Cure violence/safe streets model Flashcards
How are high risk youth identified for the program? Do people need to live in the catchment area?
how are VIs hired
Participants considered high risk and out of reach of traditional support systems
Long list of criteria of which someone must meet at least 6. includes for example: gang involvement, prior criminal history, involved in high risk street activity, victim of a shooting in past 90 days, recently released from prison for violent crime, weapon carrier, close to someone who was a recent victim, 14-25
hiring requirement for outreach is that they have credibility, rapport, and knowledge to identify and work with individuals at highest risk through past and developed relationships with key groups, establish rapport with new key individuals
Is the program all at the individual level? What level(s) are norm change occurring? What are the pros and cons of that?
Detection and interruption of violent conflicts/shooting events generally individual level although mediations between parties often occur, usually with multiple staff present.
Norm change at both individual and community level: working to change behavioral norms that support violence such as use of violence to resolve conflicts and gun carrying (more individual), at community level norms of acceptance of violence, try to increase collective efficacy
Public education, available resources (job, education, substance use), partnering with community organizations to host events
Important to focus most energy on small numbers of individuals responsible for large share of killings
What are staff trained in? Do they have enough training?
Staff are trained from the national cure violence organization
Required to complete 40 hours of training within 30 days from cure violence-
Training includes: Violence Interruption and Reduction Training (VIRT), Data Collection and Documentation Training; Basic Counseling Skills, Motivational Interviewing and Case Management; Conflict and Conflict Mediation Training
No. Recent report says 50% of staff feel adequately trained for their role, report calls for centralization of training and inadequate training as potential reason for inconsistent impacts
Is the program implemented with fidelity in Baltimore? How will you assess that?
Unsure. Internal evaluation ranked the sites by “operational and cultural norms” they did not publish the scores but only the rankings- clearly variability in fidelity
Rankings were based on some elements of fidelity: e.g. availability of in house resources for safe streets participants, sufficient administrative and fiscal capacity
Not a lot of trust in the rankings- site ranked the lowest is the site that has the most consistent postive impacts
Some qualitative interview questions in aim 1 will assess fidelity- e.g. what support and oversight their getting from their cbo. Ideally some of the program implementation data will assess fidelity e.g. documentation of referrals but it isnt going to be a key focus
Why doesn’t Baltimore employ both OW and VI? What are the pro/cons of that?
Budgeting issues. Pro is reduction of transfer of hands which can be challenging for people who have had bad experiences with social services
Mostly a con- violence interruption can be a fairly 24/7 on call job. Makes it harder to be calling service providers, doing data entry, working on broader community norms. Baltimore would benefit from hiring both
How are cbos chosen to run a site
Past site administration has been awarded via an RFP process. Mayor’s Office staff, community members and institutional partners have evaluated RFP submissions and those evaluations have driven site/administrator selections.
Requirements mostly functional- have space, can hire previously incarcerated individuals. Includes having existing relationships with community agencies and partners, and an ability to provide or connect SSB staff to trainings, referrals to supports like mental health care
Must have at least an indirect connection to the mission of violence reduction (pretty loose)
Chicago process eval: best large org that can directly provide services vs. Outside referral
Challenge with faith based: integration of religion into model a no no
Talk about the current CBOs
Living classrooms on the east side- include mcelderry park which has had a lot of trouble, several staff killed. And ellwood park which was discontinued due to implementation issues
Broad approach: equitable education, workforce development, community safety
They recently received a large grant from DOJ to establish a Crisis Management System which will be part of mayors new CVI ecosystem
Family health centers of baltimore (cherry hill) is an fqhc
Mondawmin: organization that connected various neighborhood associations- mostly greening activities and community events
Park heights renaissance: economic development, real estate developemnt
Catholic charities (sandtown) along with lifebridge health (woodbourne and belvedere) now in charge of the 10 active running sites
Want hospital based partners to facilitate integration with hospital programs
YAP (youth advocate program): most connected to youth and provision of social services (Penn North)
Which are the new CBOs moving forward. What are pros/cons of changing that model? Why did they change the model?
