Collective for Healthy Communities
The Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) is an initiative that provides community-level interventions that promote well-being and resilience using a social-ecological approach (focusing on the individual, interpersonal, community and societal levels). In addition, CHC advocates for policy changes that reduce the impact of traumatic exposures in children-at school, in the community, and in the home. CHC is funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
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In its first year, our In That Number campaign had 10 million billboard impressions and bus ads were seen over 30,000 times a day for 6 months.
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In its first year, In That Number gained 1400 new followers, with a Twitter reach of 242,967 and a Facebook reach of 81,077.
In That Number (ITN) is a public will campaign designed to change negative ideas about young people while advocating for youth-focused trauma-informed care services. The campaign also aims to break the school-to-prison pipeline and reduce school suspensions by promoting restorative and transformative justice. Beginning in 2012, CHC designed and has been conducting an Emotional Wellness Survey (EWS) to measure symptoms of poor mental health including depression, PTSD, and suicidality. The high levels of mental health symptoms and exposure to violence pushed IWES to create a strategy to change these statistics. ITN launched in 2016 aiming to change peoples' view of youth that "act out" from "bad," to possibly "sad" and in need of support services (#SadNotBad). The campaign includes a mix of traditional (billboards, bus ads, television PSA, newspaper articles) and new/social media tactics and features short narratives and powerful images from diverse youth that describe the trauma they experienced and the responses they received from the adults and systems around them. To provide the story behind the numbers, our EWS data is paired with each story to relate them back to the issues youth of New Orleans face.
In 2017, CHC embarked upon a new program that added a new layer to the In That Number campaign, IWES received a grant from the Open Society Foundations to address the rise in harassment, violence, and social marginalization of vulnerable racial and LGBTQ populations in New Orleans. Communities Against Hate (CAH) offered services to address trauma in youth stemming from negative language, hate crimes, and racism that they experience. The intervention included crisis assessments, intervention services, and professional trainings for people working with youth. CAH screened over 140 youth, 63 of which required a follow-up assessment to determine whether or not additional mental health services were needed or desired. Of those 63, 10 were referred to mental health professionals fro additional supports and services. CAH also created a new focus of In That Number, #WeThe504, which highlights stores of adults who have created inclusive, accepting, and compassion spaces through their actions in or around schools. #WeThe504 included stories from teachers, mental health professionals, students, and parents who embodied an inclusive New Orleans through action and advocacy. The stories were highlighted on all IWES social media platforms and on billboards throughout the New Orleans area.
Collected from 1200 youth between 2012-2015, some of the early statistics that the campaign shared are that: 20% of youth surveyed experienced PTSD in their lifetime; 30% of youth surveyed worried about not being loved; 40% of youth surveyed witnessed a shooting, stabbing or beating; and 54% of youth surveyed experienced the murder of someone close to them.
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Coalition for Compassionate Schools (Cforcs)
The Coalition for Compassionate Schools (Cforcs) also known as Trauma-Informed Schools Learning Collaborative and Safe Schools NOLA has been dedicated to improving trauma-informed care for students and school communities. Cforcs’ mission is to build the capacity of schools, students, and parents to create transformative change in education through the adoption, implementation, and sustainment of trauma-informed, healing-centered practices. Cforcs is supported by approximately ten organizations throughout the city of New Orleans that provide mental health, healing-centered care, and trauma-informed care to children and families. Since 2015, other organizations that have worked with Cforcs and supported the work include: Beloved Community, Children’s Bureau of New Orleans, Louisiana Public Health Institute, New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board, New Orleans Health Department, New Orleans Youth Alliance, NOLA Public Schools, Project Fleur de lis, and Tulane University.
