A New Way to Measure Healing from Violence

An Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion webi­nar, A New Way to Mea­sure Heal­ing from Com­mu­ni­ty Vio­lence, high­light­ed a new scale to mea­sure heal­ing in peo­ple who have been harmed by com­mu­ni­ty vio­lence, expand­ing ways to bet­ter under­stand and respond to young adult sur­vivors of trauma.

Par­tic­i­pants learned how this inno­v­a­tive tool and its com­pan­ion dis­cus­sion guide can help sur­vivor-serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions bet­ter under­stand the mech­a­nisms that pro­mote heal­ing from vio­lence, and why this is so important.

Pan­elists:

• Cyn­thia Weaver (mod­er­a­tor) is a senior asso­ciate with the Casey Foundation’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group.
• Danielle Sered, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Com­mon Jus­tice, is the author of the 2019 book Until We Reck­on.
• Richard D. Smith, cofounder of Align­meant Glob­al LLC, is a heal­ing strate­gist and trau­ma expert ded­i­cat­ed to empow­er­ing peo­ple of col­or and mar­gin­al­ized communities.
• Anna Orte­ga-Williams, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of social work with City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York’s Hunter Col­lege School of Social Work, is a schol­ar, prac­ti­tion­er and researcher focused on heal­ing his­tor­i­cal trau­ma, pro­mot­ing post-trau­mat­ic growth and youth development.

The webi­nar is part of the Foundation’s Lead­ing With Evi­dence series, pro­mot­ing effec­tive and equi­table evi­dence-based approach­es in a vari­ety of settings.

Why This New Scale Is Important

In the field of trau­mat­ic vio­lence recov­ery, though there are abun­dant mea­sures to assess symp­toms and cop­ing, a review of lit­er­a­ture indi­cat­ed no clear def­i­n­i­tion of heal­ing from com­mu­ni­ty vio­lence from the per­spec­tives of those most affected.

Through the work of the webinar’s pan­elists and foun­da­tion part­ners — some of whom have been harmed by vio­lence — a def­i­n­i­tion emerged: Heal­ing from com­mu­ni­ty vio­lence means get­ting to the core of the harm and reclaim­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties. As part of the new scale, par­tic­i­pants answered a series of ques­tions that cat­alyzed discussion.