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Module 6 Resources: Youth and Family Perspectives on Trauma-Informed Care

Websites and Online Materials

  1. A year to Find Out: Can Living Alone Help Health Trauma? ACEsConnection.com – Shenandoah Chefalo shares the benefits she experienced from living alone after aging out of the foster system. To access this resource copy and paste the following link into your browser: http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/a-year-to-find-out-can-living-alone-help-heal-trauma
  2. ACEs articles by category Oct 18, 2016 – Wisconsin Dept of Health Services, ACEsConnection.com – Scott Web, from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, has provided a comprehensive list of articles about ACEs covering Adversity Impact; Brain and Biology; Bullying; Courts, Juvenile Justice, Corrections, and Probation; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; Resilience; Schools; Substance Use Disorder; and Trauma-Informed Care. To access this resource copy and paste the following link into your browser http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/a-month-of-aces-articles-by-category-wisconsin-dept-of-health-services
  3. Breathing Exercises for Kids. In this YouTube video, Leah Kalish, demonstrates 4 breathing exercise to help kids get centered, relaxed, and ground. For more information and videos visit http://Move-with-me.com.
  4. Champions, cheerleaders, grandbuddies and mentors – oh my! How they can change a child’s life. ACEs Connection member Linda Ranson Jacobs describes how involved, caring adults can help children heal and thrive.
  5. Chicago Teens and Combat Veterans Join Forces to Process Trauma. For children in some Chicago neighborhoods, walking up and down the same street where there was a beating or a shooting or a body is just part of life — one that isn't always talked about. That's something the Urban Warriors program is trying to change. The YMCA of Metro Chicago project connects these children, who live in high-violence neighborhoods, with veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and who might understand what they're going through.
  6. Children of Violence. The psychological toll of violence is an issue confronting young people across the city of Baltimore, and it demands a citywide response.
  7. Coming Out as a Survivor of Adverse Childhood Experiences. Christine Cissy White discusses the need to speak up about being an ACEs survivor.
  8. Explaining the Brain to Children and Adolescents – Allison Sampson Jackson draws on Siegel, Hawn Foundation, Ledoux and many others who have helped to understand the importance of knowing and sharing with others the ways in which the “upstairs” and “downstairs” brain impact our abilities to learn and change behavior. This video combines the learning from these 3 sources to demonstrate in “layman’s” terms how to help ourselves, teens, and young children understand their upstairs and downstairs brain. Additionally, it helps develop mindfulness for youth and adults of which part of their brain they are in at any given time. Knowing this, we as can intervene with connection or redirection depending on what part of the brain is most active in the moment.
  9. Family Bereavement: Role of Nurses. Ulrika Kreicbergs, PhD, Rn, Galo Foundations Professor in Palliative Care for Children and Youth at the Ersta Skondal University College in Stockholm, discusses her research on how families experience grief and bereavement both leading up to and following the death of a severely ill child.
  10. GradNation: Understanding the Experiences of Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation. The research team at the Center for Promise with support from Target set out to discover what young people say about the experiences that lead them away from high school. They traveled across the country to hear what young people say about their lives and decisions. The website provides a video as well as a report highlighting the findings and recommendations.
  11. Healing Neen – feature length. After surviving a childhood of abuse and neglect, Tonier “Neen” Cain lived on the streets for two nightmarish decades, where she endured unrelenting violence, hunger and despair while racking up 66 criminal convictions related to her addiction. Incarcerated and pregnant in 2004, treatment for her lifetime of trauma offered her a way out and up. Her story illustrates the consequences that untreated trauma has on individuals and society at-large, including mental health problems, addiction, homelessness and incarceration. Today, she is a nationally renowned speaker and educator on the devastation of trauma and the hope of recovery.
  12. Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries serves high-risk, formerly gang-involved men and women with a continuum of free services and programs, and operates several social enterprises that serve as job-training sites. As one of the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in the country, Homeboy Industries has helped nurture into existence 46 similar programs in the United States (and several outside). The goal is to create a movement in this country to address the lethal absence hope among inner-city youth.
  13. Hopeworks ‘N Camden is a nonprofit that uses education, technology and entrepreneurship to partner with young men and women as they identify and earn a sustainable future. Together they  seize the opportunity to heal and thrive in the midst of violence and poverty.
  14. Lived Experiences - A Poem by Dr. Allison Sampson Jackson. Dr. Allison Sampson Jackson, a survivor of trauma shares her story in form of a poem. Her story highlights her experiences and her journey in becoming a professional and advocate through trauma-informed care.
  15. Mandela, I’m Not: The Taxing Life of a Mother Coping With Trauma. Giving birth is not enough to erase the fallout of unaddressed trauma. Nor is it always enough to summon the bottomless well of motherly love that’s needed to raise a child especially one with special needs. Becoming a mother doesn’t automatically erase women’s human needs and frailties.
  16. Move with Me. Movement & Mindfulness Resources for Pre-K – Grade 2   Move with Me is about young children at home and at school growing physically fit, emotionally stable, and learning able by enjoying fun active play & exercise instruction that combines stories with yoga, creative movement, and Brain Gym (R) adapted self-care / self-regulate techniques. We focus our resources for early childhood because preschool is a key time in which to instill healthy physical activity habits and self-regulation skills that will last a lifetime and because preschoolers who are overweight or obese are 5 times more likely than their peers to stay that way.