Cforcs’ Training of Trainers (ToT) program focuses on preparing schools and communities on trauma-informed approaches. ToT is a two-year project designed to increase the capacity of school leadership teams and educator peer support teams to design and install trauma-informed multi-tiered systems of support (TI-MTSS) for students and educators. Trauma-informed schools 1) create physically and psychologically safe environments that realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand potential paths for recovery to allow students, educators, and families to experience dignity; 2) recognize the signs of trauma and healing in students, families, and staff to create an environment that promotes belonging; and 3) respond in ways that resist re-traumatization by fully integrating knowledge about trauma and healing into policies, procedures, and practices that support emotional regulation skills to build agency. ToT is specifically designed to build the capacity of teams to address universal needs in the following areas:
Identify students needing support through the Universal Social Emotional Behavioral Screening process
Support Multi-Tiered System of Support Teams to develop specific pathways of support for students
Form a school steering committee that will shape the vision and goals for the two-year project. The steering committee will meet once a month on-site for the duration of the project to receive individual consultation, conduct data review, and participate in systems coaching and development
Build a Peer Support Specialists team that will pilot trauma-informed practices in their classrooms. These educators also receive coaching development to help model and train their peers in these practices
Train all staff during a 4-hour introductory professional development in Year 1 led by ToT Staff
Support with increasing Family Engagement
For more information about Cforcs and to review resources for teachers, schools, and researchers, visit their website www.cforcs.org or reach out to IWES Senior Program Manager Angela Lockley.
Hotel Hope
Hotel Hope (HH) is a non-profit, interfaith organization that provides short-term housing for women and their children while offering case management and other transitional supportive services. Using a trauma-informed approach, IWES social workers provide 3 offerings: Women’s Empowerment Hour, Children’s Feelings Groups, and Family Programming. The Women’s Empowerment Hour offers psycho-education and space for connection, processing, and peer support. Topics include: coping with trauma and stress, navigating health care systems, healthy relationships, substance use, and women’s reproductive health. The Children’s Feelings Groups aim to bolster resilience through art and social-emotional learning by supporting emotional literacy, self-regulation, self-expression, social awareness, and healthy play. Family Programming sessions offer art-based activities to nurture a healthy parent-child relationship and secure attachment through engaging, joyful activities rooted in “Art as Medicine” interventions.
To learn more about how to support and/or get involved with Hotel Hope, visit their website www.hotelhope.org
Grace House
Since 2018, IWES has been supporting programming for residents at Grace House, the only all-women’s residential treatment facility for women recovering from substance use disorders in the Greater New Orleans area. Based on the Women’s Recovery Group (WRG) curriculum created by psychiatrist Dr. Shelly Greenfield, IWES social workers focus weekly sessions on one central theme: Recovery Means Taking Care of Yourself. WRG lessons promote the development of skills related to relapse prevention and opportunities for repair work, healing, and mending relationships. Topics include the effects of drugs and alcohol on health and the brain, coping with stress, gender and recovery, navigating intimate partnerships in recovery, getting help with violence and abuse, safely coping with anger, handling issues of disclosure, exploring the impact of substance use on reproductive health, managing triggers and high-risk situations, and navigating obstacles to recovery. Sessions also include space for mindfulness, the trauma-informed principle of choice, and activities to promote creativity, healing, and self-expression.
In 2024, IWES began offering a Gambling Group to residents at Grace House to provide gambling education, treatment, and prevention. The Gambling Group is led by IWES social workers who have received extensive training in problem and disordered gambling. Sessions are based on a curriculum developed by Dr. Deborah Haskins, an Internationally Certified Gambling Counselor. These sessions aim to provide Grace House residents with the opportunity to explore and discuss topics including identifying problem gambling, the impact of problem gambling on the brain, coping with cravings and urges, risky gambling relapse prevention, and personal growth and development. These conversations are facilitated using information provided by experts and people with lived experiences through presentations, videos, and audio clips.
To learn more about how to support and/or get connected with Grace House, visit their website www.bridgehouse.org
Puentes Para Invitados (Bridges for Guests)
In July of 2021, IWES formed the Puentes Para Invitados (PPI) project to support the creation of a refugee and asylee ecosystem in New Mexico that builds on local assets and expands the infrastructure for Trauma-Responsive services to migrant individuals and families.
In 2023, PPI shifted the project lens to build on social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula in Albuquerque, NM schools. In this newer iteration of the project, PPI will deepen new and existing collaborations to help plan, prepare, and provide culturally-affirming interventions and frameworks to address and support emotional well-being among students, especially refugee and newcomer youth, as well as educators.
To learn more about Puentes Para Invitados click here.
To get in contact with CHC, please email Christina Illarmo.
