Jacksonville has a has a long history of segregation, oppression, racism, and police brutality--leading to the weeklong anti-racism and oppression demonstrations involving more than 3,000 people in May.
Building a Resilient Jacksonville System of Care (BRJ-SOC) will utilize a rights-based framework to create an ecosystem of care to solidify, sustain and build upon community-based participatory efforts; meet the needs of high-risk youth and their families; and promote well-being, resiliency, and community healing. BRJ-SOC will serve more than 15,000 unduplicated individuals in Jacksonville's urban core, home to the city's largest percentage of minority residents, highest poverty rates and highest death rates.
By building on the City of Jacksonville's existing SAMHSA System of Care (SOC), we will integrate, restructure and expand the foundational SOC components (e.g. cultural and linguistic competency, family-driven, youth-guided, and evidence based) successfully implemented through our prior and current SAMHSA SOC grants to establish a trauma informed Jacksonville that will focus on training first responders, community stakeholders, providers, educators, and clergy in trauma-informed care engaging and serving more than 15,000 community stakeholders, providers, educators, law-enforcement, clergy and high-risk youth and families in Jacksonville's urban core, violence prone communities that experience civil unrest.
BRJ-SOC will be under the leadership and guidance of the SOC Community Advisory Board, a diverse leadership consortium of community stakeholders, providers, and families and youth in the community that will ensure transparency in systemic and programmatic intervention implementation.
Project goals include: (1) Building a foundation to promote well-being, resiliency, and community healing through community-based, participatory approaches; (2) Creating more equitable access to trauma-informed community behavioral health resources; (3) Strengthening the integration of behavioral health services and other community systems to address the social determinants of health, recognizing that factors, such as law enforcement practices, transportation, employment, and housing policies, can contribute to health outcomes; (4) Creating community change through community-based, participatory approaches that promote community and youth engagement, leadership development, improved governance, and capacity building; and (5) Ensuring that program services are culturally responsive and developmentally appropriate.