Kentucky Kids-Removing Impediments to Stable Environments (RISE) through Legal Intervention

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 Northern Kentucky Legal Aid Society, Inc. will provide direct legal services to help child victims receive stability at home and in school through utilizing the civil legal justice system to develop a trauma-informed community response to serving child victims and their caretakers so they can begin to heal and live stable lives. To achieve this goal the project will implement a plan to help child victims through providing direct legal services, raising community awareness of the opioid epidemic, and collaborating with community partners to create a multidisciplinary response. CA/NCF