Trauma-Informed Leadership and Workplace Culture Insights

In her book, Garbage Bag Suitcase, former foster youth Shenandoah Chefalo describes her childhood of abuse, followed by three years in...

Garbage Bag Suitcase: A MEMOIR (foster care awareness) with Shenandoah Chefalo Shenandoah's dreams for a stable childhood were shattered:...

Welcome! It has been brought to my attention recently that an amazing number of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and woman are...

Shenandoah Chefalo was abused and neglected as a child by her mother and step-father. At the age of 13, she was abandoned so she...

We all have small secrets. Shenandoah Chefalo had a big painful secret, that she only shared with her husband… after the wedding. Her new book, Garbage Bag Suitcase, tells the world her childhood story of being neglected and abused by a drug addicted mother and choosing to be placed into the foster care system at 13. Now, a highly respected and successful professional woman living in a small midwestern town, nobody would ever guess her painful story. This is not an easier st

This evening we interview Shenandoah Chefalo (author of the recently published memoir “Garbage Bag Suitcase”) about a blog she recently...

The state of group homes in B.C. and Alberta has reached crisis level, with a recent B.C. government report revealing problems that range...

There are a number of organizations in the United States and around the globe that work for the betterment of foster children, but in...

For over twenty years, I said nothing. I hid my status as a foster care survivor from almost everyone I knew. The label “foster kid” had...

Earlier this week, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 people who he said were serving sentences disproportionate to their crimes. They were all serving time for drug-related offences. After he commuted their sentences, President Obama called for reform to the criminal justice system. He was quoted as saying, “In far too many cases, the punishment simply doesn’t fit the crime.” President Obama is calling for a fairer and more equitable criminal justice system. This

Did you know that we have over 400,000 children in the foster care system each day in the United States? It's appalling and most States are seeing spikes in the number of referrals they are getting this year, and it is estimated that by the end of the year 2015 we will have close to half a million children living in foster care. What perhaps is even more astonishing than the pure volume of children living in care are the atrocious outcomes that face them once they age out of