Enhancing Community Support for Colorado Children and Youth Victims of the Opioid Crisis

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, Illuminate Colorado will coordinate four sites in communities feeling the effects of the opioid crisis in their area: Boulder County, Adams County, Montrose County, and Huerfano/Las Animas Counties. With local leadership at the helm, each community will increase the provision of, and resource referral network for, trauma-informed Children's Circle groups offered concurrently with existing Circle of Parents® support groups for families impacted by substance abuse and trauma. Each community will identify and define the needs of children and youth victims impacted by the opioid crisis through the creation of local cross-discipline community assessments and development a written action plan for future efforts.  Finally, State level and local community investments willbe made to implement components of respective community plans as well asaddress larger state level or systemic needs or opportunities that arisethroughout the project. The project will have a special emphasis on children aged 0 to 5 years.