LISC, with support from the Department of Justice, has been investing intensively in the work and wellbeing of frontline community violence intervention (CVI) workers. A new report on CVI practitioner trauma and strategies for their wellbeing, and a panel at a recent CVI conference, hammer home the urgency of informed, well-resourced support for these critical community servants.
Photo: from left, Marquell Harris and Rashid Junaid of Kansas City, MO-based Aim4Peace, Dr. Kathryn Bocanegra, Dr. Shani Buggs, LISC's Matt Perkins.
Browse through online job postings for community violence interrupters and outreach workers and you’ll quickly learn that it takes very special skills and commitments to work on the frontlines of community violence intervention (CVI). Typically candidates must possess an in-depth familiarity with the dynamics of violence within a highly impacted neighborhood, and be able to connect personally with individuals at highest risk for engaging in violence. They must be willing to run toward danger to intervene in conflicts and prevent retaliations. In addition, they may have to document daily engagements, develop relationships with community leaders, and help mobilize residents in peacemaking activities, all while working non-traditional hours including late nights and weekends.
That much and more is demanded of these workers. But what is it they need to do their jobs effectively and sustain their own well-being?
This question is getting more attention as government and philanthropic sectors increase their investments in CVI. And it was the focus of an illuminating panel discussion at a recent conference of grantees under the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI).
Moderated by Matt Perkins of LISC Safety & Justice, the panel brought together two leading CVI researchers, Dr. Kathryn Bocanegra and Dr. Shani Buggs, with two veteran CVI workers, Rashid Junaid, program manager of Aim4Peace in Kansas City, MO, and Marquell Harris, a former street outreach worker at Aim4Peace currently working on its hospital-based team. Aim4Peace is featured in the researchers’ recent detailed case study of CVI practice in Kansas City, Supporting the Frontline Through Community Healing: Advancing Science on Violence Intervention Outreach and Trauma Exposure.
The wide-ranging conversation highlighted several key CVI worker wellness needs, including:
Ongoing recognition that CVI workers are professional public safety actors. For a long time frontline workers in many locales have had to defend their legitimacy even as they place themselves in danger. “The sociopolitical context absolutely matters” for worker wellness, Buggs observed.
CVI organizations and workers, the researchers said, need a place at the table in cross-sector safety planning and collaborative initiatives; consistent recognition of the distinctive role they play through, for example, formal MOUs with city government; and equal standing with partner organizations including law enforcement to hold one another accountable.
Consistent funding is critical. Founded in 2008 as part of Kansas City’s health department, Aim4Peace showed early success driving down homicides in its area of operation but has since had to contend with expiring grants and budget cuts, its worker ranks dwindling from 18 in 2014 to just 4 when Bocanegra and Buggs engaged with the organization in 2022. Its budget was under half a million dollars—less than 1 percent of the police department budget—in a city with consistently high violent crime and a state that ranks number one in Black homicide victimization.
That precarity of funding has improved dramatically, Junaid said, thanks to some $700,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, smaller grants from the Everytown Community Safety Fund, and a $2 million grant from DOJ’s CVIPI. Especially helpful, said Junaid, is the $1 million in annual funds the program now receives from a city marijuana tax, a contribution he expects to rise in coming years. This steady funding reflects hard-won local support. In January 2023 Mayor Quinton Lucas proposed using the tax revenue in part to fund Aim4Peace, and in April, Kansas City voters approved the tax.
Fair pay, benefits, and job stability. The researchers’ Kansas City case study, which involved interviews and focus groups with over 50 of the city’s CVI workers and stakeholders, cites equitable compensation with access to health insurance and other benefits as minimum requirements for frontline workers’ wellness; economic insecurity compounds the stress inherent in their jobs while devaluing their service. In a 2021 Giffords Center for Violence Intervention survey of 200 CVI workers in four major cities, three-quarters of full-time workers reported making between $30,000 and $50,000 per year, and nearly 9 in 10 said they occasionally or frequently worry about losing their jobs due to lack of funding.
But advocates have been pushing for improved compensation, and at April’s CVIPI conference Assistant Attorney General Amy L. Solomon underlined the need for CVI workers to be “well-paid and well-supported.” Last year the City of Los Angeles raised the annual pay of intervention workers at nonprofits contracted under its Gang Reduction and Youth Development program from about $40,000 to $60,000.
Like many CVI organizations, Kansas City’s Aim4Peace has in the past had to adapt to funding uncertainty by hiring frontline workers on limited-term contracts. That means no benefits or job security. “When you talk about burnout,” longtime program worker Marquell Harris said, “imagine thinking you are doing the most dangerous job in the city, but you don’t make enough, you don’t have life insurance, and you don’t feel like you have the support that you need.” Thanks to better and more consistent funding, Aim4Peace manager Junaid is now able to support 32 staff members, including Harris, as full-time health department employees with benefits. “I will say we’ve come a long way,” said Harris.
Trauma recovery and wellness supports. Bocanegra and Buggs emphasized that trauma is ubiquitous in the communities served by CVI programs, in program participants, and in outreach workers. Writes Buggs in a 2022 research paper on CVI operational needs, “[V]irtually all parties involved are regularly directly and indirectly exposed to violent trauma and the toxic stress that comes from navigating structural racism, poverty, and myriad poor health outcomes.” CVI workers are often “wounded healers” who “relentlessly” re-expose themselves to traumatic experiences in order to help others, Bocanegra pointed out.
Junaid gave the example of an incident last year in which Aim4Peace street team members witnessed a young man shot multiple times with an assault rifle, with others hit, too. “And so our team went over there and tried to give the young man CPR,” Junaid recounted. “He expired. That’s traumatizing, right?” The next day, a retaliatory shooting took place. One of the street team nevertheless managed to broker a ceasefire in the conflict, which has held. “It took an extraordinary effort to be able to do that in your pain,” said Junaid.
Given these exposures, the Bocanegra/Buggs Supporting the Frontline report outlines a very urgent need for frontline workers to have not only compensation commensurate with their value, but also employer-facilitated behavioral health care, structured group “check-ins” to manage work-related stress, paid time off, and group leisure activities, among other supports.
Junaid reported that he is working to institute a policy giving workers a mental health day following incidents like last year’s killing. Workers also have monthly meetings with a university-based therapist Harris affectionately calls “the Zen lady.” Both men stressed that what has sustained the group for many years are the strong bonds that tie them to one another. Outside Junaid’s office is an area with couches they call “the living room,” where they often gather to regroup and talk. “We always consider ourselves to be a family,” said Junaid.
Harris spoke of the importance of getting life advice from CVI mentors. “Somebody on the team may help you get your first house,” he said, “or may help you get your credit right.” He also recalled a personal turning point when, about a decade ago, he was canvassing for Aim4Peace and got shot at by people he knew; back in the day, Harris said, he might have got together with friends to think about punishing the culprit. But this time was different: “Rashid [Junaid] sent everybody home except me, and we went and got some fish and went back to the office and we just sat and talked, chopped it up. And that was really important to me … you know, we’re eating and breaking bread together instead of figuring out how to retaliate.”