Resilient Worcester grant seeks to improve effectiveness of youth violence interventions
Though youth violence indicators have been improving in Worcester and the city has put into place several interventions to address the impacts of trauma and better support young people, Laurie Ross, dean of the college and professor of sustainability and social justice, knows more is needed to be done for children, youth, and their families.
That is the goal of Resilient Worcester, a project by Ross that will create an “upstream-to-downstream” system to reduce youth violence and address the inequitable impact of violence and trauma in the city as early in a young person’s life as possible. Ross has received $347,000 in grant funding from UMass Memorial Health Care to support this effort.
“What’s important to me is children and their wellbeing,” says Ross. “I’ve been working with youth in Worcester for a long time. People say that young people are the future, but they’re not just the future, they are the right now. And we know that if we can provide support and reduce stress on families who have been exposed to violence as early as possible, children and youth outcomes are so much more robust.”
Ross has been tracking youth violence and its impacts in Worcester for more than a decade and is the city’s research partner on youth violence prevention and intervention efforts. The Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative launched 10 years ago and since then, gun and knife incidents involving people ages 25 and younger have declined 31 percent, and arrests of young people have declined 68 percent. Still, more can be done to reduce youth violence and the ripple effect of trauma, Ross says. The grant will fill gaps and improve the functionality of two existing interventions:
- Handle with Care is a simple yet powerful model — if the police respond to an incident at a home with school-aged children, the Worcester Public Schools is notified with a message that says, “Handle with care.” This alerts a teacher that something happened in the child’s home that could impact the child’s behavior. No specific details of the incident are revealed, just the request to be gentle with that child. Although this program has been implemented in schools for several years, there is currently no mechanism in place to notify early education and care centers. Resilient Worcester will fill that gap.
- The Hub is an evidence-based program that assesses and addresses individuals and families for acute and complex risks — such as drug use, chronic homelessness, mental health concerns, and crime — and provides coordinated support and intervention. “Yet, in spite of knowing that families are facing tremendous stressors,” Ross says, “to date, we have found that very few cases involving families with young children have been brought to the Hub.”
“We have these responses ready, but what we found was that incidents are happening where referrals are not being made and that there is just this tremendous gap in responses for situations that involve families with young children,” Ross says.
“We’re trying to understand why these downstream interventions aren’t working as well as we want them to,” she says. “We’re trying to look upstream at some of the systemic issues around information sharing and stigma associated with accessing certain services.”
“The idea is that if we can reduce violence and trauma, the whole community will get healthier.”
professor Laurie Ross
Ross routinely receives data from the city and her analysis uncovered something unexpected: Men in Worcester who were involved in gun and knife violence as adults, either as a victim or perpetrator, often had their first contact with police at ages younger than 2 years old. This contact could be for any reason, including community disturbances or domestic violence. Through this data, Ross was able to predict that young boys who were present during an incident in which the police responded were more likely to become involved in violence as teenagers and young adults. She thinks this is because there was no intervention for the young boys after the incident for which police had been called.
This research shaped Ross’s belief that interventions earlier on will lessen the impact of trauma on children and families, and, ultimately, help to reduce youth violence.
“What this grant is helping us do is connect a lot of different dots,” says Ross. For instance, the grant will provide funding to hire an early childhood navigator to support Handle with Care and the Hub. Ross and her team will also monitor data from police showing the number of incidents occurring and whether a request was made for intervention.
All partners working on Resilient Worcester are receiving trauma, racial equity, and resilience training, Ross says.
“We’re hoping to build more trust among partners so that people are more apt to actually use the interventions that exist,” she says. “The idea is that if we can reduce violence and trauma, the whole community will get healthier.”
