StrategiestoSupportChildrenExposedtoViolenceJune2021.docx

Table of Contents
I. Description of the Issue 1
i. Nature and Scope of the Problem 1
ii. Target Population 8
iii. Previous or Current Attempts to Address the Problem 9
iv. Current Gaps in Programming/Services 11
v. Research and Evaluation Studies Related to the Problem 13
II. Program Design and Implementation 15
i. Description of Program Operation 15
ii. Strategies to Achieve Program Goals and Objectives 16
i. Children and Parent Services 17
ii. Teen Services 20
iii. Parent Services 21
iv. Awareness Campaign 25
iii. Leveraged Resources 27
iv. Sustainability Plan 27
III. Capabilities and Competencies 28
i. Organization’s Experience and Capabilities 28
ii. Previous Experience Implementing Projects of Similar Design and Magnitude 30
iii. System for Fiscal Accountability 32
iv. Management and Staffing — Roles and Responsibilities and Organizational Structure. 33
v. Planning Team 37
IV. Data Collection Plan 38
i. Process to Measure Project Performance 38
ii. Process to Report Data 38

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I.
Description of the Issue

i.
Nature and Scope of the Problem

Sadly, children of all ages are exposed to violence. Violence of all sorts has become far too common in the United States and the District of Columbia (referred to as the District hereafter) is no different. Children in the District are exposed to violence at excessive levels in their homes, schools, and communities. Such exposure has multiple long-term effects that can last well into adulthood. This includes the perpetuation of violence and significant physical, mental, and emotional damage.
Results from the 2015 National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) indicate that in total, 37.3% of youth (0 to 17 years) experienced a physical assault and 9.3% of youth experienced an assault-related injury in the study year. Overall, 15.2% of children and youth experienced maltreatment by a caregiver, of which 5.0% experienced physical abuse. In total, 5.8% witnessed an assault between parents.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Finkelhor, D., Turner, H., Shattuck, A., & Hamby, S. (2015). Prevalence of childhood exposure to violence, crime, and abuse. JAMA Pediatrics, 169(8), 746-754. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0676 (CV 331)]

According to the DC Coalition, 39% of women have reported physical assault, sexual assault, or stalking by a current or former intimate partner. In 2017, a study that included all 12 DC-based domestic violence (DV) programs report that they serve up to 616 victims in one day, answered up to 92 hotline calls in a day, and 418 adult and child victims of DV found refuge in emergency shelters or transitional housing provided by local DV programs. Children are susceptible to seeing and hearing violent encounters between partners, especially in low-income households where there is limited space in the living quarters.
In the District, over 20% of our children (21.3%) have been exposed to an adverse childhood experience,[footnoteRef:2] including an estimated 9.0% who have been a victim of or witness to neighborhood violence.[footnoteRef:3] According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of the D. C., the number of homicides increased to 166 in 2019, up by 4% over the previous year. Homicides in the District rose for the third consecutive year in 2020, reaching nearly 200 (198), making 2020 the deadliest for the District since 2004. More than 920 people were shot in the District in 2020, a 64% increase from three years ago. By June 4, 2021, the number of homicides was 22% higher than that of June 4, 2020 (65 in 2020 compared to 79 in 2021). According to the Washington Post, the 165th homicide victim in 2020 was 16-year-old Kareem Palmer, who had plans to graduate from Eastern Senior High School and become the first of his siblings to attend college, a little boy was fatally shot at a “stop the violence” cookout, and a toddler was killed by gunfire as he was strapped in a car seat. These are snippets of evidence that our children are dangerously exposed to violence. [2: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American journal of preventive medicine, 14(4), 245-258.] [3: 2019 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) data.]

