Julia Carrano relinquished her crown on June 23rd, 2024, after one year of reign as Miss New Jersey Teen USA 2023. Parenting Thru Trauma interviewed Julia and her mother, Nancy Carrano, in May as they prepared for Julia's transition. Part two of our two-part interview includes a conversation with Julia's mom, Nancy, talking about their journey to identify and treat Julia's mental health symptoms, medication challenges, and navigating child-serving systems. Our conversation also takes a look at the impact of early childhood trauma and how that may have played a role.

Nancy Carrano is a professional photographer in her own right and plays the role of Julia's Manager.

More on Julia Carrano at https://missnewjerseyusa.com/teen/

https://www.tiktok.com/@julia.carrano

Julia is a high school honors graduate from Manahawkin, NJ. She began attending college to study psychology, hoping to one day obtain her postgraduate degree and become a mental health therapist working with teens. Her battles with mental wellness put her plans on hold.

As a survivor of treatment-resistant depression, the current youth mental health crisis is near and dear to Julia’s heart. As Miss New Jersey Teen USA 2023, Julia made breaking the stigma of youth mental health her platform and shared her story with young people throughout New Jersey and elsewhere to help them understand ‘it’s ok not to be ok’ and that kindness counts. She worked alongside peer groups and continues to volunteer as a trained crisis counselor with the National Crisis Text Line.

Even Miss New Jersey Teen USA 2023, Julia Carrano, Struggles with Mental Wellness

Julia Carrano relinquished her crown today, June 23rd, 2024, after one year of reign as Miss New Jersey Teen USA 2023. Parenting Thru Trauma interviewed Julia and her mother, Nancy Carrano, in May as they prepared for Julia's transition. Part one of our two-part interview includes Julia and Nancy talking about their journey to identify and treat Julia's mental health symptoms, medication challenges, and navigating child-serving systems. Julia also shared her experience with early childhood trauma and how that may have played a role.

More on Julia Carrano at

Julia is a high school honors graduate from Manahawkin, NJ. She began attending college to study psychology, hoping to one day obtain her postgraduate degree and become a mental health therapist working with teens. Her battles with mental wellness put her plans on hold.

As a survivor of treatment-resistant depression, the current youth mental health crisis is near and dear to Julia’s heart. As Miss New Jersey Teen USA 2023, Julia made breaking the stigma of youth mental health her platform and shared her story with young people throughout New Jersey and elsewhere to help them understand ‘it’s ok to not be ok’ and that kindness counts. She worked alongside peer groups and continues to volunteer as a trained crisis counselor with the National Crisis Text Line.

Twins Tiffany and Kimberly Brown, age 27, bounced from foster home to foster home as children until they found permanency (along with their younger brother) with Family Forward Advocacy CT co-founder, Cheryl Brown. Their journey began with a series of removals, numerous foster placements, and prolonged separation from several other siblings. Weekly supervised visits kept emotions raw and adoptive family attachment complicated. Their school-aged years were wrought with misguided state child-serving systems interference, intense psychological needs left unmet by the psychiatric community, and they struggled to fully achieve emotional grounding until young adulthood.

In this podcast, you will meet these dynamic women as they talk about their attachment and emotional struggles to survive. Their educational and professional achievements, fueled by twin competition and a desire to not let their past define them, continue to lead both with connection and purpose to a hope-filled life.

Spend an hour with Kimberly and Tiffiany and discover how regardless of your experience and feelings of lost hope now, hope can, in fact, be restored.

Safety planning and having a safety plan for when your attachment challenged or complex trauma-informed child's dysregulation exceeds chaos is essential. The 911 and 211 services or emergency mobile psychiatric services call-line can be a lifeline, but it can also be challenging. As a parent, you can feel shame, fear, and even failure because you made the call at all. This episode provides context around the 911 call decision and reveals what the experience might look and feel like after responders arrive at your home.

Maureen O'Neill-Davis and Cheri Brown of Family Forward Advocacy CT, Inc., a parent and policy advocacy organization, talk about their own experiences with "making the call" and discuss the reasons why calling first responders is a necessary consideration and what various outcomes of that decision might look and feel like. 

Managing the behaviors of kids with Developmental Trauma Disorder aka RAD, complex trauma histories, and kids who lost biological parents early in life can be challenging and sometimes dangerous. Safety must be a priority and natural consequences including first responders arriving at your home help teach and reinforce to your emotionally unstable child that their conduct does in fact have consequences. And calling 911 can effectively document your child's out-of-control patterns which may help you to gain access to higher levels of care for your child down the road. 

This is a hard journey, but you are not alone. Need support? Contact us at www.FamilyForwardAdvocacyCT.com

Trends in Child Welfare are an important topic as the removal of children, even infants, from the care of their biological parent(s) is traumatic on children. Statistic suggests that only 20% of the children in foster care today are there as a result of bona fide, evidence-based neglect, or abuse. This statistic also then suggests that 80% of children were removed and are in the custody of state child welfare agencies for other reasons. What are those reasons and how does federal funding influence state child welfare policies, practices, programs, and removal protocols? The Family First Prevention Services Act was signed into law in February of 2018. Its goal is to shift child welfare practices by shifting a portion of funding and outcome measures by reducing the number of kids coming into foster care by providing funding for prevention services, kinship placement, and earlier access to child mental health care. In the episode, we speak to attorney Connie Reguli about her family law defense practice in TN, her child welfare reform advocacy, and the trends she sees in the practice of child welfare.

Find Connie Reguli at www.FamilyForwardFoundation.com

For more on Family Forward Advocacy CT visit www.FamilyForwardAdvocacyCT.com

Host Maureen O'Neill - Davis and fellow advocate, Cheri Brown, discuss why kids who survive early traumatic experiences including the loss of a biological parent and multiple caregivers, often present with aggression towards primary caregivers. They explore their own experiences, provide tips and strategies, and touch on the process of calling 911 on your own child. 

This episode runs about 54 minutes.

www.FamilyForwardAdvocacyCT.com offers direct advocate services, parent mentoring, and advocacy training and coaching for those parenting through trauma and advocating for child-serving system change.

A Parenting Thru Trauma Podcast introduction - Parents Parenting Thru Trauma know how hard and often dangerous it can be to support, contain, and keep traumatized kids safe. Helping them heal to eventually thrive isn't for the faint of heart. The heightened state of alert they live in every day can be complicated and riddled with chaos and crises. We can help.

Listen to our introduction as we will launch on March 2nd, 2021 with information, tips, strategies, and more. You are not alone...anymore!