Have coordinated efforts to improve kids’ resilience in the face of violence
Kids who are alone and lonely and struggling with exposure to violence are at the greatest risk. It’s really important for children to have access to caring other folks more hours of the day than not. No one intervention is going to work for an individual child. You really have to have coordinated efforts to improve kids’ resilience in the face of community violence and home-based family violence.
Allison Scobie-Carroll, LICSW, MBA, Director of Social Work
Being a protective shield
Parents can be protective shields for kids even in a setting where there might be a lot of community violence. A family who makes careful choices and is able to convey to their child a sense of safety and protection, who is able to be attuned to their emotional responses that they have to the environment, can form a protective shield for the children. With a protective shield, the children may, in fact, live in a setting where there is a lot of violence but also understand that there is a lot of hope and there are people they can just go to for help and protection, which is a tremendous advantage.
Heidi Ellis, PhD, Director, Refugee Trauma and Resilience Center
Simple solutions that increase safety
Think about very simple solutions that increase safety. Find ways to get kids in structured settings most of the day with other kids, doing things that are distracting or physically demanding. Cultivate their creative capacities, their team building skills, all those kinds of activities. Just having a kid be really engaged most hours of the day is one of the most important ways that you can change what the outcomes of that kind of exposure are.
Allison Scobie-Carroll, LICSW, MBA, Director of Social Work
Share power with children
We need to share power with children. That means listen, that means share decision making, and that means share opportunities to do something that matters. We need to create a holding environment that’s safe for children to make mistakes, explore, take risks, screw up, and say they’re sorry, as well.
Steven Brion-Meisels, Former Director of Peace First
Establishing trust
An adult can let a young person know that you are going to be consistent. That you are somebody who’s going to follow through on your word, and if you say you’re going to be there, you’ll be there. This allows the young person to get a sense of consistency and potential closeness so that that trust can be established. Often times after a year, young people are just starting to really feel connected.
Colby Swettberg, Ed.M, LCSW
Provide some solace and help them process when crisis has struck
Adults can be agents of change and can harness their own power. As much as we wish we could control the circumstances that our young people find themselves in and keep our young people safe and pack them in bubbles, we can’t. But we can provide some solace and help them to process through when crisis has struck. So, to me, that’s about having access to mental health supports. That is making sure that young people feel connected to an adult with whom they can have meaningful conversations.
Colby Swettberg, Ed.M, LCSW