debor016

Today I can only write about what has been occupying my time and my heart for the last few weeks- the miracle of our Love Wins Conference. It is a week before the event even takes place, and already so many incredible things have taken place. In no particular order, they include:   ·          It is sold out ·          Three Universities are cooperating to make this happen- Central Connecticut State University, the University of Hartford and Western Connecticut State University ·          The University of Hartford, in addition to all their other support, is supplying student volunteers who will direct and escort people throughout the day. The University has purchased purple hats, scarves and gloves for all these volunteers. ·          We have wonderful sponsors such as Stanley Works and Siracusa who have enabled families, fo...

Angela is very upset. As the Coordinator of the Group Home she has worked hard to be supportive and caring towards her staff. She has been proud of her team, their good relationships and their low turnover. She has provided many staff recognition and fun activities.  Now she is hearing only complaints. A recent staff survey revealed that staff feels that management undercuts them with the youth.  Staff have  issues with her, the unit supervisor, and the therapist. Furthermore, Angela is starting to  not like the staff much either. They are so ungrateful. What have they got to complain about  anyway.  Don’t they realize how hard she works and how she is always on call and responsive to them? She notices that they are getting more punitive in their responses to the kids. Naturally she has to step in and change what they have put in place. She is not going to allow the kids to be mistreated. As a consultant in this situation my first impulse is to work on the ...

I have just returned from a trip to aw hitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. What a delightful place! It is beautiful, and the people are kind, caring and compassionate.  Of course they also pride themselves on being a little crazy, especially when it comes to extreme sports and pastimes. The Yukon Government has initiated a system wide implementation of Risking Connection and the Restorative Approach. They started with their residential and in home mental health services and their drug and alcohol treatment program. Soon to come are foster care, juvenile justice and protective services. The people in the system are deeply committed to understanding behavior as adaptive. They work creatively with a lack of resources and long standing, multigenerational trauma and economic stress. I taught a two day Restorative Approach training, newly revised and based on my book. I taught in a museum of Yukon history. The suggestions for improvement that I received concerned making it more locally f...

Recently my colleague Steve Brown presented a training on Promoting Sexual Health Amoung Youth. The Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Alliance hosted this training as a part of their Building Healthy Futures series . Laura Palumbo, Prevention Campaign Specialist of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) http://www.nsvrc.org Wrote the following blog post summarizing the conference. I just wanted to share a blog post I wrote for NSVRC about the recent Building Healthy Futures training. http://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/saam/building-healthy-futures-recap A few short weeks ago I was able to attend an incredible training on Promoting Sexual Health Amoung Youth. The Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Alliance hosted this training as a part of their Building Healthy Futures series , and it was awesome. The focus of this training was all about young people with two topics in mind: promoting healthy sexuality and healing from trauma . It was two days packed with prevent...