CREATE & SUPPORT A HEALTHY COMMUNITY

Collaborate with local mental health professionals and groups to foster and sustain a supportive, thriving, sustainable climate of mental and social health.

Actions

• Assess and partner with schools and other local agencies to address social health challenges specific to African American residents.

• Collaborate with focus groups, businesses, and organizations that are currently addressing these often systemic issues to diminish barriers to care that inhibit quality health and wellness among African American residents.

• Research and adopt best practices in dealing with physical, mental, and social community health in light of the harmful legacy of cultural and racial discrimination.

• Establish a process by which the City’s leadership and staff engage in ongoing training and awareness about cultural competency.

• Partner with local mental health professionals to fund therapy groups and/or sessions tailored to address issues of structural racism.

• Partner with local mental health professionals to create community-based programming/events tailored to increase awareness and access to mental health resources.

• Encourage the Williamsburg-James City County School Board to prioritize the availability of mental and social health services and counselors for students.

• Encourage the Williamsburg-James City County School Board to provide regular Cultural Competency Training to all teachers, counselors, administrators, and School Resource Officers.

• Encourage the Williamsburg-James City County School Board to increase teacher and administrator training in mental and social health awareness and traumatic retention especially among Black students.

• Ensure that Williamsburg-based Williamsburg-James City County School Resource Officers receive training in trauma-informed approaches to their work.

• Train all Williamsburg first-responders and encourage the Williamsburg-James City County School Board to equip School Resource Officers, teachers, counselors, and administrators to recognize and deal appropriately with mental and social health issues and the effects of systemic racism on themselves and on persons of all racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and ethnic backgrounds, including White students and families.

• Encourage and support Williamsburg-James City County School Board to pursue a Restorative Justice approach to discipline within all levels of the school system.

• Train all Williamsburg first-responders and encourage the Williamsburg-James City County School Board to train all teachers, administrators, counselors, and resource officers in the Restorative Justice approach.

• Provide mental and social health services in the City jail.

Agencies

• Williamsburg Health Foundation

• City Department of Social Services

• Bacon Street and other licensed mental health providers

• School Liaison Committee

• Village: The Initiative for Equity in Education

• Police and Fire Departments

• Williamsburg School Board Members

• New Horizons Family Center (William & Mary School of Education)

• CARE Lab (William & Mary School of Education)

• Greater Williamsburg Trauma-Informed Community Network

• Virginia Racial Healing Institute

• Restorative Justice Center of Virginia

• Colonial Behavioral Health

• Family Matters (FamMat) Services

• Real People Educating Others (RPEO)

• WE BALL Foundation

Outcomes

• Creation of a more trauma-informed community where teachers, first-responders, counselors, medical providers, and other leaders and professionals employ a trauma-informed and restorative justice approach in addressing community concerns.

• Improved mental and social health for all residents of Williamsburg.

• School ecology that cultivates and supports cognitive, academic, social-cultural, and linguistic learning and positive interpersonal relationships among all.

• Attractive school system for teachers and for students and families.

• Increased positive engagement with families of students from traditionally marginalized communities.

• Strengthened and sustained positive relations between police officers, firefighters and City residents and visitors.

• Highly trained and highly supported first-responders who demonstrate cultural competency, social and mental health awareness, and trauma-informed response in performing their duties.

• Improved recruitment and retention of first-responders, including police, fire, education professionals

• A climate that recognizes, respects and values all its residents and supports community social and mental health for the benefit of all.