Schools should be a safe and enriching environment in which our children can learn, but it has become a place of dread and fear for many children living in the District. The frequency of gun violence near schools in the District has put students in danger while walking to and from school and while in school. For example, in 2019 in the daylight hours of a Wednesday afternoon, a 33-year-old man was shot and killed in the southeast region of the District, just a short walk from where children at Savoy Elementary School were in their afternoon classes and Hendley Elementary School, nearly a mile away, was hit by bullets twice in two weeks.
According to data gathered by the ShotSpotter gunshot detection service and analyzed by Guns & America, at least 84 schools in the District experienced one or more gunshots within 1,000 feet of their campus during the school day in the 2016-2017 school year. This does not include areas in the city with no ShotSpotter data available. Five schools in the District, all with elementary-aged students on the premises, experienced at least 10 shootings during the 2016-2017 school year. These shootings that occur near grade schools, are routine occurrences for many students in the District and considering the rise in gun violence over the past three years, these numbers are expected to be higher now.
Many of the shootings in the District are related to gang violence but gang activities expose children to violence in more ways than shootings. Gang members are humans with parents, siblings, and other family members just like anyone else. Often, it is a parent (mostly the father) and/or older siblings in a family that first engage in gang activities. Because of the family’s affiliation, the natural next occurrence is socialization of younger family members.
Socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of a society (in this case the home/family). It is the process by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching (mostly nonverbal) and is therefore how social and cultural continuity are achieved. The presence of a parent or an older sibling who is gang-involved in the home creates an environment for the socialization of a younger child to the same lifestyle. As well, it creates the opportunity for children to be repeatedly exposed to violence by means of the death or injury of loved ones or individuals they know through their gang-involved family members. Many of these children experience the injury or death of an older sibling, their father, or other relatives far too often.
In addition to the natural process of socialization in the home, siblings of known gang members are at high risk of being exposed to violence and being drawn into gang involvement. Research done by the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa shows that siblings as young as six have been found to demonstrate anti-social behaviors that point to risk factors for gang membership. The study also shows that for 12 to 17-year-olds, being the sibling of a gang member is a risk factor for gang involvement. Younger siblings of gang members are often recruited as active members and are often being used to conceal weapons and deliver and deal drugs. Without controversy, family involvement in gang activity increases the risk for gang membership in younger children.
There are several reasons younger children choose to follow the same path as their gang-involved family members or older siblings, including: feeling obligated to carry on in an older sibling’s footsteps, feeling that gang membership is inevitable due to being associated with the gang activities of a sibling, a desire to emulate older siblings (especially brothers), the normalization of gang activity at home, and a desire to lead the “glamourous” gang lifestyle of older siblings. It is undoubtedly harmful to younger siblings when they identify with or aspire to be like their older gang-involved siblings. In fact, being associated with gangs in any way is harmful to children despite how they got involved. Female siblings of gang members are at high risk for sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and abuse. Young males (and females) are at high risk of incarceration, injury, and early death.
The proposed For Our Children program will address the needs and risk factors — at the family/home, school, and community levels — of children living in the District who are between 9 and 15 years and are exposed to violence of all sorts. Risk factors can be defined as life events or experiences that are associated with an increase in problem behaviors, such as drug use or gang activities. For example, being the child of a single parent who is often absent from the home and lacks adequate support, can be considered a risk factor. This could put children within the ready reach of the negative influences of another child or an adult who is already gang-involved, or because they are unsupervised, they could find themselves in locations where violence will likely occur or where they are subjected to predators.
The households that the proposed For Our Children program will target is predominantly headed by single women. All households will be low-income, most of the heads of households will have low education, most will be unemployed, most will have survived or are currently experiencing partner abuse, and most will be experiencing multi-generation gang involvement and prior incarcerations. Additionally, most will live in communities where the children are at high risk of directly or vicarious experiencing community violence at or around their schools or in their communities. Added risk factors that will mark these families include poor parental supervision, family disorganization, including broken homes and parental drug and/or alcohol addiction, family violence, lack of adult and parental role models, parental criminality, parents with violent attitudes, siblings with anti-social behaviors, and extreme economic deprivation.
Unemployment is an empirically founded risk factor and a significant predictor of community and family violence, especially intimate partner violence[footnoteRef:4]. Job loss and ongoing financial stress are positive correlates of domestic violence, irrespective of whether it is the perpetrator or victim whose job is lost. Both income stress and an increase in time spent together seem to contribute to this. The target population will likely have long-term, deeply entrenched financial stress that puts them at risk for increased and ongoing domestic violence. [4: D. M. Capaldi, N. B. Knoble, J. Wu Shortt, and H. K. Kim. A Systematic Review of Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Violence. Partner Abuse. 2012 Apr; 3(2): 231–280.]

