While it is almost instinctive to assume that the word recovery these days is in the exclusive domain of drug or alcohol addiction, the reality is that many people, including children, also need to find a healing path to recover from the ongoing trauma in their home lives.
Spy Board Advisor Dr. Bruce Purnell has had first-hand experience with the latter. For more than two decades, Purnell has been a regional and national advocate for children who have experienced acute trauma in their early lives. This condition, rarely diagnosed in the classroom, has the same debilitating effect that our veterans experience returning from the battlefield. In the case of children, it can have profound effects on their capacity to learn, but more importantly, their ability to trust and love.
In his Spy interview, Purnell outlines the challenges these children have at home and at school as well as his vision for the nonprofit organization he heads up called Higher Hopes located on the Western Shore. He also highlights a national movement to train teachers and prepare school systems to constructively work with these wounded children.
This video is approximately seven minutes in length.
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