Worcester ACTs
By Katherine Susman | Categories: | Comments Off on Worcester ACTs
The HOPE Coalition (Healthy Options for Prevention and Education), funded by UMass Memorial Medical Center, is launching a new initiative, Worcester Addresses Childhood Trauma (Worcester ACTs) for children who have witnessed violence. This program is a response to research conducted by the coalition’s director Laurie Ross, PhD in partnership with the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative (WYVPI).
For over a decade, the Worcester Police Department (WPD) has actively worked to reduce gang-related violence, and progress has been made in lowering the occurrence of violent incidents involving city youth. But young men of color — particularly Latinos — are still highly involved in serious incidents. In 2012, as the research partner with the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI), a state program, Dr. Ross read case histories of young men who are a proven risk for gun or knife violence. Thirty percent had their first violent experience (as a victim or witness) before age 12, and 30 percent were parents, creating the potential for an ongoing cycle of violence. Analysis of WPD data encompassing 24,000 men (younger than 27) and 98,000 incidents showed that if they had been a victim or witness to violence before age 12, they were 49 percent more likely to have a violent incident later and participate in three more recorded incidents than those not involved with police at an early age.
Even more surprising was that if they had been a witness only, they were more likely to experience violence later in life than those who were victims only. While most social services support victims, Worcester ACTs will introduce timely trauma-informed family support for children under 10 and their families who have witnessed an incident. Within 72 hours of a call to the police, a culturally competent Community Health Worker (CHW) will help the family with emergent and longer term needs.
Worcester ACTs includes the below partners, who work together to address an identified gap in the connection of young children who have witnessed violence to needed social and mental health services:
- Center for Health Impact
- Central Massachusetts Area Health Education Center, Inc.
- Clark University
- Community Healthlink
- Fairlawn Foundation Fund at Greater
- Worcester Community Foundation
- Straight Ahead Ministries
- UMASS Medical School Child Trauma Training Center
- Worcester Division of Public Health
- Worcester Police Department
- YWCA of Central Massachusetts
All 400 WPD officers have already received training on how trauma affects a child’s brain development and hiring of CHWs is underway. The program launches in January, 2018.