“Youth violence is Preventable,” read the opening slide of the second Community Safety Summit. Hosted by the York County Safety Collab, this gathering brought together 40+ members of the community to think about ways we can interrupt the pathway to crime.
Non-profit leaders, clergy, police, teachers, funders, and probation officers looked at all the youth services in York County – called a Continuum of Care – to identify gaps.
We broke the services into four categories: prevention, intervention, re-entry, and healing. Each table looked for missing links that fail to both support our kids as well as offer them opportunities for personal fulfillment and growth.
For two hours, we lifted our heads out of the day-to-day grind of our jobs to discuss systems-level changes. Our kids need this level of collaboration – we can’t thank enough the people who contributed their time, knowledge and experience. This is just the next step of the Safety Collab’s goal of a community safety plan for long-term violence reduction.
