Preventing School Violence FY 21 Haywood County North Carolina

The Thirtieth Judicial District Domestic Violence-Sexual Assault Alliance, serving rural far Western North Carolina, in collaboration with the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office and Haywood County Schools, will work to enhance current efforts to prevent and reduce school violence within Haywood County, North Carolina. Haywood County is located within the Appalachian Smoky Mountain region of the state bordering Tennessee. The program approach will utilize evidence-based treatment such as Trust-Based Relational Intervention®, animal assisted therapy, work and programming within the school district, and a school district Core Leadership Team to help victims and perpetrators of violent behaviors in order to reduce the number of violent incidents in Haywood County schools. This will provide supplemental support to the Threat Assessment Team which is already in place in the District.  In addition, training in trauma-informed response for both school district and law enforcement personnel, the use of ACES for identification of high scores on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey, and materials development for schools and law enforcement will be used as tools to identify and prevent violent behavior in schools before it manifests, further curbing the amount of violence in local schools.  This will be a thirty-six-month project focusing on Category 2 of the grant solicitation which will expand current efforts into the student population from elementary through high school-aged children. Systems change and in-house school district personnel forming a Core Leadership Team will assist in sustainability efforts. The grant award request is for $1,000,000. The project timeframe is 2021-2024.