messagefromA Message from our President & CEO

Welcome to a new year and a refreshed future for PolicyWise. This year, we are embarking on a plan to seek out projects in new markets. This means taking our expertise to other places and expanding on the experience we have gained since PolicyWise began in 2003.
 
This is a bold move, but one for which we are well-positioned. We know that every time we undertake a project, we, ourselves, learn something.
 
Sharing our knowledge and learning from new projects presents robust opportunities to grow the evidence available for services to children and families. As always, our existing clients and projects will continue to receive our unwavering attention and dedication. We're excited for the possibilities ahead!
 
-Robyn Blackadar
Journey Home journey

We'd like to thank everyone who was able to attend the  Journey Home  Launch event on January 14, 2020, at the Royal Alberta Museum. We were proud to partner with the Native Counselling Services of Alberta to launch this very important documentary. 
Thank you to Elder Campiou, Allen Benson, the Honourable Patti Laboucane-Benson, and Denise Lightning for joining us for our panel and Q&A session. Thank you also to the Edmonton Community Foundation for sponsoring the reception. 

Our hope is that together we can improve community approaches to ensuring children are meaningfully connected to their culture, community, and identity. To watch the full documentary, click here.

For those who were not able to attend, we are planning another event in Calgary in the spring of 2020. More details to come! 
ACEs Adverse Childhood Experiences Project

PolicyWise for Children & Families is conducting a three-year project to develop an evaluation framework related to adv erse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma, and resilience in Alberta. The project is funded by Alberta Health and aims to guide evidence-informed policy, practice, and evaluation to support effective use of ACEs, trauma, and resilience practices.

For the first phase of this project, PolicyWise conducted a rapid literature review and interviews with academic, policy, and practice leaders from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. The literature review and interviews were focused on understanding current evidence and knowledge on effective approaches to identify and assess individuals' experiences of childhood adversity. For highlights from the literature reviews and interviews, we've developed five downloadable information sheets (as seen on the left), which can be found on our website below. 

Learn about the next steps for this project and download the full report on our website. 
CLA
Addressing Child and Youth Addiction  and Mental Health in School Settings

The AHS Addiction and the Mental Health Strategic Clinical Network™ and PolicyWise are conducting a project to promote a provincial understanding of how health and education work together in the middle tier to deliver child and youth addiction and mental health supports in school settings. This objective is in support of the broader outcome, to ensure children and youth in Alberta have access to consistent and equitable cross-sectoral, collaborative mental health supports in school settings.

To learn more about this project and to download the full summary, visit our website. 
Rod
Meet our new PolicyWise Board Member, Jan Newberry!

We're pleased to welcome Jan Newberry as the newest board member to the PolicyWise Board of Directors!

Jan Newberry is a cultural anthropologist whose work first centered on Java, Indonesia. Her 2006 book Back Door Java: State Formation and the Domestic in Working Class Java considered the role of neighbourhood women in managing their communities. She has been a fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore and at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. Her more recent research has concerned early childhood education, care and development programs that emerged in Indonesia in response to World Bank and other intergovernmental initiatives. This work has appeared in Economy & Society, the Journal of Asian Studies, Indonesia, Ethics and Social Welfare, and Policy Futures in Education among other peer-reviewed journals.  Her current research concerns collaborative methods, including the Raising Spirit Project conducted with Opokaa'sin Early Intervention Society and funded by PolicyWise and the SSHRC-funded Urban Aboriginal Knowledge Network. This transmedia project included the production of a digital library to share Blackfoot childrearing values with early learners at Opokaa'sin and other members of the community. She is one of the founders of the University of Lethbridge's interdisciplinary Institute for Child and Youth Studies and continues her work with the institute as Past Director. She has been a Board of Governors Teaching Chair and her teaching has been recognized with a Distinguished Teaching Award and the American Anthropological Association/Oxford University Press Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
News and Updates  news
  • Congrats to our partners, the Alberta Nonprofit Network (ABNN), for the 1-year anniversary of their website launch. Read about the four priority sector-wide concerns and what our President & CEO, Robyn Blackadar, had to say about the progress ABNN has made so far in their blog.
  • We are excited to announce we will be hosting another Data to Action Day this spring in Red Deer. More details to follow!
Spotlight: Meet Sonya, our new practicum student!  spotlight

Sonya is an occupational health nurse at Cargill in High River. She has previous experience working in acute neurology and neurosurgery, as well as the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She has also moved around a lot: Tanzania, Texas, Toronto, and Edmonton. Currently, she is completing a Master of Public Health program through the University of Waterloo. She is passionate about knowledge mobilization and supporting evidence-based practice on the front-lines. In her spare time, Sonya loves spending time with her dogs, playing board games with friends, and watching basketball. She loves to travel and enjoys immersing herself in new cultures... especially the food .
Upcoming Events and Dates to Remember events
We Want to Hear from You!
We would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for how we can make future newsletters even more useful for you. Please send your comments to  [email protected] . 
Thank you!
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