Two Recently Launched Trauma Recovery Centers Are Designed To Work Hand-In-Hand With Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs.
With a mission to help “trauma victims and their families get the help they need and rebuild their lives,” Buffalo’s first Trauma Recovery Center launched earlier this month. As Mark Goshgarian reports for Spectrum News, the “social workers, psychologists, and physicians” who provide care through the trauma recovery center will work in close relationship to a pre-existing hospital-based violence intervention program.
The close connection between the hospital responders and trauma recovery center will mean a seamless transition from providing “crisis response to patients presenting in the Emergency Department for trauma injuries related to violence” to post-release “cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as grief and loss counseling” and “even transportation for any ongoing medical and mental health treatment.”
The University of California Davis Health Center designed a similar model that recently began at its Sacramento hospital. When a victim of a violent crime enters the hospital at the University of California Davis hospital, a violence intervention specialist arrives at their bedside to “make sure these patients know that there is hope and help.” This hospital-based violence intervention is the first step in reducing the likelihood that the patient becomes either a victim or perpetrator of violence in the future.
For CBS News, Ashley Sharp reports that these violence intervention specialists are also able to refer the patients to UC Davis’ newly opened Trauma Recovery Center, which helps “patients who have suffered violent injuries after they are released from the hospital [and] provides long-term therapy and social services, [and] help with food, housing and employment.”
Michele Knight, a clinical psychologist and director of the new Trauma Recovery Center, explained to CBS news that if the goal of the violence intervention specialist is to give “hope and help,” then the goal of the trauma recovery center “is to eliminate barriers…to be able to say, here, I can help you navigate, I can help you get back on your feet.”
For more detail on the recently launched Trauma Recovery Center in Sacramento, CBS News produced this excellent two-minute segment documenting a tour of the center.
Related: In Detroit, “the first Trauma Recovery Center in the state of Michigan” opened this month and will serve as “a one-stop shop for connecting survivors of trauma with mental health services, legal assistance, education, and more free of charge after they leave the hospital.” Meanwhile, in California, the “Trauma Recovery Center at Cal State Long Beach is entering its second decade of service” providing “no-cost comprehensive mental health services to the most underserved victims of crime and violence [and] helping crime victims to retake control of their lives while providing a venue for graduate students to gain essential clinical experiences.”