  17. Naeem’s Dream – Building Relationships…Changing Lives. This community provides resources for families and children to encourage the growth of protective factors.
  18. National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA). The primary mission at NAASCA is to reduce the incidence of child abuse for today's at-risk kids, & to offer recovery to those many millions of adults who still suffer from the pain & consequences of the abuses they experienced in their youth. NAASCA offers relevant news and resources.
  19. Please don’t tell me I was lucky to be adopted. The Washington Post. January 9, 2015. This article highlights the experiences of adoptees and how adoption can be traumatic.
  20. The Pongo Teen Writing Project is a volunteer, nonprofit program for teens who are on the streets, in jail, or in other ways leading difficult lives. The program helps young people express themselves through poetry, especially youth who have never written before. They also share teaching techniques with caring adults.  Among other information on the website is a video about an Emmy-winning story from KING5-TV that represents the emotional power and joy in Pongo’s poetry program inside juvenile detention. 
  21. Responding to Community Disparities—Resources for Families. This new resource page from the NCTSN features resources for parents and providers living in areas where there has been community unrest, advice regarding media coverage of these events, guidance on helping children and adolescents who have been exposed to multiple traumas, and materials addressing racism, economic and health disparities, and ways to foster community healing. There are also resources on self-care and tools to assist the first responder community.
  22. Restraint & Seclusion: Hear Our Stories – A documentary about restraint and seclusion in public schools, hospitals, and community settings created by veteran disability filmmaker Dan Habib. In the film those who experienced physical and emotional injuries, as well as their families, speak to the traumatic impact this treatment had on them. Restraint & Seclusion is available for free to the public through StopHurtingKids.com and was produced through a partnership with the National Center on Trauma Informed Care, TASH, and the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability. 
  23. The Role of Adult Mentorship in Helping Children Deal With Trauma. The Atlantic. Strong, positive relationships with at-risk youth can give them much-needed feelings of competence.
  24. Safe Spaces. Safe Places: Creating Welcoming and Inclusive Environments for Traumatized LGBTQ Youth (2015) (Video).The video features five LGBTQ youth describing how trauma and bias have affected their ability to feel safe when seeking services. National Child Traumatic Stress Network presenters discuss specific steps that professionals and organizations can take to create safe and more welcoming environments for traumatized LGBTQ youth.
  25. SAMHSA’s National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative Helps Children Recover and Thrive with New Campaign. Raising awareness about the impact of child traumatic stress and what parents and caregivers can do to help children recover and thrive is the focus of a new public education campaign launched yesterday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and its National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative.
  26. Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline Report: A Native Perspective. Girls, especially girls of color, who experience sexual abuse and violence are often routed into the juvenile justice system because of their response to traumatic experiences. 179 of every 100,000 Native girls end up in prison and are disproportionately victims of sexual violence.
  27. Teaching Children to Calm Themselves. The New York Times. The Opinion Pages. March 19, 2014. “When Luke gets angry, he tries to remember to look at his bracelet. It reminds him of what he can do to calm himself: stop, take a deep breath, count to four, give yourself a hug and, if necessary, ask an adult for help. Luke is 5 and he has been practicing these steps for half a year at school and at home, thanks to a program called Head Start Trauma Smart that currently serves some 3,300 children annually in 26 counties in Kansas and Missouri.”
  28. Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma – Introduction. This video discusses how violence and trauma affect children, including the serious and long-lasting consequences for their physical and mental health; signs that a child may be exposed to violence or trauma; and the staggering cost of child maltreatment to families, communities, and the Nation. Victims lend their voices to this video to provide first-hand accounts of how their exposure to violence as children affected them.
  29. Transition RTC. The Transitions RTC is a national effort that aims to improve the supports for youth and young adults, ages 14-30, with serious mental health conditions who are trying to successfully complete their schooling and training and move into rewarding work lives.
  30. The Trevor Project Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award®-winning short film TREVOR, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24. The Trevor Project offers accredited life-saving, life-affirming programs and services to LGBTQ youth that create safe, accepting and inclusive environments over the phone, online and through text, including Crisis Intervention, Suicide Prevention Trainings and Resources, and Community Resources.
  31. Trinka and Sam and the Swirling Twirling Wind is a story book developed to help young children and their families begin to talk about feelings they may have after experiencing a tornado. In the story, Trinka and Sam, two small mice, become scared and worried after a severe tornado damages their community. The story describes their reactions and shows how their parents help them to express their feelings and feel safer. In the back of the booklet, readers will find a parent guide with ways that parents can use the story with their children.
  32. Violent traumas bear array of often buried health issues. Merced County resident Claudia Gonzalez speaks about her PTSD as a result of her participation in gang violence at the Merced Organizing Project in Merced, Calif., Wednesday, July 29, 2015. (Warning this video contains graphic content).

