OJJDP's State and Community Development Awards program was established to provide grants and cooperative agreements to organizations that OJJDP has selected for funds in prior years. This program has been authorized by an Act appropriating funds for the Department of Justice.
The Attorney General's Children Exposed to Violence Demonstration Program will develop and support comprehensive community-based strategic planning and implementation efforts to prevent and reduce the impact of children's exposure to violence in their homes, schools, and communities.
This project will work to reduce the impact of exposure to violence in homes, schools and communities for children 0-17, and help implement an integrated violence prevention and response system in Boston, MA.
More specifically, Boston's Defending Childhood Initiative (DCI), led by the Boston Public Health Commission and overseen by the Boston DCI Collaborative, brings together more than 45 organizations to continue implementing a multi-sector plan for preventing and reducing the impact of children's exposure to violence in homes, schools and the community. The requested supplemental funding will build on past successes by expanding training, capacity-building, and policy change efforts, and focusing on sustaining organizational change beyond the project period.
The Boston DCI vision is that the multiple sectors which interact with the city's children will be able to identify those who are exposed to violence or at high risk of exposure, and respond with evidence-based trauma informed interventions to prevent and reduce the impact of violence. Boston DCI envisions a city in which schools, early education, after-school programs, health care, law enforcement, community groups and others learn together, share best practices and fashion common solutions to violence. Boston DCI recognizes that violence and trauma are indicators of health inequities, and violence contributes to poor health. With a focus on equity, Boston DCI can help remediate the disproportionate health burdens in Boston communities with the highest rates of violence, concentrated poverty and other social inequities.
To achieve project goals, Boston DCI has identified five objectives for this grant:
(1) maintain the multi-sector Collaborative;
(2) provide cross-sector and sector-specific training and learning collaboratives to enhance the capacity of organizations and individuals to use best practices, promote resiliency, prevent violence, help organizations collaborate across sectors and support policy change; (3) build organizational capacity to support parents and create nurturing environments through a Boston Nurturing Network;
(4) with the engagement of and in neighborhoods disproportionately affected by violence, promote healthy adolescent relationships and engage men and boys in efforts to address family and community violence; and
(5) promote trauma-informed systems in the multiple sectors serving children, and improved data collection on children's exposure to violence through implementation of the state's 2012 health care cost containment law that enhances primary prevention and intervention services for children and families exposed to violence, and continued support for the Boston Police Department in implementing the department's enhanced reporting requirements on children who are exposed to violence.
NCA/NCF
