coworkers. No. library directors and managers can better support staffers by practicing trauma informed supervision. This is when leaders nurture a healthy workplace culture and connect staffers with needed support and resources after a distressing incident with patrons or co workers. This type of supervision is a significant protective factor in preventing an upsetting interaction from turning into a traumatic event. That's a great sentence. That's perfect. Because the right when we say trauma is not the event. It's it's how you react to the event and how you carry the stress of the event. And so this sounds this sounds great. Now, of course, we talk a lot about prevention. But to me, in this case, it's like yeah, you know what stressful things are gonna happen. You put that open sign out there to the public, and you're just, you're gonna have you're gonna have some encounter See that are going to be stressful. So what can we do when those happen to make sure they don't turn into trauma for someone? Perfect? Yeah, great. And then you you have some experience with with supervision in social work. So I don't know, if you want to speak to, you know what this looks like?

Bri Twombly 30:19

Yeah, I just think I'm either in supervision where it's like a one on one, or if there is a larger event, and there's like a larger debriefing. I think it's just helping to, like validate the experience that the person is having, the responses that they're having, because sometimes it can be like, Why, why am I responding this way, or like I shouldn't be feeling this way. And to just talk about the ways that stress the ways that trauma can impact our body, that these are very typical responses to stressful situations. And here are some things that you can maybe do, to kind of like, again, help to kind of slow down that stress response system that has been activated. So just really being able to kind of validate the person's experience and create that space where they can talk about how they're feeling about what the experience was like for them in a way that isn't judgmental, and where you provide kind of empathy for that individual. So I love that they're, they're thinking about these different strategies and ways of being within lots of different it's not this being a librarian. It's not a clinical setting, but they're thinking about how do we do this? So I really like to see that. Yeah, that's

Alison Cebulla 31:33

so great. Okay, regional nonprofit, hiring social workers for $770,000 initiative to bring trauma informed training counseling to Prince George's County Public Schools. So that's Virginia, right. Maryland, Maryland. Okay. So got it. Adoption and Family Well Being nonprofit paths for families, formerly adoptions together and family works together has been awarded $770,000 by the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission in Maryland Consortium on coordinated community supports to provide specialized evidence based counseling, and trauma informed training to staff students and families in Prince George's County High School's paths for families will provide specialized evidence based counseling to high school students currently experiencing foster care or living with a guardian or adoptive parent. monthly support sessions for caregivers will also be offered. Additionally, trauma informed care training and coaching will be facilitated with staff from all 33 high schools in Prince George's County. So the grant is timely, as there was a 2022 community schools needs assessment done, and it revealed that roughly 1/3 of students feel they can't access behavioral health services if they need assistance. Okay, so they're addressing they did a needs assessment and now they are they've they've put money there. That's perfect. Additionally, out of all youth in foster care in the state of Maryland, 43% reside in Prince George's County, okay, okay. So high need area, okay. Pastor families has been partnering with the Prince George's County Department of Social Services in Maryland to provide trauma informed training and coaching since 2020. Maryland has a really strong trauma informed training program all over the state. When I worked at pieces connection I met with people from they have a really like centralized agency. And I'm not going to be able to remember now what it was, but just offering so many trainings throughout the state, that it's actually a really good example of how to make training like sustainable long term because they really had a lot of follow up plans. The thing is, we talk about, you know, just doing like a one off training here and there. Well, what if new staff come in, we know what, blah, blah. So in Maryland, they really have partnered well with local agencies to make sure that trauma informed trainings are happening at regular intervals. So I'm not surprised to see this. They're based on what I know about what's happening in Maryland. And that's a good chunk of money that's going to that's going to do some really good things. And I will be curious to see what the data ends up saying about. Like, which outcome I wonder which outcomes they're going to be measuring and looking at. Yeah,

Bri Twombly 34:36

yeah, I'm interested in that too. And I think to your point of the like training and the way that there's like turnover, and like we did this one training, how is everyone getting that? It seems like that has been a big focus for this group as well of how are we making sure that the training components get integrated into the onboarding process? So anyone else To is hired is getting that same information. And that helps it from being. So I love that the sustainability kind of deal with that, as well. Exactly.

Alison Cebulla 35:11

Yeah. Maryland's a real leader in that area. So yeah.

