MCCNY wants to improve services at Sylvia’s Place, a 90-day emergency shelter for LGBTQI runaway and homeless youth. Sylvia’s Place, which provides drop-in services including case management, computer usage, medical services, and self-defense training, has experienced an increased incidence of youth experiencing mental health crises. Program staff, however, are often not prepared to address these types of challenges, including situations where emergency services are called for participants’ suicidal or aggressive behaviors. MCCNY proposes to create a training curriculum that would develop in staff greater capacity for trauma-informed care. The organization will engage a social worker to develop the curriculum, train staff, and run weekly group counseling sessions for resident youth, in addition to designing a system to document staff use of the training and surveys for youth to assess the effectiveness of the group therapy.
This grant will support the creation of a trauma-informed training curriculum for MCCNY staff at Sylvia’s Place.
