Celebrating Ten Years of CHI
Ten years of supporting Portland youth and their families!
Community Healing Initiative (CHI) is a community-centered, whole family-focused collaboration designed to address root causes of youth violence. This dedicated group works in partnership with the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice. Justice-involved or impacted African American parents and children find hope, safety, stability, and develop healthy social connections through their culturally-specific family outreach work. Let's celebrate CHI for ten years of improving lives one family at a time!
CHI 10 Year Timeline:
2011
NGVPP - Neighborhood Gang Violence Prevention Program
Partnership with Latino Network and POIC, Department of County Human Services, and Department of Community Justice/Juvenile Services Division.
Serving medium to high-risk gang impacted youth on probation.
“ We envision a community that empowers African American families to heal, grow, and move towards safe and thriving lives.”
2015
Early Intervention
Georgetown's Center for Juvenile Justice Reform - Reducing (RED) Racial and Ethnic Disparities Certificate Program. The multi-disciplinary team attended week long training in July 2014 and developed a capstone project concept.
The community-based early intervention and police diversion program referrers first-time youth offenders and their families for low-level criminal and status offenses, such as theft 2 and 3, criminal mischief, interfering with public transportation, minor in possession.
Mentoring
Credible Messengers to establish deep connections with our boys on probation to successfully transition to adulthood. Being productively engaged citizens means the youth are law-abiding, connected to meaningful work, in healthy relationships, and living in healthy environments.
2017
Elevate
Elevate serves African American males ages 17 to 25.
Previous and current gang-involved or gang-affected people who have committed felonies or misdemeanors and other lower-level offenses are at high risk of further criminal activity and incarceration.
“ We work together to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in systems that impact our youth and families.”
2018
Parent Partners
Parent Partners, specific to CHI Probation youth, are parents who have developed expertise because their child has been involved in the juvenile justice system. CHI provides parents with emotional support, advocacy, and knowledge through Alternative Placement Committee (APC) meetings and preliminary meeting support.
Multnomah County's OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model's Parent Partnership Team released the Parent Handbook for Justice-Involved Youth.
2019
Gang Prevention
Gang Prevention serves African American or African Immigrant youth 11-16 years of age and their families. Outreach workers address the cultural, gender-specific, educational, emotional, and social needs of children who are at high risk for becoming involved or already affiliated with gangs.
Georgetown Center for Juvenile Justice Reform (CJJR) certificate program entitled Transforming Juvenile Probation.
2020
Step - Up
Nationally recognized adolescent family violence intervention, Step-Up, is designed to address youth violence toward family members.
Stopping violence and abuse toward family and developing respectful family relationships helps all family members feel safe at home.
Later renamed FUSE (Families United for Safety and Empowerment).
The POIC + RAHS Community Health Initiative (CHI) provides a culturally-tailored evidence-based youth violence prevention program that targets the underlying causes of youth violence by enhancing culturally-relevant protective factors at the individual, family, and community levels. The CHI intervention approach is founded on the evidence-based 7 Field Principles of Health Behavior Change and Cultivation of Resiliency model developed by Carl Bell, MD (Bell, 2001). The 7 Field Principles model is based on the Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) (Flay, Snyder, & Petraitis (2009) and informed by African-centered values, beliefs, and practices.
