This application provides the latest information related to the use of alcohol during pregnancy and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). From women planning a pregnancy to health care providers to families and educators, this application allows users to easily find and share the latest in the prevention, recognition, and treatment of FASDs.  The application is one of an expanding collection of applications from CDC on a variety of specific topics, each optimized for your mobile device. Now you can have topical CDC content wherever you go. When your device is connected, the content is updated automatically so you always have the most up-to-date information. You can personalize your experience with features like highlighting, annotations, and bookmarks to suit your own needs. Share the content with others through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

CHECK OUT THESE FEATURES:

* Alcohol consumption data by state
* Easy-to-read information on diagnosis and treatments for children with FASDs
* Individualized pages for different users – women, families, health care providers, educators, and partners
* Training and education resources
* Access to free materials on alcohol use and pregnancy and FASDs
* Information on what CDC is doing in this area

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorders/id517058288?mt=8&ls=1

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Canada+only+Children+Village+provides+stable+home+kids/6590533/story.html
Vancouver Sun
Business

Canada’s only SOS Children’s Village provides a stable home to B.C. kids
By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun May 9, 2012

School’s out. Two little girls with books tucked ter under their arms
chat away happily as they go up the front steps of their house.

The five-bedroom house looks little different from others that are
built or being built along a quiet street in this Surrey
neighbourhood – until you go to the back yard.

It’s nearly two acres shared with four neighbouring houses. There’s a
basketball court, playground equipment and a massive lawn backing
onto a forest. There’s a separate building with a kitchen, living
room, music room with drums, guitars and other instruments and a room for art.

This is SOS Children’s Village. It’s unique in Canada and one of only
five in North America.

I met David there earlier this week. Sitting at a picnic bench in the
yard, the 18-year-old told me that he’s studying political science at
college. He wants to be Canada’s first aboriginal prime minister.

Six years ago, David and his family – the one he’s been part of since
he was a month old – moved to the village, which opened in 2004.

The village model – used mainly in developing countries – is based on
the belief that loving, consistent parenting, a stable home and a
supportive community create “a circle of healing, belonging and
positive growth” for children in need.

The definition of children in need is situational. Among the children
housed in developing countries are former child soldiers and AIDS orphans.

Here, it’s aboriginal children. They comprise nearly half the
children in the province’s care.

“It would help our society if there were a lot more of these
villages,” David says simply. “It’s the people you grow up with who
shape who you are. I would have been a lot different person … Life
would have been a lot different.”

David calls the foster mom next door ‘Auntie’ and, for most of the 15
other kids in the village, David is regarded as a trusted, older brother.

“There’s a lot more support here,” he says. “You can count on
anybody. It feels like one big family.”

SOS Children’s Villages B.C. owns the homes, which are rented at half
the market value to foster parents who have contracts with the
Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society. That society,
in turn, has a contract with the provincial Ministry of Children and
Family Development to pro-vide services to urban aboriginal children
and their families.

It takes a village to raise any child, but it requires an especially
strong one for foster children because their needs are greater. But
the foster-care system often appears the antithesis of that.

It’s well known that the first few years of a child’s life are
crucial. Yet, one of the moms in the village told me about an
11-month-old baby and a 23-month-old baby. By the time they came to
her, they’d been in five different homes.

(For the children’s protection and to meet government confidentiality
requirements, none of the mothers can be named, nor can the
children’s real names be used.)

Another mom had a teenage boy who had previously been in 14 different
homes. One day, he arrived home from school to find his bed stripped.
His mom hadn’t had time to put the clean sheets on. It took a lot to
convince him that he wasn’t being moved again.

While another boy was away at weekend camp, his mom painted his room
in Canucks’ colours. Instead of being happy, he was distraught. He
was certain his few possessions would be shoved into a garbage bag
and he’d be moved. He was sure she did it for someone else. It
couldn’t have been for him.

“These are very broken children,” she said.

The statistical profile of B.C. kids in care is tragic.

Slightly more than half of the kids are considered ‘special needs’
compared with 8.4 per cent of children who had never been in care,
according to a 2007 report by the B.C. Child and Youth Advocate.

By age 16, it says, three-quarters of the boys and nearly half the
girls had intensive behavioural or serious mental health issues. Some
were traumatized in infancy and traumatized again when they were
taken from their families. Some have fetal alcohol syndrome or
attention deficit disorder.

Many of those issues are exacerbated by the foster-care system itself
- the frequent moves, too few social workers, a paucity of willing
foster parents resulting in heavier loads for the willing and group
homes for kids when there’s nowhere else to go.

The perfectly justifiable requirement that people who care for these
children have criminal record checks has unintended consequence for
kids already stigmatized for being different. They can’t go to
another kid’s house unless the parents have had a criminal record check.

It means that in the middle of the night, if a child needs to be
rushed to emergency, the other kids have to be awakened, bundled up
and taken to the hospital too. They can’t be left alone and a foster
parent can’t just call a neighbour.

Unless they live in the village.