Bri Twombly 35:16

Great. Okay, well, I will transition us over to some of our peer reviewed research this week and positive and adverse childhood experiences. So the first is called investment by maternal grandmother buffers children against the impacts of adverse early life experiences. And this is in the March 2024 edition of scientific reports. And in this study, they looked at English and Welsh adolescents, ages 11 to 16. They were chosen in classrooms that were randomly selected in some of the schools throughout England and Wales, and were asked to complete a questionnaire. So they had a total number either from like 817 to 1197, depending on the grandparent type that they considered. So they looked at different kinds of makeups of grandparents, and how that had an impact through the study. And then the children had to have at least one living grandparent, and could not be living full time with that grandparent, in order to kind of qualify to participate. So they use the strengths and difficulties questionnaire, which looked at the kind of self reported behaviors for the children, they used eight different events from the distal adverse life events scale. And then they used a scale to measure grandparent investment. And what they found was that investment by maternal grandmother's purchase protected their grandchildren from the negative influence of experiencing multiple kind of ACEs in their early life, they didn't find that same effect for other grandparent types,

Alison Cebulla 37:02

that is so wild, what is happening, which is

Bri Twombly 37:06

really, really interesting. And so there's this all talk about this, like evolutionary theory that is out there. That they were, they were thinking maybe that is why this is happening, and why they found this in this study. But they also found that although the maternal grandma's kind of investment, was able to kind of reduce the impact on the child's emotional and behavioral problems, not even like the highest level of investment from them, could kind of fully safeguard and protect that child from the negative impact. So they're still they're still worse on kind of behaviors or side effects from that. So the researcher actually said that This finding was expected to them which to me, I was like, what? I'm just showing that I'm not an expert in this type of research. But he said that it's in line with an evolutionary theory, that's known as the grandmother hypothesis, which states that by helping to care for children, grandmothers increase their daughter's fertility.

Alison Cebulla 38:27

Okay. Wow. So

Bri Twombly 38:30

that is kind of the theory that exists out there that they're saying, Yep. Like, our funding is in line with that. And that makes sense. So I don't know, I have so many questions about this. I feel like I could go down a rabbit hole. Learn more about this, for sure. There. They also kind of cautioned in this study that there are probably existing numerous examples of grandfathers or paternal grandmas that also are protected, providing the same care to the same protective factor that exists out here. They weren't looking at every kind of grandparent. But really, those maternal grandmas seem to be the ones with kind of that highest protective factor. And so I just think this again, is just like more research more kind of support for that kind of buffering effect that positive relationships can have. Yeah. And then they also talked about how maternal grandmas often are the ones who are helping to pass down culture for families as Oh. And so, that kind of like a sense of connection and sense of belonging, that can occur related to culture is also another protective factor. So you have that relational you have that culture little piece of kind of those two really big protective factors that are being fostered by that maternal grandma, as well. So lots of interesting things and wow,

Alison Cebulla 40:10

wow. Okay.

Bri Twombly 40:13

Until I read it.

Alison Cebulla 40:16

Yeah, I mean, it makes me think of so I host a podcast called latchkey urchins and friends. And we interviewed someone whose family came over from China, and emigrated to Hawaii. And one of her main points was that she didn't get to grow up with her grandparents. And it made me think about the United States in general of just how many families left grandparents behind, and grandparents serves such a protective role and such a supportive role that we honestly have like a whole, you know, when we're kind of like, Why, what's going on? Why are there so many mental health? You know, it when you look at that, it's very traumatic to leave your home country and leave all of your kin, behind. And that's the origin of the United States. So it is, it's a little bit heartbreaking to see research like this, because we know how many disrupted you know, family, kinship bonds there have there have been, Yep, yeah.

Bri Twombly 41:16

Yep. And I think, and kind of our western more kind of white supremacy, US culture. It's supposed to be a little bit more individualistic, like, here is your family, you're gonna figure it out and do it by yourself. And we've shifted away from kind of that community care, like feeling and model of living with extended family living with parents when we have young children. And some of those strategies that, again, like helps to reduce stress helps to increase like support and protective factors for kids.

Alison Cebulla 41:57

Really, and we have our event event next week, one week from today with Dr. darshana Riaz, about restoring the kinship worldview, using precepts from indigenous peoples all over the world. So we hope you will join us for that you can find that event on our website and on our LinkedIn. So join us so excited for me to meet.

