Healing Hearts in Rampart: Responding to Children Exposed to Violence

Children's Institute, Inc. (CII)'s Children Exposed to Violence (CEV) Program is designed to address the widespread impact of Adverse Childhood experiences in the Rampart community. Despite high rates of domestic and community violence, this community remains largely under-served and resources to address the impact of trauma are scarce.

The purpose of this program is to support children exposed to violence in building protective factors that promote resilience; enhance family capacity to address underlying trauma; and build community capacity to support children who have experienced trauma.

CII will provide a continuum of trauma-informed, culturally appropriate services including on-site response at Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) crime scenes involving children, counseling, follow-up support, leveraged evidence-based mental health care, linkage to additional resources, and concrete supports. CII will leverage existing funding through their Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health contract to offer evidence-based mental health services. Youth will also be provided with access to positive youth development activities to build protective factors, including the Wyman Teen Outreach Program, a promising practice, and innovative arts programming through P.S. Arts.

Finally, CII will build on the work established during the grant planning process to codify a Collaborative Stakeholder Team. By the end of year 1, this team will create a comprehensive plan to address the needs of children exposed to violence. This will include addressing the needs of children, families, and the broader community. The program will achieve the following outcomes: strengthen protective factors to build resilience among enrolled children and families; expand services available to children impacted by violence in the Rampart community; and build community capacity to prevent and respond to violence.

The target population for the program will be children birth through 12 years who have been impacted by violence. Children will be identified through three referral pathways: the LAPD, a community health partner (Saban), and local community schools (Mann UCLA Community School and Camino Nuevo Charter Academy schools). There will be one subrecipient on this project, P.S. Arts, which provides arts education dedicated to advancing equity and opportunity for children in systemically under-resource communities.