Hub to introduce trauma teams for high-crime areas
‘We want community members to know the city cares’
Five new trauma response teams will aim to help members of high-crime areas in the city cope with violence — an initiative crafted at the request of worried residents, Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s office announced yesterday.
“We spent May to August of last year hosting 14 community listening sessions and heard from over 350 residents and providers,” said Catherine Fine, director of the Division of Violence Prevention. “We asked them what they’d like to see in their neighborhoods following a traumatic event. And this is what we heard they wanted.”
The effort, which will officially launch next week and will be led by Walsh and the Boston Public Health Commission, will be a combination of community organizations and health centers.
Four of the teams will have outreach organizations, including the Four Corners Actions Coalition of Dorchester; Jamaica Plain’s Tree of Life; North Suffolk Mental Health of East Boston; and Roxbury’s Whittier Street Health Center.
The Justice Resource Institute’s SMART Team will serve as a mobile vendor, hosting a 24hour crisis hotline.
The teams will provide assistance anytime after a traumatic event, regardless of how much time has passed, Fine said.
“Someone may, following an event, feel like they don’t want to connect to someone,” Fine said. “And they can take support or access teams at any time, a year later, two years later.”
Traumatic events include any gun-related homicide, shootings that impact anyone under the age of 18 or more than one victim, and any unexpected traumatic event that affects a child.
Fine said the initiative was planned to let residents in these areas know that just because an area is crime-ridden does not mean the events go unnoticed.
“We want community members to know the city cares,” Fine said. “We want to connect with residents to let them know there are services that are available.”
That could take various forms, she said, including door-knocking, community meetings, and healing sessions.
She said each team will be comprised of about four to six people, who will be trained by JRI.
Although the effort is up and running now, it will be officially launched Tuesday at Whittier Street Health Center.
The approach is more structured than ones other communities across the nation are taking, Fine said.
“The fact that we are sort of knitting together more of a system connecting these entities together is unique,” she said. “We hope it’s the start of a very positive model.”