Looking for Child Care?
The Child Care Resource and Referral in your parish can help. Click here to download this map.
Helping Children in Times of Disaster
Children, especially young children, respond in many different ways following a disaster. These two outstanding books, co-authored by Baton Rouge's own Cate Heroman, offer outstanding resources for parents and caregivers. Many thanks to Cate for sharing this information!
HOW CHILDREN BEHAVE AFTER A TRAUMATIC EVENT
Excerpt from HELPING CHILDREN REBOUND by Cate Heroman and Jenna Bilmes:
Young children have a hard time adjusting to change and loss. They cannot grasp the concept of permanent loss and often see consequences as reversible. When they experience the flood firsthand, they may feel helpless and powerless. Because they lack the ability to protect themselves or others, they feel intense fear and insecurity. Young children are beginning to develop coping skills, but they often do not have the language to express their feelings.
Children react to stress in different ways and will recover from a disaster at different rates. The degree to which they are affected depends on factors such as these:
- how close they were to the disaster (e.g., whether they were rescued by boat or saw news coverage of rescues)
- how quickly their basic physical needs were met
- their family situation before the flood (e.g., divorce, new baby, moving to a new school)
- how their family members react to the disaster
- their disposition and resiliency
In the weeks following the flood, young children's play may reflect aspects of the event. They may reenact a particular incident repeatedly. Over time, you should see the play progress from reenacting destruction to becoming hopeful and moving on. For example, you may initially see play focused on destruction such as building blocks and knocking them down. As children work through their feelings over time, their play might progress to pretending to be a construction worker who is rebuilding houses. Whether this play progression occurs will give you some insight into how well children are adjusting.
To read more, download this free two resources:
Legislative Wrap-Up & Annual Meeting
The Legislative Wrap-Up and Annual Meeting were held on June 16, 2016 in Port Allen, LA. The meeting also served as the official monthly meeting of the Louisiana Children's Cabinet Advisory Board. The following documents were shared at the meeting: |
| The Louisiana Partnership for Children and Families is a non-profit policy and advocacy organization focused on improving the well-being of young children and their families in our state. Member Categories: | Like our Facebook Page! Follow Us on Twitter!
Upcoming events
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Strengthening Advocacy for Children & Families!
Regional Meetings were held at nine locations across the state. Thank you to the hosts and attendees for their support and participation in the meetings. We discussed:
The presentation PowerPoint and materials that were distributed to all the attendees can be found here:
Additional information shared at the meetings from Louisiana Youth Justice Coalition:
Our legislators will be working through all of the proposed bills for this year. The Partnership will also be tracking their progress. If you are interested in watching specific bills or learning more about them, you can go online to the Louisiana Legislature website or you can read the weekly update on bills that the Louisiana Partnership prepares. The Partnership is tracking bills impacting children & families. The weekly update will be sent out to our members.
Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support!
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The Louisiana Platform for Children offers a series of policy briefs outlining issues affecting children and proposing sound recommendations for ways in which to improve outcomes in the areas of child health, child welfare/foster care, early childhood education, social emotional development, juvenile justice and family economic stability. Read the full Platform for Children Report or the executive summary. For more information, send an email to: platform@louisianapartnership.org. Key partners in this project include:
The Platform for Children is available on the websites of all of these organizations. Platform Meeting in Monroe on the News (includes embedded advertising from television station): Get Involved! Please share comments on the Platform here.Your organization is encouraged to partner with us and lend support! Please send an email to Louisiana Partnership indicating your interest as a supporting partner. Sign up for updates on the Platform for Children - send us an email to let us know you want to be kept in the loop! Share a copy of the Platform for Children on your website. Click here to let us know how we can help you share this information in your community. |
The Raising of America Series: Early Childhood and the Future of Our Nation View the video series trailer (11 minutes) It’s often said a society can be measured by how well it attends to its children—their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved and valued by their families and communities. So how is it that children in the U.S. have worse outcomes on most measures of health, education and well-being than other rich nations? How can we do better? The Raising of America takes us inside the brain and brings to life recent scientific research that reveals how early experiences, beginning in the womb, can alter brain architecture and developmental trajectories. Through the stories of families from different walks of life, we discover how the lack of paid parental leave and high-quality affordable childcare, stagnant wages and overcrowded housing, depression and social exclusion, and perhaps most of all the time crunch, too often undermine the efforts of parents and caregivers struggling to provide the nurturing environments all children need to thrive. By exploring how things got this way—the history of U.S. child and family policy over the past century, the victories as well as the defeats—The Raising of America seeks to better understand what stands in the way of progress, and what we can do better. The film lifts up those struggling to make good on a vision where all our children matter, all are nurtured and all have opportunities to thrive. For more information, click here. |
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