In the fall of 2019 SARCC joined forces with the Community Health Council, Empower The Mind, domestic violence intervention, and the United Way to develop a community violence prevention grant application. The idea arose from the connected together subcommittee of the better together mental health action team.
The role of this committee was to develop and enhance trauma informed community practices in Lebanon County. The connected together initiative that evolved from this grant application included a three-pronged approach to community violence prevention. The first part was to make excess of all free trauma therapy for anyone in the community.
Empower The Mind, and later SARCC, began to offer trauma assessment and treatment to any community member who requested it. The second part of the initiative was to offer a scholarship for local mental health practitioners to complete movement desensitization and reprocessing treatment certification.
At the conclusion of the grant at least 10 practitioners will have completed the training and consultation for this evidence-based treatment for trauma. The final part, and the one that gets to the root causes of trauma and violence in our community, is establishing community boards using the communities that care violence prevention model.
As you can see from the resources below, we are coming to the end of our grant funding. This means that we need to do a final push for the community to access the free mobile trauma therapy. Please help us to spread the word!