Family violence and the lack of parental supervision, or structure in the home create a litany of problems for children. First, the children do not learn how to respect authority. Second, they have an unmet need for recognition and belonging and almost always seek to meet these needs through unhealthy and sometimes means. Third, they will seek to get away from the chaos in their homes to anything but that, which often lands them in the hands of child predators who are seeking children to help them carry out crimes or to be victims of the predators’ own sadistic acts that meet their own deviant needs. Authorities say it is becoming common for grade-school children to join gangs. Sadly, sometimes it is their own older gang-involved siblings that recruit them into gangs.
Considering the negative home environment of these children, they often lack a sense of identity, self-esteem, and unprotected, and they are often angry due to the victimization they have suffered. Consequently, the violence in the children’s homes bleeds into the streets by way of the children’s gang involvement and eventual gang related crimes.
The For Our Children program will address the needs of children who are directly and indirectly exposed to violence in their homes, at or near their schools, and in their communities. Specifically, the program will address the primary and secondary trauma elicited by exposure to violence, offer services to the children and families to reduce the children’s risk and actual exposure to violence, and offer services to lessen the impact of being exposed to violence. We will work with the heads of households to put protective factors in place to prevent children from further exposure to violence.

Effects of the Problem on the Target Population and the Larger Community

Our “fight or flight” response to danger, stress, and traumatic events is normal and adaptive; it is an important reaction to threats that increases our chances of survival. But with repeated exposure to trauma, as in the case of recurring community and family violence, this natural response becomes overactive, with the brain on constant alert. This state of prolonged agitation, sometimes referred to as toxic stress, can contribute to severe physical and mental health problems later in adulthood.[footnoteRef:5] Research shows that chronic exposure to traumatic events can change how our brain functions, negatively impacting multiple aspects of our daily lives: how we learn, make decisions, process and regulate emotions, and interact with others. [5: Shonkoff, J. P., Boyce, W. T., & McEwen, B. S. (2009). Neuroscience, molecular biology, and the childhood roots of health disparities: building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. JAMA, 301(21), 2252-2259.]

Trauma can also influence children’s social-emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. Children exposed to violence can experience ongoing mental health challenges that disrupt their everyday school lives. They can become less engaged in and happy at school.[footnoteRef:6] Furthermore, these children are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression,[footnoteRef:7] which, in an educational context, can negatively affect their relationships with peers and teachers and their adjustment to the school environment.[footnoteRef:8] Because connectedness to school is a key factor in academic performance, unaddressed traumatic stress can dramatically reduce children’s academic achievement over time, which may impact their well-being and success in life.[footnoteRef:9] [6: Borofsky, L. A., Kellerman, I., Baucom, B., Oliver, P. H., & Margolin, G. (2013). Community violence exposure and adolescents’ school engagement and academic achievement over time. Psychology of violence, 3(4), 381–395. doi:10.1037/a0034121] [7: McDonald, C. C., & Richmond, T. R. (2008). The relationship between community violence exposure and mental health symptoms in urban adolescents. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 15(10), 833-849.] [8: McGill, T., Self-Brown, S. R., Lai, B. S., Cowart, M., Tiwari, A., LeBlanc, M., & Kelley, M. L. (2014). Effects of exposure to community violence and family violence on school functioning problems among urban youth: The potential mediating role of posttraumatic stress symptoms. Frontiers in public health, 2, 8.] [9: Lynch, M. (2003). Consequences of children’s exposure to community violence. Clinical child and family psychology review, 6(4), 265-274.]

Trauma changes our brain, our body, and how we interact with and react to the world and people around us. Trauma symptoms may look like a lot of different things in children — for example, “acting out,” disruptive behaviors, withdrawal from social life, or fidgeting in class — so most teachers may not even realize that a student is struggling with traumatic stress. Similarly, most parents may not link their children’s acting out behaviors with the violence to which they are repeatedly exposed.
Community violence is a common example of childhood adversity, which is a broad umbrella term for a range of circumstances that pose a serious threat to a child’s behavioral and mental well-being.[footnoteRef:10] Community violence often happens without warning, which can cause feelings of sudden, horrifying shock and loss of control and safety. It involves intentional acts to harm others, which can lead to feelings of extreme mistrust of others and powerlessness. [10: Exposure to community violence as a new adverse childhood experience category: Promising results and future considerations. Families in society, 98(1), 69-78.]

