Continuing Education
Resources

The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past. Copies also available in the CASA office.

Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, and unexpected friendship. Copies also available in the CASA office.

When Ree Dollys father skips bail, the 16-year-old knows if he doesn't show up, her family will lose their home. Her goal had been to leave her life of poverty and join the Army, but first she must find her father, teach her little brothers to fend for themselves, and escape a downward spiral of misery. Copies also available in the CASA office.

Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family. Copies also available in the CASA office.

Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.

The original book is also available at Lawrence Public Library: https://lawrence.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S119C328750

An inspiring true story of the tumultuous nine years Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent in the foster care system, and how she triumphed over painful memories and real-life horrors to ultimately find her own voice. Copies also available in the CASA office.

The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a solo walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay. Also available from Lawrence Public Library via Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/11475900?vp=lawrencepl

KCSL offers regular trainings, so we have linked their site in order for you to peruse what's upcoming.

Opeeka believes the goal of using technology is to make life easier, more productive as well as increasing health & wellness. Opeeka’s mission is to keep the person in the center of care, which helps assist with equity and have an impact of the Social Determinants of Health. An important pillar of their work is to increase collaborations among systems. These podcasts can serve as a conduit for sharing knowledge, innovations and strengthening collaborative efforts worldwide.

Not all podcast episodes will be applicable to CASA work, but there are a number of useful conversations exploring the child welfare system.

Through telling their stories and by hearing from professionals in the field, the film explains how children enter the foster care system, what happens while they are there, and especially what it's like as they transition out of it. Many of the hardships these youth face come to light as they allow unfettered access into their current situation and provide candid recollection and insight into their past. Along the journey of telling these unbelievable stories, the documentary shows how individuals, organizations, and communities work to improve the lives of these young adults – and how YOU can make a difference!

The Vera Institute of Justice, an independent nonprofit national research and policy organization hired by Justice Matters, recently presented its research findings to the Douglas County Criminal Justice Coordinating Commission.

The Executive Summary can be found here.

Meeting ID:* 896 0385 2522 *Passcode: *205066

Neurobiological systems may be particularly susceptible to deleterious impact of childhood trauma, and the impact of childhood trauma on development and subsequent functional outcomes across the lifespan has been well-documented. The current review addresses the neurobiological impact of exposure to interpersonal trauma in childhood in the context of executive function, emotion regulation, and dissociation/interoceptive awareness. Subsequent risk for PTSD and depression is also discussed. The pathway of risk from childhood trauma to these cognitive, emotional, and psychiatric outcomes is addressed in terms of potential structural and functional alterations within the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and amygdala resulting from chronic or repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and its interaction with and influence on genetic and epigenetic processes during sensitive periods of development. Implications for practice are discussed.

Presented by Dr. David Schonfeld, MD. Supporting Children, Staff, and School at Times of Crisis and Loss. Crisis and loss are common in the lives of students, whether due to a crisis involving a student’s individual family or one that affects the entire school community. This webinar will help school professionals learn basic skills in how to talk with and support individual students or the entire class/school as they struggle to understand and cope with a crisis and loss in their lives.

A  look at why the lives of high school graduate and GED test takers'  lives vary so drastically when their test scores are roughly equal.

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A story about doubt: how it germinated, spread, and eventually took hold of an entire community, with terrible consequences. A collaboration with The Marshall Project and ProPublica. A story from "This American Life" from Feb 26, 2016 and about the story of a girl who was raped and not believed and the subject of the Neflix series "Unbelievable."

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The stories we tell about ourselves — stories of success and stories of failure — often have their beginnings in the distant past. Sometimes, they start in our childhoods. Sometimes, before we were even born.

This idea may sound poetic, but when it comes to economic mobility, there's evidence to back it up. Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, is responsible for some of the most powerful evidence, drawing on data from many millions of Americans.

Raj has found that early variables in your life, from the quality of your kindergarten teacher to the neighborhood you grew up in, can have lasting effects. And those effects often result in dramatically divergent outcomes in different parts of the country.

