Healthy relationships and communities create the foundation of a California where everyone has what they need to thrive. How can we each play a role in creating this vision in our daily interactions with friends, family members, and colleagues? In the time of COVID-19, when inequities have intensified, we face this imperative together.
As preventionists, parents, advocates, educators, social workers, and everyday people, we CAN challenge gender-based violence, barriers to our safety net, racism, and ageism. Our interactive platform, #PreventionAcrossCA, puts you in the driver’s seat of specific scenarios where you can effect social change. Afterward, you’ll be introduced to a number of resources that you can use in real life!
We can connect the dots between these stories with the CHARM Model, which explores the intersections of harm & hope.
CHARM your way to healthier relationships!
Communicate in a healthy, timely, and assertive way!
Have Fun while you learn together!
Acknowledge & Apologize when you’ve made a mistake!
Respect each other!
Make space for each other and Take the space you deserve in the relationship!
Ana’s Alarm
Meet Ana, who usually enjoys learning—but due to COVID, has been social distancing with her noisy family in a crowded house, turning her junior year into a real nightmare.
Read along, then YOU decide how Ana’s teacher, Ms. Bailey—who is also stressed—can best support Ana and other students, while discovering ways to support herself and staff too.
Marcella Maggio, the Partnership’s Prevention Coordinator and Storyteller, conducted extensive interviews with youth and teachers to inform this story. Along with our Companion Guide, we believe this interactive story can be especially helpful to preventionists as they strengthen relationships with educators. With enough support, all teachers can become trusted adults that understand how youth experience trauma and guide their social-emotional learning.
Explore Our Newest story: Ana’s Alarm
Access the Companion Guide
Monica Matters
Meet Monica, and her family: James, and their children Kyleigh and newborn Henry.
Join them as they share a moment of their family’s struggle, managing stressors during the COVID pandemic. Follow along, then YOU can choose from possible supports to help them succeed.
This interactive experience is perfect to pair with training for anyone who works with community members—especially social workers and lactation educators.
Experience Our First Story: Monica Matters
Access the Companion Guide
Resources for Resilience – Monica Matters
State what is and isn’t working.
Together, figure out healthier ways to work through the problem.
Open up to each other, using healthy & direct communication.
Respect each other’s perspectives.
Your actions have the power to change the outcome.
Every choice can lead to healthier stories.
What choice will you make?
Below you will find a list of Resources for Resilience, enabling you to support the needs of your clients, colleagues, and yourself through any crisis, including COVID-19.
Together, we’re stronger.
The following resources are the ones Lupe shared in the STORY with Monica:
Handouts for Healthier Relationships:
Families grow healthy with WIC – Food, nutrition counseling, and access to health services are provided to low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, popularly known as WIC.
Moments Matter – California Paid Family Leave (PFL) provides partial wage replacement benefits to employees who need to take time off from work to care for a seriously ill family member (child, parent, parent-in-law, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or registered domestic partner) or to bond with a new child entering the family through birth, adoption, or foster care placement. More than 18 million California workers are covered by the PFL program, paid for by California workers that pay State Disability Insurance (SDI) taxes in the past 5 to 18 months. Paid Family Leave and other related benefits are administered in California by the Employment Development Department. For more information: www.edd.ca.gov
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information.
Were you concerned about anything else?
What did you notice about Henry’s or Kyleigh’s behaviors?
Henry – crying unless distracted, short nap, inexperienced sibling as caretaker, etc.?
Kyleigh – facial expressions, scribbling in book, acting as a “helper” for Monica, etc.?
Did you know these behaviors can be indicators that the child has ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and is experiencing toxic stress, which can impact a child’s development, especially in the first five years?
The more ACEs in childhood, the greater the likelihood of developmental delays and later health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, substance abuse, and depression. Research also indicates that supportive, responsive relationships with caring adults as early in life as possible can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress response.
Join the movement to prevent ACEs, heal trauma & build resilience – ACEs Connection is the world’s most active, influential network focusing on ACEs science. Connect with people using trauma-informed/resilience-building practices. Stay current with news, research, events.
Futures Without Violence
This is a trying and frightening time for families, parents and kids, with daycare, schools and workplaces closed; beloved caregivers and teachers absent; everyday routines and schedules disrupted; and family members confined in close quarters. The economic uncertainty and hardships facing so many working families add to these stressful factors. Help is available through the National Parent Helpline. Resources for parents, children and caregivers are available in the Futures Without Violence link above.
We work to help California’s children receive the best possible start in life. – First 5 California will convene, partner in, and help lead the movement to create and implement a comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated system for California’s children prenatal through age 5 and their families. It will promote, support, and optimize early childhood development.
What about the family’s financial struggle?
Are there ways you can provide further support?
As Californians are urged to stay home to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, workers across the state and their families are feeling the impact on their jobs and income, making the need for paid leave, unemployment, and other related benefits more apparent than ever – These topics are especially important to preventionists and advocates in our movement, whose work to increase survivors’ and communities’ financial stability acts to lower the impact and risk of domestic violence. That’s why we’re working with our partners at the California Work & Family Coalition to increase access to these benefits – especially among immigrants and low-wage earners—through a network of community leaders, coming together to provide access to and advocate for trainings, resources, and benefits that are accessible and timely.
The California Work & Family Coalition is an alliance of community organizations, unions, non-profits, and individuals dedicated to helping parents, caregivers, and families thrive.
Access general information for employers and self-employed/independent contractors about Disability Insurance (DI), Paid Family Leave (PFL), voluntary plans, workers’ compensation, SDI Online, and the Disability Insurance Elective Coverage (DIEC) program.
