About Us
Community Violence is a public health crisis!
- We did not choose the work. The work chose us. We are on the front lines and in the trenches because that is where we come from. We started off participating in anti-violence street night walks in the highest murder rate zip code in the city. We also began doing prison re-entry, transitional housing, and parole board advocacy. Criminal Justice Reform and Restorative Justice were next added. Our team grew to embrace the prevention of community violence and mass incarceration, so we focused upon the highest risk teens from the community to break the school to prison pipeline by offering our Metamorphosis Juvenile Re-entry programming to teens being charged as adults. We focused upon the highest risk demographic, the shooters and robbers, those most likely to kill or to be killed, and those documented to be violent and part of groups. Heavy focus was placed on teens being charged as adults in the County jail. These high-risk teens then became part of our juvenile strategy of violence prevention, and we developed a program for them right there in the cellblock. Families emerged that needed to be nurtured and healed from their vicarious trauma and who were in a constant state of crisis. Therefore, now we are more and more are engaging the whole family unit now in our prevention efforts. We never stopped our community youth mentoring even during the pandemic. Relationships drive everything for us in what we do. Violence is rampant where too many relationships have broken down. Our approach is constantly building relationships so that we can leverage power for what is needed to be done. We have now further grown to become part of the new, emerging eco-system for stopping gun violence in Birmingham, on a different level of community violence prevention collaborating with others. All of us are needed to help win this victory over all of this pain.
Trauma Informed Care
- Trauma informed care does not ask the question, what is wrong with you? Trauma informed care asks the question, what happened to you? Trauma informed care asks, what is your story, and your truth? The entire approach we take at 2nd Chance Lifesavers is always considerate of what a person, family, neighborhood or community has been through already. Our people are in a real live crisis from the trauma driving their PTSD. Children, and others who have witnessed extreme violence, or those who have higher Adverse Childhood Experience Scores process things very differently because their trauma is real. In other ways, those who are many times still grieving multiple losses in life in their world, are often in survival mode too. The frontal lobe is responsible for decision making, planning, problem solving, socializing and controlling emotions. Far too many times this frontal lobe is underdeveloped from long term or repeated exposure to trauma causing the brain to shift from its usual functioning to survival mode. Thankfully, our lived experience combined with our professional development allows us to meet people right where they are in crisis in real time. Trauma informed care is crucial to how we are building relationships with those who are broken, nurturing, effectively communicating with, connecting with, reaching, teaching, mentoring and developing mental wellness in helping persons overwhelmed with anxiety. Trauma informed care drives how we day in-day out engage with people, how we respond to those in crisis, facilitate classes, conduct group therapy, and do reentry and restorative justice, teach social and emotional learning, and conduct case management.
Youths are looking for guidance.
- Our approach to mentoring and life coaching is that of treating our young like little brothers or little sisters. Life is not simple and is especially complex when a person is young and doesn't have the guidance really needed. Because we are positioned as a Big Brother, we avoid being authoritarian and judgmental and in the true essence of trauma informed care, we consider what a person has already been through before meeting us. Our approach is to give young people more tools. We provide mentoring and Life Coaching because the streets or social media can be a horrible, brutal place for a young person to get advice for hard life choices and decisions in this post-pandemic world. Our youth sessions incorporate behavioral cognitive therapy, and social and emotional learning. We raise our youth's emotional intelligence as we cover things important to teens like anger management, restorative justice, community violence trauma, domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault and what is consent, what is vicarious trauma? We interactively explore goals, vision, purpose, careers, entrepreneurship as well as the range of opportunities in the military. In group therapy we provide a safe space to talk about trauma and adverse childhood experiences. Exposure to the concept of purpose makes a safe space for sharing dreams, hopes, their voice and their vision. This safe space allows for serious questions to be asked by them about how to change their attitude, controlling being impulsive, changing who you hang around with, having a more positive mindset, sexually transmitted diseases, legal consequences, entering the workforce, obtaining drivers licenses and a CDL license along with college and trade school enrollment processes. We utilize the 24/7 Dads curriculum taught by credible messengers along with LiveRespect, The Protective Factors and Youth Mental Health First Aid.
