More about Rochester Safe Start
Rochester Safe Start is a national demonstration project funded by a five-year grant from the United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
As managing partner for the Rochester Safe Start collaborative, Children's Institute facilitates the initiative, manages its funds, and is responsible for its evaluation.
Goals
- Reduce the impact of exposure to violence on young children, birth through age six, and their families
- Prevent exposure to violence
Primary Strategies
- Give police a place to get immediate help for young children
- Support families with young children in the court process
- Improve the quality of early childhood programs
- Change community norms to recognize and respond to young children's exposure to violence
- Improve response to young children exposed to domestic violence across systems
Right now, Rochester Safe Start has already begun to...
- Give police immediate help for young children exposed to violence through SAFE kids, a partnership of RPD and social workers from SPCC
- Supporting families with young children through an ABW Child in Court Advocate and through more supervised visitation at SPCC
- Improve the quality of early childhood programs, through mentors, with particular emphasis on children exposed to violence
- Change community norms, through public awareness campaigns, to recognize and respond to young children's exposure to violence
- Train those who work with families and children on the implications of domestic violence for their practices and offer ways of responding
Future plans include...
- Developing a policy agenda
- Ensuring sustainability
Rochester Safe Start Partners
Funded by:
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs
- Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Lead Agency:
- Monroe County Department of Public Health
- Andrew Doniger, MD, MPH, Director
Co-Applicant:
- Children's Institute
- Dirk Hightower, Ph.D., Executive Director
Project Director:
- Lori VanAuken, Director of Community Partnerships
- Children's Institute
Rochester Community Partners
- Alternatives for Battered Women
- Children's Institute
- City of Rochester
- Domestic Violence Consortium
- Early Childhood Development Initiative
- Families and Friends of Murdered Children and Victims of Violence
- Family Resource Centers of Rochester
- Ibero-American Action League
- Integrated Domestic Violence Court
- Life Line
- Monroe Council on Teen Potential
- Monroe County Department of Human and Health Services
- Monroe County Family Court
- Monroe County Department of Public Health
- Monroe County Office of Mental Health
- Monroe County Probation
- Mt. Hope Family Center
- NYS Office of Children and Family Services
- Perinatal Network
- Rochester City School District
- Rochester-Monroe County Youth Bureau
- Rochester Early Enhancement Project (REEP)
- Rochester Police Department
- Society for the Protection and Care of Children
- State University of New York at Buffalo, Law School, Family Violence Clinic
- Strong Hospital Department of Psychiatry
- Strong Hospital Department of Social Work
- United Way of Greater Rochester
- Urban League of Greater Rochester
National Partners
- Department of Justice
- Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
- National Civic League
- National Center for Children Exposed to Violence
- Association for the Study & Development of Communities
Contact Children's Institute for further information.
