Philadelphia Coalition on Children and Opioids

OVC’s mission is to enhance the Nation’s capacity to assist crime victims and provide leadership in changing attitudes, policies, and practices to promote justice and healing for all victims of crime. OVC achieves this mission, in part, by administering discretionary award programs supported by the federal Crime Victims Fund to develop innovative training and technical assistance, and to provide direct services to improve the overall quality of victim assistance. The purpose of the FY 2018 Enhancing Community Responses to the Opioid Crisis: Serving Our Youngest Crime Victims is to address an urgent gap in crime victim services related to the opioid epidemic and to expand upon existing or establish new programs to provide services to children and youth who are victimized as a result of the opioid crisis. The overarching goal of this program is to support children and youth who are crime victims as a result of the opioid crisis by providing direct services and support to these young victims at a community or jurisdictional level.

With this award, the Turning Points for Children will convene the Philadelphia Coalition on Children and Opioids to develop a comprehensive framework to support children and deliver services through a collective model. The project will strengthen assessment of substance abuse in the homes of families involved in child welfare, and provide access to supports and services for children and their nonabusing caregivers. The Coalition will extend the knowledge of how to recognize the problem and how to respond beyond child welfare workers to other child-serving professionals. The target population is children up to age 17 involved with child welfare, specifically those with suspected or known child abuse reports where there is active substance abuse. Project activities will include direct services that are trauma-informed to identify the needs of child victims; dissemination of awareness materials to help generate referrals with organizations that encounter victims; and delivery of targeted trainings to allied professionals. In addition, project staff will analyze local data sources associated with the problem and integrate data into the community response.

CA/NCF