Bullies 2 Buddies

Is your child being bullied in school? Are you angry because the school is failing to make the bullying stop? Or are you furious because the school is accusing your child of being a bully?

If you have found that everything you and your school are doing to make bullying stop isn’t working, you have come to the right place! Bullies to Buddies™ has materials and services that really work!

Learn more at www.Bullies2Buddies.com and become an educated parent!

Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention for Youth: A Practitioner's Guide

If you manage the health and well-being of 9- to 18-year-olds, this Guide is for you.

“Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention for Youth: A Practitioner’s Guide” is designed to help health care professionals quickly identify youth at risk for alcohol-related problems. NIAAA developed the Guide and Pocket Guide in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, a team of underage drinking researchers and clinical specialists, and practicing health care professionals.

Why use this tool?

• It can detect risk early: In contrast to other screens that focus on established alcohol problems, this early detection tool aims to help you prevent alcohol-related problems in your patients before they start or address them at an early stage.
   
• It’s empirically based: The screening questions and risk scale, developed through primary survey research, are powerful predictors of current and future negative consequences of alcohol use.
   
• It’s fast and versatile: The screen consists of just two questions, which can be incorporated easily into patient interviews or pre-visit screening tools across the care spectrum, from annual exams to urgent care.
   
• It’s the first tool to include friends’ drinking: The “friends” question will help you identify patients at earlier stages of alcohol involvement and target advice to include the important risk of friends’ drinking.

Download or order the Guide and pocket guide.

You may also be interested in related resources to support you, your patients, and their families

Class Wish Web Thrift Store

Making a difference.

You know how deep the school budget cuts have been!  Now, your child doesn’t have to sit in a classroom that doesn’t have enough supplies and equipment.  Now, teachers don’t have to spend their own money just to provide the basics.

An exciting nonprofit has a new solution. 

Here’s an easy new way that all of us can turn unused household items into resources for the classroom of our choice:  http://ClassWish-WebThriftStore.org.     

You list items on the site.  Visitors buy.  And a full 80% of the purchase price will go to help fulfill a Wish List for the K-12 teacher or PTA/PTO you choose, so your child and others can perform at their best.  It gets even better: you will receive a tax-deduction for the value of the item (generally, the full purchase price).  

Imagine what a well-equipped classroom your child could have if all the parents participate!

To get the greatest exposure for your items, list them today so the first buyers see them when we start selling on October 21. 

The web thrift store is brought to you http://ClassWish.org, the nonprofit about which Sarah Brown Wessling, 2010 National Teacher of the Year, wrote, “This nonprofit is a swift and inventive way for communities to unite in support of the tools that make learning more accessible for all students.”

Please list your items today.  Tell your child’s teacher and the school’s PTA.  And be sure to tell other parents about this great new opportunity. 

 

Learn more at www.ClassWish.org.

Sober Info: Educating your community

SOBERINFO is an informational news portal for the sobriety community to empower, share, educate and learn from others within the industry. 

 

SOBERINFO is a collaborative platform for industry professionals and participants, alike, to submit their own original content as well as recommend useful resources, news articles and blog posts that may be of value to the sobriety community.  

 

SOBERINFO was designed to be the go to resource for the most useful and relevant information the internet has to offer.  This site was built for those in the sobriety community, so please help us to make it the powerful tool it was designed to be.

Contact Information:

info@soberinfo.com

714.545.5384

www.soberinfo.com

Follow on Twitter.

Tobacco Free Florida: Halloween Haunting - Candy Flavored Tobacco Products

Kid-friendly flavors, colorful packaging and scheming marketing campaigns target young people while masking the harmful tendencies of tobacco use.


The emergence of new candy-flavored tobacco products has parents, teachers, health advocates, physicians and communities rightly concerned. Cigarillos, cigars and a host of smokeless tobacco products - chew, snuff, snus, dissolvable tobacco - now come in such tantalizing flavors as pineapple, sour apple and chocolate. They are presented in bright and playful packaging and readily available at convenience stores throughout the state, much like Halloween candy.

These products, widely considered to be a gateway to a lifetime of tobacco addiction, have been proven to entice young audiences. In fact, use of all flavored tobacco products among youth is trending upward. In Florida, one in six kids between the ages of 11 and 17 had ever tried flavored tobacco, and youth erroneously believe these products to be less harmful than their non-flavored counterparts.

