Build partnerships and community resilience
Traditional community-building strategies often lack the breadth and depth of resources and services that the research identifies as key to building healthy, resilient communities that provide equitable opportunities for meaningful engagement among those in trauma-impacted communities. Existing cultural scripts often demand that all coping transpire at the individual level and fail to bolster the societal and structural resources that support holistic well-being, democratic participation, and the realization of the full potential of all people and groups who live within a community.
CTIPP supports change efforts that challenge these systems and institutions while creating the context and conditions for collective transformation to emerge. CTIPP maintains that the paradigm shift from “What’s wrong with…?” to “What happened to…?” involves a critical analysis of community context to create a powerful tipping point to reorient thinking and behavior toward the promotion of whole-person wellness, mutual meaning-making, and collective care.
CTIPP SUPPORTS:
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Create and fund grant programs to fund community-based coalitions and groups that coordinate and collaborate with stakeholders and community members to address and prevent trauma and build resilience
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Create and fund efforts to promote cross-sector, cross-system collaboration to provide, develop, and/or improve trauma-informed prevention, screening, referral, treatment, and support programs/services to meet the unique needs of trauma-impacted communities
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Provide funding for, reduce barriers to, and test the potential health savings related to devising cross-sector private-public partnerships to reduce healthcare costs, emergency room visits, and other costly healthcare-related impacts
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Promote community norms that emphasize mutuality and support reciprocity, and cultivate a community culture that is grounded in the idea that we all share responsibility for the well-being of each other
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Grow the trauma-informed, healing-centered workforce by incorporating knowledge of and consideration for trauma-informed approaches and trauma-responsive practices, Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACEs, Resilience (NEAR) science, and other related topics in the recruitment and training of those who work in community organizations/agencies
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Increase collaboration between community resources that serve individuals, families, groups, and communities that have experienced trauma
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Minimize exposure to community violence by increasing funding opportunities for and presence of known protective factors for communities (e.g., green spaces, opportunities for meaningful civic participation, equitable access to quality healthcare and wraparound services, access to nutritious food, BIPOC-owned businesses, etc.)
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Engage those with lived experience and members of trauma-impacted communities directly in the trauma-informed transformation process and ensure they have the tools and resources needed to sustain trauma-informed change
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Actively involve individuals and communities with lived experience to strengthen programmatic coordination and policy alignment with their needs and goals
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Train the workforce to recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma and respond by providing or referring community members to appropriate trauma-informed services
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Support and fund the development of tools and resources to increase public awareness of individual, community, and collective trauma and its myriad possible impacts
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Invest in violence interrupter and restorative justice-centered community programs
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Increase access to trauma-informed, healing-centered, and culturally-specific supports and services that meet the needs and reflect the diversity of the community