School of Social Work Has Key Role in Effort to Turn Around One of City's Most Distressed Neighborhoods

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Social Work is taking a pivotal role in a collaborative, community-based program aimed at reducing youth violence in one of the most distressed neighborhoods in Buffalo.

The Kensington Project is a pilot demonstration program aimed at reducing youth violence, increasing opportunities and strengthening community connections in the neighborhood surrounding Buffalo's Kensington High School and the Kenfield/Langfield Housing Development.

"That neighborhood is particularly distressed, and suffers some of the highest rates of poverty and violence in the city," noted Lawrence Shulman, dean of the School of Social Work and co-chair of the Mayor's Task Force on Reducing School and Community Violence. "In the last several years, neighborhood violence has increasingly impacted the schools, resulting in gang fights and high rates of student suspensions. The community and surrounding public-housing projects have experienced gang and drug-dealing activity."

Shulman is joining community stakeholders representing education, the juvenile justice system, health, human services and the clergy to develop the Kensington Project to turn around the neighborhood's problems with youth violence.

The project is based on a Boston program that used a comprehensive approach to prevent youth violence. The Boston Police/Public School Violence Reduction Program focused on discouraging young people from becoming involved in criminal activity, intervening in the lives of those who had initial trouble with authorities and taking tough, fair action against those who commit violent crimes.

The Boston program was so successful that between 1990 and 1995, the number of juvenile homicides dropped 80 percent citywide and between 1993 and 1995, the juvenile violent crime arrest rate decreased 65 percent.

A delegation of public officials and professionals from Buffalo visited Boston during the summer of 2001 to learn more about the Boston Police/Public School Violence Reduction Program.

The group was so impressed with the strategies that had been implemented in that city that it invited representatives of the Boston program to give a presentation in Buffalo on March 15 at a conference that was attended by more than 100 government, education and community leaders from throughout Western New York. It was organized by the Mayor's Task Force on Reducing School and Community Violence, which also is co-chaired Sharon West, executive director of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority.

The Kensington Project will utilize the resources of collaborating agencies that include the UB School of Social Work; Buffalo Public Schools; Buffalo Police Department; FBI; Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority; area health, human service and employment agencies, and community groups.

"This is an important pilot project demonstrating the potential impact of coordination and collaboration of existing resources from the criminal justice, school, social services and university in addressing school and community violence," said Shulman. "It is a strengths-based approach that believes we can mobilize what is right in our schools, communities and children, rather than just focusing on what is wrong."

Highlights of The Kensington Project will include:

o Probation and parole officers working with the Buffalo Police Department, Buffalo Public Schools Security and the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority to help identify, monitor and take fair action against high-profile youth offenders. Kensington High School officials also will share information with the Buffalo Police.

o Collaborating agencies working together to implement a strategy of balanced and "restorative justice." An idea rooted in Native communities, restorative justice is based on the premise that crime hurts not only its immediate victims, but also the broader community. Restorative justice requires offenders to take personal responsibility for their actions and to repair the harm they have done by performing community service and making direct restitution to victims. It provides opportunities for victim/offender mediation, for communities and victims to rebuild their sense of safety and capacity, and for offenders to develop their personal strengths and to strengthen their ties with the community.

o Organization of a community-based mentor program for Kensington High School by Buffalo Employment and Training, which also will work with in-school and out-of-school neighborhood youth on developing employment skills and experience. Development of a summer employment program, in collaboration with community businesses, will be a crucial element of this project. Leaders in the Buffalo business community will be asked to participate.

o Members of the local clergy working collaboratively with local social service and law-enforcement groups to reach out to at-risk youth and their families with counseling and other support services.

o Provision of direct hot-line services to children and adults in the community by Erie County Crisis Services, which also will establish a training program for youth and adults in order to develop a community capacity to respond to the stress related to violence in the schools, families and the community.

o Increased gang "street workers" -- volunteers who venture out daily to direct at-risk youth, including former gang members, to appropriate services.

o Drug clinic services in the area.

An important component of The Kensington Project will be the School of Social Work's VISA (Vision, Integrity, Structure and Accountability) Center, a city-wide assessment and intervention program serving students in grades 7-10 after they have been suspended from school for violent or other disruptive activities, as well as their families. While the center, located on UB's South (Main Street) Campus, has been closed due to state budget cuts related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, some of its resources have been transferred to serve the Kensington community through programs for "out-of-school" and "in-school" suspensions and for school "re-entry" programs for returning suspended students. Former VISA Center staff, UB social work faculty members and graduate students, school personnel and community mentors are involved.

Funding will be an integral part of the success of The Kensington Project, Shulman emphasized.

"This project cannot replace the significant loss of basic resources resulting from budgetary cutbacks associated with Sept. 11. We can, however, better use the resources we have until the cuts are restored."

He added that the project has the potential to have a city-wide impact.

"This project should provide a model that could be implemented in other neighborhoods and communities as well," Shulman said. "As we address the issues of our most troubled children, we can help many of them and, as we do so, we can make the school and a community a better place for all of the children."

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