How CP4P Works

Understanding that effective solutions to community challenges require residents’ active support and engagement, CP4P’s model puts the power in communities’ hands. Community-based organizations form the core of CP4P’s implementation model and engage residents to participate in the solution to gun violence while forging closer partnerships with public agencies and the police department.

CP4P prioritizes working with the Chicago Police Department to develop a strong relationship, built and maintained on mutual trust and respect between CP4P’s outreach workers and CPD.

CP4P targets individuals at highest risk of being perpetrators and victims of violence. We are accomplishing this through developing authentic, trusted relationships in communities, facilitated by local organizations skilled and informed in peace, trauma and wraparound services, with capable outreach workers who live and work in the communities they serve.

VIOLENCE PREVENTION

Prevents and Intervenes in Violence

Violence Intervention and Ongoing Services

• Outreach workers identify threats to prevent shootings or receive notifications of a shooting incident.
• The workers respond to the threat/incident and intervene using strategies to de-escalate tensions, control rumors, and support families of victims and perpetrators of violence to prevent the next shooting.

Proactive Prevention Services

• Outreach workers and their organizations connect individuals at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of violence to services and case management to mitigate further high-risk situations.
• In addition to case management, services include legal and restorative justice, employment, family support, trauma-informed mental health, and substance abuse services as well as other enrichment and empowerment programs.

Pre-release and Re-entry Services for Individuals

• Pre-release and re-entry services are necessary to coordinate closely with street outreach workers to neutralize violence dynamics that can flare up.
• Relationship development supports the individual as well as the community as both prepare for the family and community reunification process.
• As high-risk individuals including those returning from incarceration become open to receiving support and services, case managers will engage, assess his/her needs, and provide linkage to services such as counseling, job training, and life skills.

LIGHT IN THE NIGHT

Summer Safety Strategy in Safe Spaces

• During the summer months, public spaces – parks, gyms and/or schools – will be focal points of the strategy in each target community. The goal is to create access to the park for all community members regardless of age, affiliation or status.
• Programming takes place at least three nights of the week (ideally Thursday through Sunday). Safe spaces provide free food during the hours of operation. The summer strategy lasts ten weeks and then continues year-round in different ways in each community. The goal is to build community cohesion around the safe public space while also giving productive alternatives and access to services for all residents.

METROPOLITAN PEACE ACADEMY

Participation in the Development and Implementation of the Metropolitan Peace Academy

• The Academy’s goal is to enhance community-level capacity to reduce violence, and therefore focuses on developing skills and knowledge rooted in community-driven knowledge while also drawing from research and evidence-based practices.
• Common best practices and protocols across Chicago will also build the outreach profession while removing the current stigma that follows outreach programs.
• The Academy is a multi-disciplinary training platform designed to train and develop leadership among practitioners to enhance their ability to implement best practices in violence reduction, including multi-sector collaboration.
• A multi-disciplinary team of violence prevention and intervention practitioners, academics, policy and subject matter experts has designed the curriculum. Everyone in the CP4P initiative will go through The Academy.
• The Academy will also provide parallel training across sectors (e.g. outreach as well as law enforcement) to promote effective and constructive partnership towards reducing violence.

PARTNERING ORGANIZATIONS

• Alliance of Local Service Orgs. (ALSO)
• Breakthrough
• Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)
• Institute for Nonviolence Chicago (INVC)
• New Life Centers
• Precious Blood
• Target Area DevCorp
• UCAN
• Acclivus
• Claretian
• Roseland Ceasefire
• SWOP (Southwest Organizing Project)
• ONE
• Project Hood