Family violence such as partner or child abuse creates an unsafe home. A person’s home, if nowhere else, should be the place they feel safe. Children who are exposed to any form of violence in the home, are deprived of this basic right. This unsafety drives the children into the community as they seek safety in the streets and from/among the wrong people.
ii.
Target Population

The For Our Children program will serve children residing in the District who are between nine and 15 years old. Serving children as young as nine will allow us to address at an early stage, the primary and secondary trauma that the children are experiencing. All children will be members of low-income households. The program will serve the parents of these children as well.
The population served by this program will be mostly individuals of African American and Hispanic descent and their employment outlook is bleak even as unemployment rates decline. In general, African American–Caucasian employment gaps widened and Hispanic–Caucasian gaps persisted as unemployment rates dropped. According to the Economic Policy Institute, at the end of quarter 3 in 2020, the unemployment rate for Caucasians was 3.5% and 15.6% for African Americans, 446% higher than Caucasians.
We will serve 60 children each year, for a total of 180 children over the three-year implementation. We anticipate that at least 70% (169) of the parents of the children in the program will fully participate in the program.
iii.

Previous or Current Attempts to Address the Problem

CSC implements three programs each year that serves a population in which children are sometimes exposed to violence of varying sorts and at varying degrees.
The first is the Community-Based Child Well-Being Services program that we offer under contract with the Child and Family Service Agency (CFSA). CSC has been providing these services since its inception in 1996. The target areas for these services are Wards 1 and 2 in the District. Services are provided to reduce family risk factors and to support the families in preventing out-of-home child placements. The type of violence to which we often see children in households served by this program exposed to include physical abuse, violence in the community (gun, gang, robberies, etc.), child physical and sexual abuse, and DV. The services we offer to address these needs are relocation when necessary, Family Group Conferences to devise a family-led plan to address the issue, intensive case management that is directed at the issues pertaining to violence occurrence and exposure, and referrals.

Second, with funding from Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants (OVSJG), CSC has been offering truancy prevention services to families in elementary and middle schools in Wards 1, 5, 7, 8 since 2001 and have served up to 13 schools and well over 100 families in a year. We offer multi-tiered, individualized services that address the factors contributing to school truancy. With the understanding that truancy is but a symptom of the problem, our services get to the core of the issues that lead to truancy, and we find that violence and disarray in the homes are directly associated with school truancy. The type of violence to which the children in this program are often exposed include domestic and community violence, pressure to join gangs, and robbery. The services we offer to address these concerns are safety planning, after school activities, relocation support, intensive cases management services for violence interventions, and referrals.

Third, under contract with The Community Partnership for Prevention of Homelessness (TCP), CSC has successfully provided Family Rehousing Stabilization Program (FRSP), that provides case management services to prevent homelessness among District-resident families for the past 23 years (since 1998). The families served by this program are formerly homeless families that need resources and stability to maintain newly acquired housing. Like school truancy, homelessness is the result of an amalgamation of risk factors and DV, and other forms of violence within the homes are direct correlates of homelessness. The type of violence that the children in the households served by this program are often exposed to include those related to substance abuse in the community and in the homes, high crime in the communities, and DV.
To address the problem, we help the parents maintain housing by referring them to and supporting them through workforce development and help bring structure into their homes by introducing parenting education and support. Also, we provide mental health counseling, refer clients who have been exposed to DV or are victims of a violent crime to DC Safe and DC Crime Victims Compensation Program, enroll children in summer camps, collaborate with school administrators to address the educational needs of the children, and complete safety planning as well as conduct client safety checks with the clients. Additionally, we refer families who are battling with substance abuse to Addiction Prevention & Recovery Administration as well as D. C. Department of Behavioral Health for extensive mental health treatment.
Concerning exposure to violence in schools, CSC has been providing school-based violence education/prevention programming in two partner schools — Cardozo and Columbia Heights Education Campus — since 2002. Both schools are in the same Ward where CSC’s headquarters is located. In any given fiscal year, CSC is always providing either gang prevention/intervention, Soccer Diversion Program, parent support groups for teen parents and/or life skills / self-development sessions for high-risk students. The principal and administrators of both schools know and do use CSC as a resource when there are apparent or impending outbreaks of youth gang violence in their schools. Currently both schools are partner sites for our gang prevention programs.
To address community violence, CSC provides a full range of gang violence programs — intervention, suppression, and prevention. The gang suppression and intervention programs serve youths under 18 years and the gang prevention program serves youths and adults; however, these programs are limited to residents of Wards 1 through 5 and we are already seeing more clients than there are resources to respond to the need.
These programs provide community/street outreach with substantial presence in the community, case management, life skills training, workforce development, mediations and peacemaking retreats, violence interception and interruption, Critical Incident Protocols, and referrals to and enrollment in other services and supports. Critical Incident Meetings are held within 24 hours of a homicide or serious incident. Community-based “Cool Down” activities are held to help communities heal from violence and build collective efficacy. All programs are provided in a trauma-informed environment and trauma-informed sessions are offered in a group setting on a quarterly basis. These sessions teach the participants how to recognize and respond to trauma in a healthy manner.
iv.
Current Gaps in Programming/Services