“It’s the ultimate guise,” remarked Kim Berfield, Deputy Secretary of the Florida Department of Health.“Youth are drawn in to the pageantry of these novel products and fall prey to the tobacco industry’s sweet deception.”

Youth have always been an essential target for the tobacco industry. Numerous internal tobacco industry documents reveal that the companies perceive kids as a key market, and develop products and advertising campaigns aimed at them. With traditional smoking rates on the decline in the U.S., the tobacco industry insures its livelihood by creating products and strategies that connect with a new generation of tobacco users.
“I want to ensure that my peers understand that candy-flavored tobacco is not safer than cigarettes or other ‘plain’ tobacco products,” said Kareem Golden (Putnam County), SWAT State Chair. “I see these products more and more in my everyday life -- in magazines, at sporting events, at local convenience stores. Plus, with some of the new dissolvable products, no one even knows when you’re using them, so I urge people to resist the lure of these products.”

Candy-flavored smokeless tobacco products are also perceived to be less harmful; but in reality, these products contain more nicotine than cigarettes, and 28 cancer-causing agents (carcinogens), including nitrosamines, which are the most harmful. In addition, people who experiment with smokeless tobacco often develop a pattern of regular daily use.
Fortunately, the onslaught of flavored tobacco products has not gone unnoticed. The controversial candy-flavored cigarette was banned under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Actin 2009. However, menthol cigarettes, flavored cigars, cigarillos and smokeless products were not included. Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is examining options for regulating these remaining categories of flavored tobacco products.

Many municipalities throughout the state of Florida have taken on candy-flavored tobacco head-on. In June, Sarasota County passed a resolution urging local vendors to cease the sale and marketing of all candy-flavored tobacco products. The Fort Myers City Council also signed a resolution that urges tobacco retailers to stop selling and marketing all flavored tobacco in the city limits.


Remember, candy-flavored tobacco products pose significant health risks. They can cause cancers of the mouth, lung, pancreas, esophagus, and larynx and possibly contribute to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other respiratory diseases.

Don’t be fooled by the most dangerous disguise of them all.  If you are looking to quit or would like to encourage someone to stop using candy-flavored tobacco, Tobacco Free Florida can help. Tobacco Free Florida offers a number of free and convenient resources to help all tobacco users quit.

• Phone: Call the Florida Quitline at 1-877-U-CAN-NOW to speak with a Quit Coach who will help you assess your addiction and help you create a personalized quit plan.
• Online: Enroll in the Web Coach®, which will help you create your own web-based quit plan that’s right for you, visit https://www.quitnow.net/florida.
• In-person: Visit the Florida Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Network’s website, http://ahectobacco.com, to locate your local AHEC and sign up for Quit Smoking Now group classes. 

ABOUT TOBACCO FREE FLORIDA

Tobacco Free Florida (TFF) is a statewide cessation and prevention campaign funded by Florida’s tobacco settlement fund.  The program is managed by the Florida Department of Health, specifically the Bureau of Tobacco Prevention Program.  TFF’s mission is to combat the pervasive problem of tobacco use in the Sunshine State, where each year, more than 28,000 Floridians die from smoking and tobacco-related diseases cost the state an estimated $19.6 billion in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

Since its inception in February 2008, TFF has reached millions of Floridians through advertising, grassroots initiatives, social media, and public relations efforts as a means of providing information and offer resources to help tobacco users quit.  Smokers and smokeless tobacco users interested in quitting are encouraged to call the Florida Quitline at 1-877-U-CAN-NOW to speak with a quit coach.  To learn about TFF and the state’s free quit smoking resources, visit www.tobaccofreeflorida.com or follow the campaign on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TobaccoFreeFlorida or Twitter at twitter.com/tobaccofreefla.

 

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Stop Bullying: SPEAK UP

Bullying hurts our kids. 

 

It can have a lasting and damaging impact on their lives – sometimes more than we realize. Our goal is to raise awareness of the simple, yet powerful actions that parents, kids, and educators can take to prevent bullying. We hope to inspire millions of bystanders to take action by speaking up when they see bullying and to grow a community committed to ending bullying.

 

For more information visit www.StopBullyingSpeakUp.com and join their Facebook page.