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Downloadable Documents

  1. 1-2-3 Care:  A Trauma-Sensitive Toolkit for Caregivers of Children (PDF, 63MB). Public health nurses at Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) developed this toolkit for caregivers of children. This toolkit is intended to support caregivers on their journey towards trauma sensitivity. It is organized by topic, each offering a brief overview, specific tools that can be used with children, and where to find more information. Also included are handouts that can be used as teaching aids.
  2. A Recovery Bill of Rights for Trauma Survivors - Infographic. Thomas V. Maguire. National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare. This handout from the National Council provides the reader with information on the rights of trauma survivors.
  3. The Amazing Brain. What Every Parents Need to Know. Linda Burgess Chamberlain for the Institute for Safe Families. This guide provides parents with information about the growth and development of the adolescent brain. This guide also provides parents with ways to help teens make good decisions, develop healthy relationships, and stay away from alcohol and drugs.
  4. The Amazing Brain. What Every Parent and Caregiver Needs to Know. Linda Burgess Chamberlain for the Institute for Safe Families. This guide is targeted for parents and caregivers provides insight into how experiences shape children’s brains and how to foster healthy brain development, including helping children to feel safe.
  5. The Amazing Brain and Discipline: Positive Parenting Builds Healthy Brains. Linda Burgess Chamberlain for the Institute for Safe Families. This guide is targeted towards parents. In this guidebook, the author provides information on how to promote healthy brain development and positive behaviors.
  6. "The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook". Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz. In beautifully written, fascinating accounts of experiences working with emotionally stunted and traumatized children, child psychiatrist Perry educates readers about how early-life stress and violence affects the developing brain. He offers simple yet vivid illustrations of the stress response and the brain's mechanisms with facts and images that crystallize in the mind without being too detailed or confusing. He emphasizes that the brain of a traumatized child can be remolded with patterned, repetitive experiences in a safe environment. Most importantly, as such trauma involves the shattering of human connections, "lasting, caring connections to others" are irreplaceable in healing; medications and therapy alone cannot do the job.
  7. Don’t Call Them Dropouts: Understanding the Experiences of Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation
    A Report from America’s Promise Alliance its Center for Promise at Tufts University.  2014. This guide brings together available research on why some teenagers do not finish high school on time. This publication looks at several factors, including disengagement, the child’s home environment, and resilience.
  8. Healing the Invisible Wounds: Children’s Exposure to Violence. A Guide for Families. Safe Start Center. This guide is a resource to help parents and other caregivers understand the potential impact of exposure to violence on the development of their children. It provides practical suggestions for supporting the healing process. Recommended strategies are tailored to children based on age (birth to 6, 7 to 11, and 12 to 18) and are easily integrated into every day interactions.
  9. In Their Own Words. Trauma Survivors and professionals they trust tell what hurts, what helps, and what is needed for trauma services. Maine Trauma Advisory Groups Report, 1997. In Their Own Words is the work of over 200 courageous women and men in the State of Maine who have dared to hope that the truth and wisdom of their experience will be heard by those in power, and that Maine’s mental health and human service systems will respond to the long ignored plight of children and adults traumatized by histories of interpersonal violence. Both survivors of abuse and the professionals they trust give voice in this book to their experiences with individuals, organizations and systems that have been shaped and influenced in such a way that they frequently harm, rather than help, the individuals they serve.
  10. Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: Trauma in the Lives of Homeless Youth Prior to and During Homelessness. Coates J, & McKensie-Mohr S, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. 2010;37(4):65-96. This paper presents the findings from a study of 100 homeless youth regarding the role of trauma in their lives. Results indicate that trauma is both a cause and a consequence of youth being homeless, as a large majority of participants experiences a number of types of highly stressful events both preceding and during homelessness, and that trauma in the lives of both male and female homeless youth should be understood as a pervasive reality with serious implications. Implications for services delivery are discussed.
  11. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! A Journey of Resiliency.  Brianne M. Masselli. This presentation provides information about protective factors against trauma and lasting changes that help a person to become more resilient. This presentation also provides tips for developing a positive response system to help individuals avoid trauma triggers.
  12. Partnering with Parents: Apps for Raising Happy, Healthy Children. Linda Burgess Chamberlain for the Institute for Safe Families. This booklet helps the reader recognize how the past shapes an individual’s present.  Hotline numbers, apps, and websites are provided to help the reader identify stressors in their life and foster healthy relationships between parent and child.

