Sela Redmond (Prevention and Wellness Coordinator) is a key player in implementing the prevention aspects of the CASN grant which CRW and other providers have received from the city of New York. Below is a conversation about how the prevention work has been going so far.
Tell me about the work you’ve been doing related to the CASN grant?
I have been doing a few things related to the CASN grant. I was recruiting and interviewing for the two open positions (Senior Prevention and Wellness Health Educator and Prevention and Wellness Health Educator). Once hired, I onboarded the two employees and familiarized them with the grant. I also have received virtual training in the two evidence-based programs for the grant, Support Students Exposed to Trauma (SSET) and Triple P Parenting, which teach us how to run the evidence-based programs in our community.
SSET is a small group evidence-based program geared towards children in middle school, but can be used with high schoolers and upper elementary grades, who have been exposed to a traumatic or stressful experience and might show signs of PTSD. The program is 10 lessons and helps to provide coping strategies and techniques to be able to prevent long-term stress disorder from the traumatic events.
Triple P is a series of four discussion groups geared towards parents with children 0-12. The topics include Hassle Free Shopping in Public, Dealing with Disobedience, Managing Fighting and Aggression and Good Bed Time Routines. This program helps teach skills on preventing and managing these issues when they arise in your family.
The rest of the CASN grant team and I have begun outreaching to schools and organizations in the community about our new programs to see where we can partner to run our prevention program. Myself and the rest of the prevention team been actively involved in the NYC Prevention Resource Center Partners of Prevention, which is expanding into a consortium with other providers around NYC to enact environmental and policy change.
When you say “environmental and policy change”, are there any specific goals yet for that policy change?
This has not been decided yet. Since we are coming together with the Prevention Consortium, we will need to do a Community Assessment and see what policy we want to try to enact on a city-wide scale.
What has been successful and what has been challenging?
I believe a challenge has been getting information from OASAS little by little about reporting and other specifics of the grant when the grant has already begun. In every grant we will need to know how we will report the work we do. The challenge has been around finding out what OASAS wants from us in order to implement the grant successfully and report out as expected.
A success we have had is that we have already started to implement one of the evidence-based programs for the grant: at Tompkins Square Middle School, we have launched the SSET training with 6th graders.
Do you hope to develop your work collaboratively with the recovery services team and if so, how?
I hope we can work with the Recovery Services team by doing our prevention programs with their recovery participants at CRW and within the rest of the Citywide Addiction Support Network.
This grant is a really great opportunity for Prevention. I am excited to see our prevention program grow and find other ways to connect our evidence-based programs in the community besides at schools. I think working with other prevention providers to create change is an awesome opportunity to do something on a bigger level than just the Lower East Side but throughout all of New York City.