Most foster parents spent hours ferrying kids back and forth to
counselling each month. In the village, social workers comes to them
and there’s an SOS counselor as well. If the kids don’t want to talk
, sometimes the counselling takes place on the basketball court.
Homework is another friction point for all kids and parents. So, SOS
program director Corina Carroll hired a certified teacher. Once a
week, the tutor comes to the village and eight other times during the
week, the tutor helps village kids and others at local schools. Those
extras cost money. SOS donors pay for them.

As Carroll says, the idea is to create “a perfect storm of people”
attending not only to the needs of the children, but to the foster
parents’ needs as well.

It’s the kind of storm that this province needs more of.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

Source: EDM – Edmonton Journal
May 10 04:17
Page: A27
Section: Ideas
Edition: Final
Column: Graham Thomson
Byline: Graham Thomson

It was an issue barely mentioned by Premier Alison Redford when she unveiled her new cabinet on Tuesday and it was an issue overlooked by the media.

But it is an issue that perhaps indicates better than any news release or news story how Redford sincerely wants to change how government does business. And she did that by simply mentioning four letters: FASD – the acronym for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

“We as a society need to be able to deal with communities and people that are dealing with FASD in a very different way than we have,” Redford told reporters. “We’ve got to do a better job and we’re going to do a better job.”

That was it. No details, no explanation, no hint as to how the government will do a better job of helping those dealing with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. But the fact that Redford – on a day when everybody else wanted to talk about “big” issues such as the new minister of energy or how the finance department is merging with treasury board – would mention a “little” issue indicates what’s going on in the back of her mind and what she sees as priorities.

One of those priorities is dealing with FASD, a chronic problem that Redford encountered repeatedly as Justice minister. A disproportionate number of people with the disorder end up before the courts and in jail. Nobody knows how many inmates suffer from the disorder but some educated guesses place the number in federal prisons at around 25 per cent or higher.

Children with FASD suffer from what effectively is a permanent brain injury caused by the birth mother drinking during pregnancy. That causes behavioural problems: they act on impulse; exhibit astonishingly poor judgment; and fail to realize the consequences of their actions. There are treatments to help the children improve somewhat but there is no cure, so they grow into adults with FASD who, because of their impulsive and irresponsible behaviour, routinely end up in jail.

Alberta has a committee made up of representatives from various departments including Justice and Health to diagnose FASD and counsel those who suffer from the syndrome. It is a never-ending struggle that won’t get any better unless government targets the source, which means convincing mothers to avoid alcohol while pregnant and providing support networks to keep children with the disorder from committing crimes.

As Redford pointed out as Justice minister in 2010: “If you just continue to recycle people through the justice system and you don’t deal with whatever their underlying problems are, it’s not good for them, it’s not good for the community, it’s not good for the justice system and it’s not good for the health system.”

Now that she’s premier with a fresh mandate, Redford is dealing with the problems of FASD by appointing MLA Frank Oberle (a former solicitor general) as an associate minister dedicated to “services for persons with disabilities.”

Redford is tackling this issue the same way she is tackling others: by getting ministries to work together more efficiently or even amalgamating responsibilities into a single department. This is the motivation, for example, behind the ministry of Human Services that replaced the former ministries of Children Services, Housing and Employment to tackle problems ranging from foster care to unemployment to homelessness.

It is a motivation that helps dispel much of the usual skepticism that greets political rhetoric. When the government says “supporting healthy and strong families and communities is an investment in Albertans and Alberta’s future” it might sound like a political cliche but Redford’s motivation is sincere and her restructuring of government holds promise.

In fact, Redford’s premiership holds so much promise that areas of the province which voted against her are optimistic for change.

“I think maybe the election was a little bell that rang for them,” says Medicine Hat mayor Norm Boucher. The election might have been a “little bell” for the government but Tuesday’s cabinet announcement was something of a wake-up gong for many ridings in southern Alberta dealing with the reality that for the first time in living memory they are represented by an opposition MLA and thus are on the outside of government looking in. Politically speaking, rural Alberta is the new Edmonton.

“My hope, personally, is that the provincial government will want to retake these seats in the next election,” says Boucher, who says his city has often felt like the “forgotten corner” of the province the past few years on issues including flood relief and the twinning of Highway 3. “I hope that’s the way they see it so that they can reinvest and pay attention to what we have.”

Redford didn’t mention southern Alberta on Tuesday when she announced her cabinet but that’s largely due to the fact she has nobody in the rural south in her caucus.

And it might be because right now she is focused not on re-gaining southern Alberta but on winning much different challenges – such as helping Albertans throughout the province struggling with the difficult issue of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

gthomson@edmontonjournal. com

To read more:

http://advocatefortheunborn.com/default.aspx

The stress of exposure to early-life violence can leave lasting marks on children so deep that it affects their DNA, according to the findings of a study by researchers at North Carolina’s Duke University.

Chromosomes of children who were exposed to maternal violence, bullying or physical maltreatment by an adult showed signs of biological aging, researchers reported Tuesday in a study published by the journalMolecular Psychiatry.

To read more, click below

Abuse, violence can alter children’s DNA: study.

EFAN Quarterly Newsletter