This issue brief from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) addresses opioid misuse and opioid use disorder in the U.S. Hispanic and Latino population. The brief presents various challenges these communities face including discrimination and trauma, intergenerational substance abuse, language barriers, and other sociocultural factors associated with accessing prevention and treatment and recovery services.

From CEOs to frontline employees providing essential services, workers across the board have been impacted by the uncertainty, stress, anxiety, loss of earnings, and other emotional and physical trauma brought on by COVID-19. These experiences, whether neurological or emotional, can deplete executive functions. Written by an organizational psychologist, this article offers strategies organizations can use to reduce cognitive load and restore balance to employees returning to the office. The three strategies identified are rest, schedule breaks, and implement a phased return to the workplace; acknowledge and name feelings and hire a psychologist to meet with managers; and take steps to help with memory deficiency, including the use of assistive technology and memory tools. Organizations might also want to hold workshops on time management and organizational skills or bring in coaches to help employees use new technology.

This research to practice brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation describes examination of findings from nine rural programs that serve child welfare-involved parents with substance use disorders. The examination was unable to provide information on program effectiveness but does focus on the range of services offered, the targeted population, how funding is blended, and collaborative approaches of these programs. Programs covered in this brief are: Children and Recovering Mothers (CHARM) Care Collaborative (Burlington, Vermont); Iowa Department of Human Services Parent Partner Mentoring Program; Kentucky Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START); Vermont Hub and Spoke Model; Women in Recovery (Tulsa, Oklahoma); The Arizona Families in Recovery Succeeding Together (FIRST) Program; Helen Ross McNabb Center (HRMC) Great Starts Program and Motivating our Mothers to Succeed Silver Linings and Rise to Recovery Models (Knoxville, Tennessee); and Parent-Child Assistance Program (Washington State).

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice will host a webinar on July 30, 2020 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET which will focus on serving adolescents in family drug courts. Emphasis will be on encouraging youth to engage in building positive relationships with adults and peers and to be actively involved in developing their own voice as they transition into adulthood. Strategies for substance use prevention and treatment and information on recovery support will also be addressed.

This dataset from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is the 31st edition that follows and ranks states on metrics related to child well-being. The data reflects trends prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Particular focus is on four larger categories of trend analysis: economic well-being, education, family and community, and health. Additionally, there are individual state profiles with relevant data that are presented as user-friendly fact sheets.

Access to quality maternal and child health care services remains a challenge for low-income women in many areas of the country. In this webinar scheduled for July 22, 2020 from 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. ET, a panel of health experts will discuss improving care for mothers and babies through the formation of state or multistate collaborative initiatives, hospital-based quality improvement efforts which support optimal infant nutrition, and the formation of strategic alliances with the private health sector to strengthen the quality of neonatal and child health services. Speakers include representatives of the Health Resources & Services Administration, the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute, and Abt Associates.

This guide offers a framework and process for establishing a multi-system trauma-informed collaborative that addresses the impact of trauma on children and families. The guide identifies the collaborative as including the health care system as well as child welfare, education, early child development, first responder, and related systems; these components must support each other in policies and practices to best serve children exposed to violence and other adverse childhood trauma. The guide is designed for public agency administrators, local and state policy makers, trauma professionals, and other service stakeholders.

Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, this research article features a study examining how mothers' Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) were associated with their children's developmental risk. The mothers' depressive symptoms and health were considered. The study concluded that mothers' ACEs are significantly related to their children's developmental risk, suggesting that addressing intergenerational trauma by focusing on childhood adversity in children's caregivers may be an important factor in promoting child development.

In this TEDx video presentation, the topic of intergenerational or transgenerational trauma is presented as a condition that is passed down from one generation to the next. In families where parents and grandparents have experienced abuse and neglect, witnessed violence, and suffered numerous losses or early life adversity, these painful recollections were often unspoken or repressed. In some families, the next generation was affected by this trauma, and the children displayed symptoms of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, low self-esteem or other self-destructive behaviors. The video’s moderator is a medical professional who shares her family’s story of intergenerational trauma. She describes the effects of parents who are emotionally detached from their children and the importance of reestablishing family relationships. She also provides examples of trauma-informed supports and draws on her work with survivors of trauma whom she treats in her medical practice for mental illness and addictive disorders.

This CLASP webinar on May 20, 2020 focused on learning from lived experiences of young parents of color and their perspective on mental health. The two presentations by Dr. Nia West-Bey and Clelie Choute were comprised of qualitative reports based on conversations with young parents about the role of intergenerational trauma in shaping families’ relationships to mental health. They identified unique forms of trauma and chronic stress to which young parents are susceptible, such as infant mortality, environmental stress, deferring dreams, and stress linked to policy and program barriers. The webinar offered practice, program, and policy solutions to address their mental health needs.