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Additional References

  1. Finding My Way: A Teen’s Gide to Living with a Parent Who Has Experienced Trauma. Michelle D. Sherman and DeAnne M. Sherman. This guide is an invaluable tool in the hands of those so often forgotten in dealing with trauma: the teenagers who are confused and frightened by what is happening. Part One of Finding My Way clearly explains PTSD and other common responses to trauma, reviews co-occurring problems (including addictive behavior), and describes numerous treatment options. Part Two gently encourages readers to address their own strong emotions including anger, fear, confusion, sadness, and shame. Readers are then guided through the process of learning valuable coping tools, identifying their social support network, and figuring out how to deal with their friends. Part Three includes frequently asked questions, a glossary, and an extensive resource list. This honest and respectfully written manual serves as a roadmap for teens who are trying to find their way.
  2. Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World. In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians.
  3. Trigger Points: Childhood abuse survivors experiences of parenting. Trigger Points Anthology is a collection of writing by parents who are survivors of childhood abuse. Editors Joyelle Brandt and Dawn Daum are survivors of childhood abuse working to break the cycle for their own families. Together they started an online community specifically for parent survivors, and started collecting essays to create the Trigger Points Anthology. A book where survivors of all forms of childhood abuse could talk about what it is like to be a parent when your own childhood was so traumatic.
  4. The Way Home: A Therapist Looks at the Inner Lives of City Children. Lesley Koplow. Penguin Group USA, 1994. A gifted child therapist explores the impact of homelessness on her young clients, and helps them recover their inner lives buried by crisis, poverty, and despair. The Way Home explores these issues as it tells the riveting stories of Qimmy, a wide-eyed and pretty three-year-old, raised on a subway platform, and Opal, her non-verbal, homeless mother, on a mission to get her daughter admitted to a day-care center; Ronnie, a thirteen-year-old girl who has become phobic to attend school and is terrified of homeless women in the subway, until dream images connect her to early memories and family secrets, and ultimately allow her to overcome her fears; Angie, 'Mitri, Raquel, Kendra and Maimai, kindergartners who work to build "homes" within themselves that are strong enough to protect them from the violence in their daily lives, including crack-addicted mothers and abusive fathers.

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