Safe Long Beach: Safe Families Enhancement Project

The primary goals of the OJJDP youth violence portfolio are to promote the wellbeing of children, youth, and families; reduce violence; and improve community capacity to address all forms of violence. This program supports the enhancement of OJJDP’s youth violence prevention initiatives by inviting OJJDP localities presently implementing the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention (Forum), Community-Based Violence Prevention (CBVP), and/or the Defending Childhood initiatives to apply for funding to adopt practices and implement models from a different program to achieve their shared violence prevention objectives. This program serves to encourage current initiative sites to enhance, integrate, and align youth violence prevention strategies; coordinate existing resources; engage in community education and outreach; develop and maintain strong collaborations; increase the involvement of youth and families in decision making; and engage the faith community, media, law enforcement, advocates, victim services, business, and other key partners in collective action. These efforts are authorized under Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2015 (Pub. L. 113-235).

The purpose of the Safe Families Enhancement Project is to dismantle institutional silos, enhance awareness of trauma exposure and implement trauma-informed screening. The City of Long Beach will enhance existing violence prevention efforts by incorporating Defending Childhood Initiative recommendations into the Safe Long Beach Violence Prevention Plan to address critical service gaps for children, youth and families exposed to violence. The target population includes children, youth, and families exposed to violence living in the Central and North areas of Long Beach. Activities include implementing an awareness campaign, providing in-depth training for service professionals and institutionalizing trauma-informed screening tools. Project goals are to: 1) Increase awareness of and education about children exposed to violence and 2) Improve service delivery for children exposed to violence through organizational and systems change.

CA/NCF