Changing lives with evidence-based interventions

Virtual Conference: Best Practices in Hospital-Linked Violence Intervention: The Challenges for Delaware County
May 19th, 2021 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Hospital programs that connect patients with intensive case management and treatment for psychological trauma can reduce cycles of violence.

Keynote Address: Violence Prevention on the Front Lines: Caring Clinicians Coast to Coast

Rochelle Dicker, MD, Professor in Residence, Department of Surgery, UCLA, Board Chair of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention.

Joel Fein, MD, MPH Professor, Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Co-director, The Center for Violence Prevention at CHOP

Target Audience: Anyone who is interested in decreasing violence in the community. Application for 3.75 continuing education credits for Nurses, NPs, PAs, Physicians, and Social Workers is pending.

Cost - $75 per person; $25 for students with ID

For more information, and to register, click here

Art Therapy is a cornerstone of the services we provide at Chester Community Coalition. We aim to support the whole family and 4-7 year olds are a precious part. Thanks to the Chester Upland School District, and-- in particular-- counselor Megan Corcoran, we have been able to support elementary school students with art therapy. Providing the groups through Chester Upland School of Arts using remote learning gave us the opportunity to give children experiencing grief a space where they could connect with others (which has been difficult in COVID times), learn about the grief process, helpful ways to cope with their emotions, and ways to remember their loved ones.

Ms. Corcoran shared a statement,

“After learning about what services are available for my students, I referred several families who have been directly affected by violence to the counseling services through the Chester Coalition. When I follow up with these same families, they shared with me that their experience was positive in the effort to provide support for the student who was affected by the violent trauma. Furthermore, our partnership with Chester Coalition has been such a positive experience for our students... The counselor, Ms. Alex Johnson, supported by Jessica Davis, has been such a positive support system for students who have experienced the loss of a loved one. Our students have completed two separate eight-week sessions during the spring/winter of 2020, and we have an upcoming session during the spring of 2021. Thus far, the groups have supported over a dozen students.”

Being able to provide this space during such a difficult year was a huge benefit! We are thankful to Congregation Ohev Shalom, the Ethel Clark Sergeant Foundation, and our generous donors for keeping this resource available to Chester children who need it most.

Life After the Gun Shot

In 2017, the PATIENTS Program at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy funded study led by University of Maryland Professor, Dr. Joseph Richardson, to qualitatively understand how young Black male survivors of violent firearm-related injuries treated at the University of Maryland Prince George’s Hospital Trauma Center coped with their recovery, specifically the traumatic stress associated with gun violence and violent injury.

CCC Awarded Grant from PCCD

The PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) awarded Chester Community Coalition (CCC) $299,430 over two years under its Community Violence Prevention/Reduction Initiative. The funds will cover staff for the collaboration among Crozer-Chester Medical Center (CCMC), the Chester Peace Initiative (CPI, a part of Cure Violence) to provide socio-psychological services to patients who enter CCMC’s Emergency Department with gun-shot wounds, treating the emotional as well as the physical trauma of violent injury.

Violence is an epidemic that disproportionately hurts young people of color. Violent injury is a traumatic event with serious mental health consequences. Without access to case management and behavioral health services, victims of violence are at increased risk of reinjury, poor health, and homicide. Hospital programs that connect violently injured patients with trauma-informed services have been shown to reduce reinjury and justice system involvement.

Healing Hurt People and CHOP’s Violence Intervention Program provide these services to Philadelphia victims of violence. The partnership among CCMC, CPI, and CCC is the first such program in Delaware County.

PCCD’s funding will enable CCC and CPI to hire a Violence Interrupter who will reach out to patients with gun-shot wounds and help them design a safety plan and a social-worker therapist to provide behavioral health services. CCC’s individual and congregational donors have made it possible to hire a full time case manager to connect clients with basic needs, educational, and employment resources.

The Chester Community Coalition offers free trauma-informed programming and art therapy to children and parents in Chester who are survivors of violence. Counselling sessions are in the evening, so working parents can participate and are available year-round.

To do our work we need you.

Your support means we can offer free counseling and case management for bereaved families and survivors of assault.

We can offer individual therapy for those whose experience of violence is too recent for them to benefit from a group setting.

Your donations also mean:

We can offer families safe door-to-door transportation (via Lyft)
We can offer families dinner (safely pre-boxed)
We can send home craft supplies for remote art therapy
We can buy supplies for outreach, to start families’ healing journeys

For those who prefer to donate by check, please make check out to “Urban Affairs Coalition, Chester Community Coalition”, and mail to:

Urban Affairs Coalition
Attn. Lee Wall
Suite 700
1207 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19107

CONTACT US

703 Central Ave.
Chester, PA 19013
(610) 368-0714

info@chestercommunitycoalition.org