Bri Twombly 42:21

Our next one is facilitating trauma informed social emotional learning with refugee youth in Uganda, the UN International research practice partnership, and it's called Lessons Learned from the well being club. And so this is a partnership between the University of California, San Diego and the non governmental organization, as well as Africa Education and Leadership Initiative. And so the well being Club was a social emotional learning curriculum that was originally designed in the US, for girls who were having challenges with mental health, as well as like family stressors. So they took what they had from the curriculum, they adapted it on to Ugandan refugee context. It is a 40 hour after school curriculum that's informed by trauma informed care, social emotional learning, and youth development theory. And they really try to focus on social emotional learning skills within a trauma informed space. So they talk a lot about kind of creating a sense of belonging among peers within their local communities. Because feelings of connectedness are a really strong component of positive youth development among refugee and immigrant youth, and like we just kind of talked about is just another one of those protective kind of positive childhood experiences that you can have. So they do a lot of norm setting at the beginning, a lot of intentional kind of community building. They talk then with the youth around kind of exploring their own well being. What different dimensions do they have what is in their control what is out of their control. They use things like talking circles, art. They do topics like identity, self image, emotional awareness, regulation, these a lot of mindfulness within their sessions. And then they kind of end there's kind of a 40 hour kind of cohort, what they call a community activism project, where they kind of move from their own well being towards kind of again, recognizing like systems and structures that impact their community, and then kind of working together to make a positive change. So a little bit, it reminds me a little bit of like healing center of engagement with Dr. Sean Jin right. And this is the experience that I had and like this is why these things happen. So what are those structures and how can I advocate and create some change? within those areas to kind of promote some of that healing, they did talk about how they tried to be intentional about modifying curriculum to the cultural context. So one of the examples is they use a well being model. And that was labeled the self at the middle, which again, thinking about white supremacy culture, like right when it was for us girls, the cells at the middle, right. But culturally, that didn't fit on, because it's more framed around family in the community. So they kind of changed it to allow people to kind of self write what they wanted in their if they want it to be self, family or community. So yeah, just a lot of kind of voice in there. So I think from thinking about this one, I liked that they had an intentional lens, to try to kind of adapt it for the cultural context, on a little more successful, to have included the voices of those individuals, kind of from the beginning, when they were thinking about this curriculum, and like, what does it look like? With that? So I know, they kind of talked about that as like a lesson learned to in their research. But I, I liked this one, and just that focus on that, like, it was developed for this type of culture, that doesn't mean that we can just bring it over and duplicate it with another culture, which often that is missing, completely eating. So I liked that there was some intention behind not trying to do that. Great, great. Um, there was first thing about positive childhood experiences. There are some additional research that just came out on May 2, this is in the morbidity, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is just not a happy meme.

Alison Cebulla 47:03

To well, and I always, but I always think of the fact that when those of us, like go into public health, or we say like, we're just studying how people die, essentially, yeah. And it's yeah. Is it as depressing as it sounds? Yeah. Yeah. So all right, let's do it. Okay. So,

Bri Twombly 47:28

in this, they were looking at positive childhood experiences. So those things again, like safe, equitable, nurturing relationships and environments, healthy child development, kind of those types of things. And so they collected data in Kansas, Montana, Wisconsin, and South Carolina. And overall, 53.1% of respondents reported six to seven positive childhood experiences. 34.7, reported three to five and 12.2, reported zero to two. And low positive childhood experience scores was higher among women than among men. And then, the, they also found that the proportion of respondents with high PCE scores vary by race and ethnicity, age, employment status, and sexual orientation. So you can kind of see the break downs in those if you take a look, they have some nice graphs and stuff within the article. But really thinking about like, that's important when we're thinking about how is this data being used to inform public policies, when we're thinking about health disparities? One of the like, big things that they found was that there were fewer racial, ethnic and sexual minority adults that felt a sense of belonging in high school. So one of the things to think about is how can we support promoting a sense of belonging for all high school students? And we've talked about at the beginning of this, some of the reasons why there isn't a sense of belonging, why they experience trauma in school, so kind of thinking about those. So yeah, just highlighting again, how systemic inequities can create some barriers to accessing protective factors for people and just how are we using this data now to help to inform policies and programming to create more supports for children? Yep. Great.

