’Far too many tragedies’: Advocates demand more funding for underserved neighborhoods
In the aftermath of Sunday’s deadly shootout in downtown Sacramento, community leaders and organizers behind a major countywide effort to reduce Black child deaths in Sacramento are urging the city and county to invest more in community-led violence prevention efforts.
In an open letter released Friday, leaders of the Black Child Legacy Campaign called on elected officials to build on the existing relationships that community groups and nonprofits have forged in underserved neighborhoods of color.
Details are still emerging about the downtown shooting that killed six people dead and wounded 12 others, but police say the shootout appears to be gang-related and involved at least five shooters.
“We mourn alongside the community, which has seen far too many tragedies. Sadly, this tragedy is one of many experienced recently,” the letter read. “We are deeply frustrated that violence prevention has not been addressed with the urgency this crisis deserves.”
“We were there with the families of the six victims on Sunday. And we will remain beside them, as they grieve their loved-ones, by ensuring access to mental health services, ongoing wraparound care, burial support, and a feeling of safety and community,” the letter continued.
The Black Child Legacy Campaign, a landmark collaborative community effort, started in 2015 with a simple goal: Reduce preventable deaths of Black children under 18 by at least 10% by 2020.
The group identified four primary causes to target — sleep-related incidents, perinatal conditions, caregiver abuse and neglect, and violence committed by someone other than a caregiver.
Nonprofit groups in the campaign offer a variety of wraparound services to support families in the seven Sacramento neighborhoods with the worst health outcomes, while collaborating with county social workers, hospitals, school districts, churches and more.
Expecting mothers are offered prenatal care and in-home visitation. Teens attend youth anger management classes and neighborhood movie nights. Healing the Hood, the campaign’s violence prevention and interruption arm, puts intervention workers on the streets immediately after an incident to provide crisis support to victims and families.
By 2020, leaders said the campaign had exceeded almost all expectations. The rate of Black child deaths dropped by 30% over five years and the rate of Black infant deaths fell by 19% between 2015 and 2018, according to the group’s most recent available data.
Those results show that sustained and targeted investment can create change, said Kim Williams, hub director at Sacramento Building Healthy Communities, one of the campaign’s participating groups.
“A lot of young people from communities not invested in, a lot of those children don’t feel support or see a positive outcome in their life,” Williams said. “We have to break the cycle, and we can’t break the cycle if we can’t give young people an alternative.”
Organizers said that Sacramento would continue to see tragic outcomes unless community economic development, youth engagement, and violence prevention and interruption are “investment priorities” for the city and county.
“If we don’t put programs in place at a young age to counter gang culture, then kids are going to go that direction because that’s what’s calling to them because there aren’t other opportunities,” Williams said.
This story was originally published April 9, 2022 at 9:42 AM with the headline "’Far too many tragedies’: Advocates demand more funding for underserved neighborhoods."