Catholic charities (sandtown) along with lifebridge health (woodbourne and belvedere) now in charge of the 10 active running sites
Want hospital based partners to facilitate integration with hospital programs
Decentralized approach decreasing program fidelity
Pros: help with cross site collaboration important for conflicts that cross geographic boundaries
Cons: lose connection to local resources, any credibility program had in community
What are the key program components of safe streets and how are they assessed?
directly mediate conflicts, identify and attempt to modify behavior of youth at high risk for violence perpetration, and change community norms around violence
To directly mediate conflicts, VI work to identify, resolve, and de-escalate conflicts that could lead to shootings. They must be aware of the dynamics in the community and able to intervene directly by trying to separate parties, buy time, or facilitate reconciliation.
Both OW and VI work to identify youth at high risk for violence perpetration and try to modify their behavior by teaching them how to resolve conflicts without resorting to lethal force and connecting them to services that would support a non-violent lifestyle such as workforce development training or GED programs.
OW conduct public education campaigns to counter norms around gun carrying and responding to threat or disrespect with violence. These campaigns include fliers, events such as block parties and cook outs, and a general consistent presence in the community.
Do shooting responses within 72 hours. All sites try to participate in shooting responses
Assessed: mediations are counted, monthly meetings to assess who SS are working with and whether it’s the right people, was an assessment of norm change among target population
SSB using a database that the national Cure Violence developed, not sure exactly what is in that database and what is reliably/consistently entered
New CVI ecosystem that Mayor Scott is proposing
provide stronger oversight and accountability of Safe Streets and focus on our commitments to our frontline violence interrupters — including greater support, safety, training, and career pathway development for the workforce
will include familiar programs, like Safe Streets and Roca, and grow to include additional partnerships with hospitals, public schools, victim services providers, life coaches and case managers
Describe the origins of the model and its first implementation in chicago
Dr. Gary Slutkin at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the 1990’s. Before developing the model, Dr. Slutkin worked internationally as an infectious disease doctor and based the model on two lessons learned from his previous work: gun violence spreads through networks like an infectious disease epidemic, and trained workers from the community are the most effective messengers for communicating health behavior change.
As applied to gun violence, the program attempts to break the transmission of violence by changing behaviors, attitudes, and social norms related to gun violence, particularly among males age 15-24 who are greatest risk of involvement in gun violence.
The program is implemented under a Community Based Organization (CBO) with established relationships in the community and is run by a team of Violence Interrupters (VI) and Outreach Workers (OW) who are well known in the community they work in and often have criminal histories and/or former gang affiliations.
These qualities are intended to increase their credibility and their ability to connect with youth engaged in violence or at risk of engagement
Operated in 20 sites across chicago that were all above median in crime and poverty
Why did baltimore start in mcelderry park
Initially run out of health dept and hopkins (webster) was quite involved in original implementation. Josh sharfstein was health commissioner at the time. Webster evaluated initial program. Phil Leaf really deeply involved. High violence area close to health department and hopkins
Pros/cons run out of the mayors office. Always true?
Pros: integration with other services, high political priority
Cons: things are more political and arugable bureaucratic than health dept. Concerns about re-election, public opinion, changing hands. Instability in mayors due to various criminal behaviors.
Moved from health dept to mayors office in 2017
What are the discontinued sites. How long did they run? Why were they discontinued?
Four discontinued sites. Union square was only a few months, elwood park, madison east end and mondawmin 3-4 years
Union square: Implementation/staffing issues
Other sites: saw dramatic increases in homicides and non fatal shootings after the sites opened, mondawmins largest coming from the freddie gray unrest where there was a big concentration of violence around the transportation hub in mondawmin
An intense feud between gangs selling drugs precipitated an incident in which 12 people were shot at a cookout in Madison-Eastend in the summer of 2009.27 28 The feud allegedly involved kidnapping of a gang leader’s family, murders and retaliatory violence during the period when Safe Streets was implemented. The intensity of this ongoing conflict may have made it difficult or impossible for OWs to mediate the very violent, gang-related conflicts in this area.
mondawmin: key supervisor indicted drug chargers, site worker shot and killed there
union square: stopped early bc leader also fed indictment (?) or something v. bad
main findings of the city’s recent internal evaluation
Did not assess program effectiveness. Interviewed staff at all levels of program implementation and some program participants, residents, community leaders
Individual level findings discussed directly with the sites and not shared publicly
Staff requested stronger partnerships with service providers for participant referrals, challenge of lack of stability in city gov including standardized policy and guidance, high staff turnover at site and central levels, staff want more opportunities to collab with staff at other sites, issues with equipment/technology, request larger budget, additional training, challenges making ends meet (salary between 40 and 60k), issues not being fully staffed, some physical spaces insufficient