Alison Cebulla 49:34

Okay, this was published December 2023, mindfulness. And this really feels like it ties into everything. We've been talking about childhood trauma and relationship satisfaction among parents a dyadic perspective on the role of mindfulness and experiential avoidance. So, researcher stated we wanted to further our understanding of how childhood trauma not only affects individuals directly, but also how it reverberates across generations influencing family dynamics and shaping relational patterns. So hopefully our work will shed light on key mechanisms that might down the line help survivors heal from adverse interpersonal experiences that they had in their childhood, and prevent further impacts on their couple parenting and offspring love to see that move away from just individual. Yeah. How does this impact relationships? So they were looking at 529 Heterosexual Canadian couples, with an eye toward the link between childhood trauma, mindfulness, experiential avoidance, and relationship satisfaction, sorry, a little jargony. Today on that one, but so higher mindfulness levels and couples correlate with increased relationship satisfaction, and emotional openness. By leaning into emotions and practicing mindful awareness. Couples can build resilience and nurture intimacy crafting the foundation for a happier and healthier family life. Okay, yeah, so this is great, because it's weird, right? We don't talk about we don't really talk about relationships, which is kind of weird relationships between parents and maybe other relationships as well, when we're talking about childhood trauma. We kind of are but like, but kind of indirectly, right? Yeah. Because trauma is relational trauma. And, you know, when we look at the things that cause, you know, long, long lasting trauma for a child, we're looking at the ways in which that relational Bond was disrupted, the child may have experienced something really hard. And whereas normally, they would go to one of their caretakers or primary caretakers for comfort and reassurance and someone to really hold space for that thing that happened that was really difficult. It ends up being ruptured or missing, causing a long term wounds that we're calling you know, trauma that shows up in our that, you know, you grew up with that. And that shows that shows up in how you can relate to other people, including the quality of your intimate partner relationships and friendships and community relationships. So really cool to look at it and really kind of label these things directly. Okay, prospective and retrospective measures of child maltreatment and their association with psychopathology, a systemic review and meta analysis. So JM ma psychiatry may 2024. And the question was do prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment, show different associations with psychopathology, which essentially means mental illness diagnose mental illness. So, the they searched and reviewed peer reviewed studies published by so Okay, so before January 1 2023. And so in this systematic review and meta analysis of 24 studies, which included 15,485 individuals, it's a good dataset. Psychological psychopathology was more strongly associated with retrospective than prospective measures of childhood maltreatment, the associations between retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment and psychopathology were stronger when the assessment of psychopathology was based on self reports, and was focused on internalizing emotional disorders. So that's a little tough to understand, even for me. But let's see if we can get down to what they're saying. psychopathology is more strongly associated with retrospective measures which capture the first person subjective appraisals of childhood events reflected in memory recall, compared to prospective measures, which essentially capture third person accounts of these events. So maltreatment related psycho pathology may be driven by subjective interpretations of experiences, distressing memories and associated schemas, which could be targeted by cognitive interventions, you know, so kind of what they're saying is like, if you're remembering the event, looking back, it has the potential to

so they're saying, associated with psychopathology to be more associated with mental illness, is that kind of what they're saying?

Bri Twombly 54:44

Yeah, so I think as you're as you're looking back, and you're kind of like recalling things, yeah. There. You can be influenced by like other people's experience. into a bias can start coming in. There's lots of other kind of like cognitive and like memory things that can be happening that can make it so there's more of an impact on kind of your overall well being which can impact your kind of state of your mental health.

Alison Cebulla 55:17

That's so that's such a good discussion to be having. I just watched last week a talk by Scottish man, I had forwarded you that that talk, and I posted it to my LinkedIn, it was so good. So this was a man and I don't have his name up in front of me. But he wrote a book that was the best selling book in the UK about his experiences growing up with trauma, with a lot of trauma. And he became really famous for this. But in this talk, he was being critical of his own work and saying, now that I dumped all my trauma out. Now I'm like, was it all true? And it's not that he said he wasn't implying that he was lying about it. But our interpretations of things change, and memory is not this thing that's infallible. So it was a really, really cool discussion that he brought up with a lot of humility about when we're sharing our trauma stories. How can we do it in a way that admits and accepts that? Our interpretation isn't necessarily the facts.

