Monday, March 26, 2012

Working With Children Exposed to Violence

The Attorney General's Defending Childhood initiative has launched a new Web page, “Take Action to Protect Children,” to support professionals in their efforts to address children's exposure to violence. The Web page provides online resources for professionals in various fields who work with children who experience or witness violence.  You can access this new website at http://www.justice.gov/defendingchildhood/action.html.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Podcast: Improving Educational Outcomes for Youth

How can CASA volunteers be even better advocates for the youth they serve? In this podcast, Educational Advocacy Coordinator Jeff Perry describes how he is working to improve educational outcomes for youth in the San Francisco CASA program.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Wings for L.I.F.E.

Wings For Life Meeting
(Life-skills Imparted to Families through Education)

GUEST SPEAKERS:
MIKE GOMEZ - CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY
BRETT SCHNEIDER – FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY
Doors open at 5:45 PM. Meeting starts at 6:00PM and doors will be shut at 6:15PM

Roswell Boys & Girls Club
201 S. Garden
SUNDAY, March 18th, 2012
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
For Questions call: Shelly @ 317-204

Dinner: Mexican Food plus some food specialties from our guests
Crafts for children in a family friendly environment
(Sitter available)

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Honor Our Voices - Online Training Module

Presented by:
Avon Foundation for Women
Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse
Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare

Honor Our Voices is a unique learning module that allows the viewer to see domestic violence through the eyes and voices of children. This module is intended to increase the awareness of child welfare workers and other to the needs of children and to suggest promising ways of enhancing services to children exposed to domestic violence.

The link below will take you to the Honoring Our Voices Web site where you will be able to view the content and the materials associated with it.

Honor Our Voices

The Brain on Trial

Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts. A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order.

By David Eagleman, Atlantic Magazine

On the steamy first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation deck, lugging with him a footlocker full of guns and ammunition. At the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. Two families of tourists came up the stairwell; he shot at them at point-blank range. Then he began to fire indiscriminately from the deck at people below. The first woman he shot was pregnant. As her boyfriend knelt to help her, Whitman shot him as well. He shot pedestrians in the street and an ambulance driver who came to rescue them.

The evening before, Whitman had sat at his typewriter and composed a suicide note:

I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

By the time the police shot him dead, Whitman had killed 13 people and wounded 32 more. The story of his rampage dominated national headlines the next day. And when police went to investigate his home for clues, the story became even stranger: in the early hours of the morning on the day of the shooting, he had murdered his mother and stabbed his wife to death in her sleep.

It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight … I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this …

Along with the shock of the murders lay another, more hidden, surprise: the juxtaposition of his aberrant actions with his unremarkable personal life. Whitman was an Eagle Scout and a former marine, studied architectural engineering at the University of Texas, and briefly worked as a bank teller and volunteered as a scoutmaster for Austin’s Boy Scout Troop 5. As a child, he’d scored 138 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test, placing in the 99th percentile. So after his shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower, everyone wanted answers.

For that matter, so did Whitman. He requested in his suicide note that an autopsy be performed to determine if something had changed in his brain—because he suspected it had.

For more go here.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

National CASA's Connection Magazine

Feature Story: Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare

View the national CASA Association's Connection Magazine here to learn the latest from our parent organization.