"People ask... is the American dream alive or not today? And I actually think the question itself is sort of ill-posed," Raj says. "The term 'the American Dream' --really we should think of it as 'the Iowa Dream' or 'the Atlanta Dream' or 'the California Dream' because there's so much variation within this country."

Today we ask some questions that carry big implications: can you put an economic value on a great kindergarten teacher? How is it that two children living just a few blocks from each other can have radically different chances in life? What gives Salt Lake City an edge over Cleveland when it comes to offering people better prospects than their parents? The state of your American Dream, this week on Hidden Brain.

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This memoir, which tells the story of Machado’s abusive relationship with another woman, is an act of personal and formal bravery.

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Snyder highlights an epidemic of unacknowledged violence. Fifty women a month are shot and killed by their partners, and she explores the problem from multiple perspectives: the victims, the aggressors and a society that turns a blind eye.

In her unstinting memoir — a portrait of working-class poverty in America — Land scrapes by on $9 an hour cleaning houses to support herself and her young daughter.

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In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti–Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.

Despite the nature of its title, Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author's own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism.

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In powerful poetry and prose, Saeed Jones recounts his experiences growing up as a young, black, gay man in rural Texas. In powerful poetry and prose, Saeed Jones recounts his experiences growing up as a young, black, gay man in rural Texas.

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Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.

A book-length letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, Samori. In it, Coates explains to Samori what it means to be a black man in America.

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Details how federal housing policies in the 1940s and '50s mandated segregation and undermined the ability of black families to own homes and build wealth.

Whether we are overwhelmed by work or school; our families or communities; caretaking for others or ourselves; or engagement in social justice, environmental advocacy, or civil service, just a few subtle shifts can help sustain us. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, shows us how by offering concrete strategies to help us mitigate harm, cultivate our ability to be decent and equitable, and act with integrity. The Age of Overwhelm aims to help ease our burden of overwhelm, restore our perspective, and give us strength to navigate what is yet to come.

The Kansas City Star has examined what happens to kids who age out of foster care and found that, by nearly every measure, states are failing in their role as parents to America’s most vulnerable children.

Trauma is a widespread, harmful and costly public health problem. It occurs as a result of violence, abuse, neglect, loss, disaster, war and other emotionally harmful experiences. Trauma has no boundaries with regard to age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, geography or sexual orientation. It is an almost universal experience of people with mental and substance use disorders. The purpose of this paper is to develop a working concept of trauma and a trauma-informed approach and to develop a shared understanding of these concepts that would be acceptable and appropriate across an array of service systems and stakeholder groups. SAMHSA puts forth a framework for the behavioral health specialty sectors, that can be adapted to other sectors such as child welfare, education, criminal and juvenile justice, primary health care, the military and other settings that have the potential to ease or exacerbate an individual’s capacity to cope with traumatic experiences … The desired goal is to build a framework that helps systems “talk” to each other, to understand better the connections between trauma and behavioral health issues, and to guide systems to become trauma-informed" (p. 2-3). Sections of this publication include: introduction; purpose and approach—developing a framework for trauma and a trauma-informed approach; background—trauma—where we are and how we got here; SMAHSA's concept of trauma; SAMHSA's trauma-informed approach—key assumptions and principles; guidance for implementing a trauma-informed approach; next steps—trauma in the context of community; and conclusion

How can child welfare agencies, Federal partners, judicial and legal entities, and community organizations shift both the perception and application of foster care to one that supports families? Dr. Jerry Milner explains his support for systemic change across child welfare systems: where foster care is viewed as a last resort for families facing challenges in maintaining safe and stable homes for children and youth.

In this episode, Dr. Milner explains the Federal Government’s role in facilitating community-based collaboration to support families. The conversation also focuses on increasing awareness of the needs of children, youth, and families involved in foster care, along with the value of ensuring foster care is used as a support for families instead of a substitute for parents.

Topics discussed include the following:

 Changing the misconceptions regarding children, youth, and families impacted by foster care

 The importance of Title IV-E Reimbursement for legal services for parents, children, and youth

 How the Federal Government supports community-based prevention efforts

 The issues and trends State and local child welfare agencies are sharing with Dr. Milner

Follows the year in the life of a high school that has radically changed it's approach to disciplining its students, becoming a model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affects families.