The programs in the District that offer services for high-risk youths aged 6 to 18 years have made tremendous attempts to reach children and youths who are exposed to and engaged in violence. However, most programs do not offer the services needed to help youths with complicated behavioral issues, and this is primarily due to inadequate funding (Urban Institute, 2015). Others do not provide the full array of services needed. For example, to improve situations for the children, the parents must also be served so that the home environment can improve and provide a nurturing place for the development of the children.
An example of a program with very good youth services but little to nothing for the parents is the Youth Services Center (YSC) is detention center for male and female youths of ages 6 to18 years. YSC offers 24-hour care, supervision, and custody for youths detained as ed by the DC Family Court Division or DC Superior Court. The youths receive counseling, educational services, and mentoring while detained, as well as are engaged in physical fitness and other creative arts programs (DC. gov. n.d.). The program encourages family involvement and provides frequent family visitation opportunities but there is no record of services being offered to the families to which most of these children will return.
There is a gap in service within CSC as well, and this program would help meet that need. CSC implements three violence prevention/intervention programs — two are youth-focused and the other serves youths and adults. While the programs seek to prevent and stop youth violence, they are not focused on the effects of exposure to violence. At most, we provide education on and support around trauma care, but this does not adequately address the damage that can result from exposure to violence. Furthermore, the children in the households of adult participants of the program do not receive any services. Furthermore, it should also be noted that these programs have a narrow focus, and concentrate solely on gang violence. Children in these households are exposed to all sorts of violence but their needs are not addressed.
Other programs that CSC implements that serve families with children who are exposed to violence are the Community-based Child Well-being, Truancy Prevention, and FRSP programs. We assess and address the needs of the children but due to limited resources and because the programs are mainly focused on the parents, the response is limited. Children in these households that are exposed to DV, have suffered the loss of siblings and family members due to gun violence, have experienced sexual abuse, and other forms of violence are in dire need of intensive personalized attention, but these children do not receive that level of care.
v.
Research and Evaluation Studies Related to the Problem

Community violence is recognized as a major public health problem (WHO, World Report on Violence and Health,2002) that Americans increasingly understand has adverse implications beyond inner cities. However, most of the research on chronic community violence exposure focuses on ethnic minority, impoverished, and/or crime-ridden communities while treatment and prevention focus on the perpetrators of the violence, not on the youth who are its direct or indirect victims. Cooley-Strickland, et. al (2009) conducted a study to better understand the impact of children’s chronic exposure to community violence on their emotional, behavioral, substance use, and academic functioning. The findings show that the public health impact of living in violent communities is significant, particularly for children. Among the emotional, behavioral and academic achievement correlates are anxiety, depression, disruptive and aggressive behavior, substance use, school disengagement, and academic failure which may have profound effects on children’s development from early childhood into adolescence and beyond.[footnoteRef:11] Copeland-Linder et. al (2010) also found that communities of predominantly African American adolescents with high community violence exposure report having the lowest self-worth when compared with their counterparts with less exposure to community violence.[footnoteRef:12] [11: M. Cooley-Strickland, T. Quille, R. Griffin, E. Stuart, C. Bradshaw, and D. Furr-Holden. Community Violence and Youth: Affect, Behavior, Substance Use, and Academics. Clinical Child Family Psychology Review. 2009 June; 12(2): 127–156.] [12: N. Copeland-Linder, S. Lambert, and N. Ialongo. Community Violence, Protective Factors, and Adolescent Mental Health: A Profile Analysis. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. 2010; 39(2): 176–186.]

Although research has found that urban youth are exposed to excessive levels of community violence, few studies have focused on the factors that alter the risk of exposure to violence or the processes through which youth who are exposed to community violence do better or worse. Goorman-Smith et.al investigated the risks of exposure to community violence and their relation to violence perpetration among a sample of 263 African American and Latino male youth living in inner-city neighborhoods. The study also examined the role that family functioning plays in moderating the risk. The study found that youth from struggling families—those that consistently used poor parenting practices and had low levels of emotional cohesion—were more likely to be exposed to community violence. It also finds a relation between exposure to violence and later violence perpetration. However, youth exposed to high levels of community violence but living in families that functioned well across multiple dimensions of parenting and family relationship characteristics perpetrated less …