Red Ribbon Campaign: Preventing Teen Drug Use

The National Family Partnership organized the first Nationwide Red Ribbon Campaign. NFP provides drug awareness by sponsoring the annual National Red Ribbon Celebration. Since its beginning in 1985, the Red Ribbon has touched the lives of millions of people around the world. In response to the murder of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena, angered parents and youth in communities across the country began wearing Red Ribbons as a symbol of their commitment to raise awareness of the killing and destruction cause by drugs in America.

Enrique (Kiki) Camarena was a Drug Enforcement Administration Agent who was tortured and killed in Mexico in 1985. When he decided to join the US Drug Enforcement Administration, his mother tried to talk him out of it. "I'm only one person", he told her, "but I want to make a difference."

On Feb. 7, 1985, the 37-year-old Camarena left his office to meet his wife for lunch. Five men appeared at the agent's side and shoved him in a car. One month later, Camarena's body was found. He had been tortured to death.

In honor of Camarena's memory and his battle against illegal drugs, friends and neighbors began to wear red badges of satin. Parents, sick of the destruction of alcohol and other drugs, had begun forming coalitions. Some of these new coalitions took Camarena as their model and embraced his belief that one person can make a difference. These coalitions also adopted the symbol of Camarena's memory, the red ribbon.

In 1988, NFP sponsored the first National Red Ribbon Celebration. Today, the Red Ribbon serves as a catalyst to mobilize communities to educate youth and encourage participation in drug prevention activities. Since that time, the campaign has reached millions of U.S. children and families.

The National Family Partnership (NFP) and its network of individuals and organizations continue to deliver his message of hope to millions of people every year, through the National Red Ribbon Campaign.

Learn more - click here.

Caregiver Village: Making A Difference

Today in the U.S. alone over 50 million individuals are caregivers for an aged, ill or challenged family member.  Whether you have a child with autism or ADHD or a parent with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s, you may be one of those millions, experiencing an unprecedented level of stress and personal challenge.

Despite millions of dollars and hundreds of dedicated websites, family caregivers are still in trouble. With over 60 million family caregivers in the U.S. alone, many are sick (with nearly twice the rate of chronic illnesses as their non-caregiving peers); they’re depressed (40-60% report significant feelings of depression) and they’re frustrated, unable to find resources or solutions they need to help with the basic, day-to-day caregiving tasks they face. They’re also costly to our economy, accounting for an estimated $33 billion in lost productivity to our country’s businesses.

It’s time to change this description of the family caregiver. It’s time improve the lives of family caregivers. Caregiver Village, a brand new place on the web, is dedicated to doing exactly this.

Learn more:

caregivervillage.com
facebook.com/caregivervillage
twitter.com/cgvillage 

Abuse Bites

Abuse Bites was created by Lisa Freeman who is an abuse survivor.

Many don't realize that bullying isn't just limited to kids and teens.  Adult bullying is more prevalent that many know.

Abuse Bites Workshops Aim to Educate & Train employers and workers alike how to defeat bullying and make the workforce a more enjoyable, safer, and productive place.

October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.  Find out how you can help your community combat bullying and learn more about bullying prevention.

GAPRA: Global Alliance for Preventing Relational Aggression

Welcome Schools and Youth Organizations!

You Know the Devastating Effect Relational Aggression (RA), or Emotional Bullying, Can Have in Your School or Youth Organization. Are You Ready to Equip Your Staff, Volunteers, and Parents with Tools to Reduce Relational Aggression in Your Community?

Relational Aggression Causes Emotional Suffering

This unproductive behavior frequently:

• Wastes opportunities for growth and learning
• Steals time
• Causes dropout behavior
• Decreases attendance
• Leads to eating disorders, self-mutilation, depression or suicide
• Leaves lasting emotional scars

The Solution: Train Everyone in Your School or Youth Organization

Training your staff, volunteers and parents to recognize relational aggression and to know how to effectively deal with it will have a positive influence on your youth.

Membership in GAPRA Equips Your School or Organization with Training, Tools and Support – Without Having to Leave Town!

When your school or youth organization joins GAPRA, you equip everyone in your community with the knowledge and skills to prevent relational aggression through monthly training opportunities, CDs, transcripts and checklists/forms/templates.

You, your group leaders, parents, counselors, teachers, administrators and others will learn a common language and positive framework to proactively address relational aggression.

Empower Your Community to Think and Work Together to Support Your Youth From Every Angle. Join GAPRA Now!

GAPRA membership is affordable.

Learn more about how an annual GAPRA membership will help your community.