ST. LOUIS — With approximately 20-30 aggravated assaults occurring for every one homicide in the St. Louis region, United Way and the Violence Prevention Commission are working together to set up an intake process for survivors of gun violence through an existing hotline.
The gun violence intake process is designed to initiate critical intervention to interrupt the cycle of violence by offering services and support to gun violence survivors, according to Jessica Meyers, the Violence Prevention Commission’s coordinator and board member.
“The hope is that if we can coordinate these responses to folks, if we can help meet the needs, if we can provide services, then we can break them out of this cycle of violence,” she said.
The hotline has been around for years and helps connect people with a range of services from basic needs to child care to disaster relief to counseling. The gun violence intake process, however, went live a week before COVID-19 shut the country down in March and was temporarily put on hold while United Way devoted all of its resources to pandemic response efforts. The intake process resumed in July and has been in service since.
When someone calls 211 they will be prompted to press 2, putting them in touch with a navigator who asks questions, specifically centered around their experience with gun violence and current needs, in order to put them in touch with the appropriate services. This could include mental health counseling, employment, home repair or securing housing.
Meyers said the first thing the hotline intake process seeks to do is meet people’s basic needs, so as to reduce their likelihood of being involved in future violence.
“The second thing is reducing trauma. So we know when folks have experienced violence, victims of violence have a higher risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder than victims of other types of trauma,” she said. “And some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are always being on guard, sleeping, re-experiencing the event, but also having anger reactions and some heightened trauma reaction, so helping people to deal with the trauma actually reduces the likelihood that they will have the trauma symptoms that could to them committing a violent act.”
The goal is to streamline the process for people attempting to receive services so they do not become overwhelmed, which is part of the mission of the commission — coordinating a community-level response to non-fatal shootings.
While data is not yet available on how many people have gone through the intake process, Meyers said the true measure of success will be what kind of services people are being referred to and whether the community is meeting all the needs of gun violence survivors.
“What we want to know is, are we effectively getting people to the services we know about and are there continuing unmet needs that we need to try and find a way to fill,” Meyers said.
Right now, the collaborative effort is focused on getting the word out about the addition to the hotline so more people know what to do when they or a loved one experiences gun violence.
“We're not asking anyone to be an expert in all the services that are out there,” Meyers said. “We're asking that folks know that they can tell their neighbors, their family, their friends who may have experienced this kind of trauma that they can call 211 and that there is help out there, because too often folks don't know about the services until they're in the position where they need them and then they don't know what to do.”