Bri Twombly 56:27

Yeah, and I think that's, that's something even when we think about just like the definition of trauma, and like, right, like, you and I could experience the same event. And because of our experiences that we've had our personal histories, our different identity markers, we could tell the story in a completely different way of that experience. We could have different feelings about it, we could have different reactions, and responses to it. There's just so many different things that impact in influence the way that we remember and recall things. Yep, yep. And then as we talk to other people about their experiences with that event, how does that then start to shift and change how we're remembering and recalling things? Exactly.

Alison Cebulla 57:16

Yeah. And the more times you tell it, then the story? Yeah. So what a cool what a cool study. Wow, so many good ones today. We end and end with a pretty packed, packed agenda. So thanks for sticking with us here. We have a few more. So childhood maltreatment, shame and self esteem and exploratory analysis of influencing factors on criminal behavior in juvenile female offenders. Okay, so in BMC psychology This was published in May 2020. For this study aimed to investigate the relationships between childhood maltreatment, shame and self esteem among juvenile female offenders and to explore the potential influencing factors on their criminal behavior. So they looked at 12 127 juvenile female offenders from 11 provinces in China, okay, I'm using the childhood trauma questionnaire, the self esteem scale, and a self developed shame questionnaire. So the study demonstrates that childhood maltreatment is a significant predictor Surprise, surprise, of criminal behavior among juvenile female offenders. childhood maltreatment can directly influence self esteem, which can affect juvenile female offenders. There so with through shame, okay, so the results emphasize the necessity of early identification and intervention for abused children, the importance of incorporating shame reduction and self esteem building strategies into treatment programs and the need for comprehensive treatment approaches. So okay, so that one is it. You know, it's always good to have data saying yes, childhood maltreatment, childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences, it does cause the perpetuation of violence. So, you know, when we're looking at jail and prison populations, even with young people, we need our the conversation needs to shift what happened to these people to cause them to offend? So important study to say, Yeah, this is what's going on. There's childhood maltreatment behind this, this violence in this population. So good to have that data. Yeah.

Bri Twombly 59:34

The next is about the reliability and valid validity of the short version of the childhood abuse, self report scale and Chinese college students. So they were really talking about how there wasn't a lot of reliability or validity have different scales that they were using, um, specific to Chinese youth so they really kind I've looked at how childhood abuse is closely associated with depression, self esteem and well being and use those skills to help to see if they could create validity for the tool within Chinese students. So 932 college students were kind of asked to participate in take these skills. And what they found out was that the tool did kind of meet the criteria for reliability and validity within the Chinese college student population. So I loved that, again, we're looking at culturally validated and reliable not just on the original population, it was kind of tested on but with others as well. Okay, so moving us into psychological safety. So, Deloitte 2020 for Women at Work report recently came out. And that really takes a look at critical workplace and societal factors impacting women's careers. So they gathered feedback from around 5000 women across 10 different countries, talked about how two thirds of women feel uncomfortable discussing mental health at work or disclosing it as the reason for time off. They women express concerns about discrimination or layoffs, with one in 10, reporting negative experiences discussing mental health at work. More than a quarter of women say they've experienced challenges related to menstruation, menopause, or fertility, at work, and they feel uncomfortable, being able to kind of discuss those with their managers, and feel that their career has been negative, negatively affected by discussing those in the past at work. Talked about how women who live with a partner still bear the most responsibility for childcare, as well as care of other adults. So just the impact of kind of those responsibilities on their mental health. I just think about emotional labor that people are experiencing and how that's impacting them. And to intend women believe that the lack of affordable childcare might force them to give up their jobs or might slow down their careers. Flexibility and work life balance they've gotten women feel like they can't talk about that. And that that could again, in fact, impact their promotion kind of prospects. Women are also continuing to feel unsafe, there's a lot of non inclusive behaviors that are kind of continuing to occur in there. So really, what they talked a lot about in the article was the importance of leaders creating cultures that are grounded in psychological safety. So women and all employees are not feeling penalized for requesting for participating and flexible work arrangements. And it talked about

Alison Cebulla 1:03:00

oh, okay, we lost three. So maybe she'll, she'll hop back on. So let's see if I can if I can continue on that one.

Let's see we'll move on to actually, we will say we have a couple more. We will save those for next week. And so we'll just go ahead and wrap it up now. So thank you so much. We had a ton of information to share and, and a lot of interesting stuff this week and we will be back next week. So we will see you then

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Alison Cebulla
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