2022 COMBAT Funding: $50,000.00

In Rose Brooks' Own Words

Rose Brooks Center’s mission to break the cycle of domestic violence motivates our commitment to violence prevention. Project SAFE is Rose Brooks Center’s school-based violence prevention program for children in preschool through 12th grade in Jackson County. For over 40 years, Rose Brooks Center has provided shelter and supportive services to adults and children impacted by domestic violence. Annually, Rose Brooks Center impacts approximately 14,000 local individuals through professional education and shelter, its hotline, and non-residential advocacy, clinical and prevention services.

Reaching Children Before They Make Key Life Choices

Project SAFE carries out the mission to end the cycle of domestic violence by reaching at-risk youth in grades pre-K through 12th before they make the life choices that can reproduce the cycle of violence. The program helps students identify and develop resiliency tools and emotional management skills necessary to avoid future violence perpetration or victimization and other unhealthy, unsafe life experiences. By reaching children and young adults in schools and providing them with much-needed tools and support, they gain resources to break the cycle of violence. Rose Brooks Center first offered school-based prevention in 1997 in response to schools’ requests to support children with domestic violence trauma.

It started as large group presentations to high schoolers, but Rose Brooks Center soon learned the importance and effectiveness of reaching younger students and in smaller groups. Over the years, Project SAFE has expanded and changed continually to respond to the changing needs of students and the community.

Today, the agency’s multi-tiered, age-specific prevention programming reaches children from preschool to high school across three Jackson County school districts: Kansas City Public Schools, Center School District, and Grandview School District.

On-Site Program At The Schools

Decades-long multi-sectoral collaboration informs the structure and practices of Project SAFE. Project SAFE is not an after-school program, but critically takes place on-site, at the schools, during the school day—the most effective strategy to reach the students most in need. 

Project SAFE is a successful, evidence-based, in-school community violence prevention program, and has been proven successful in reducing and/or eliminating violent behavior and promoting lives free of violence. 

Support For 400 Students

With continued funds, COMBAT supports 400 students pre-K through 12th grade at nine Jackson county public schools. The schools span across three local districts: Kansas City Public Schools, Grandview School District, and Center School District.

Teen Dating Violence

Project SAFE delivers COMBAT’s Anti-Violence Area of Focus of Community Violence Prevention and also provides innovative prevention in Teen Dating Violence.

Weekly In-School Support Groups

The most critical activity is intensive weekly in-school support groups consisting of six-to-eight students in elementary through high school who meet as a group with their Project SAFE Prevention Specialist. With COMBAT funding, Project SAFE provides 40 total weekly support groups, reaching 300 students in elementary through high school. 

Also, COMBAT funding supports universal education to 100 preschool-kindergarten students, for a total of 400 students reached in 2021.

28 Schools Reached In Total

All Project SAFE weekly sessions take place on-site during the school day. Sessions occur on a rotating basis to integrate effectively with the students’ other classes. Project SAFE as a whole, outside of COMBAT funding, reaches 28 total schools. Its presence in schools across three districts demonstrates the community’s ongoing commitment to the success of this project, and trust in the program. Moreover, there is a continual waiting list, as many more schools request Project SAFE than current capacity allows, unfortunately. Every school currently providing Project SAFE depends upon its continuation each year, due to the tremendous impact of the program on its students, reinforced by teachers, administration, counselors, and principals.

Outcomes

 Outcomes of the program include:

• an improved ability to respond to and deal with conflict
• improvement in social skills
• increased satisfaction with perceived emotional advice, guidance and practical social support
• increase in personal safety
• increase in knowledge about the effects of illegal substances.  

Longer term goals of the program include:

• students developing problem solving and coping skills while learning to keep themselves safe and free from violence;
• students building social, personal and leadership skills through presentations, videos, role play and educational materials; 
• dimiinishing violence within the schools and surrounding community

Trauma-Informed Approaches

All staff are trained annually in trauma-informed approaches, and also recently participated in training provided by Turning Point on the 10 Facets of Resiliency, bringing new concepts and tools for working with child survivors of trauma.

Findings were integrated into the Project SAFE curriculum and outcomes. 

Also, all Project SAFE staff recently participated in a four-day national trauma-informed training in, the 25th International Summit on Violence: Abuse & Trauma Across the Lifespan, sponsored by IVAT (Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma). This experience allowed the staff to share Project SAFE with other participants, and gain insight into the newest trends and techniques in trauma-informed services for at-risk youth. 

Project SAFE is continually analyzed and restructured according to new research, particularly that which is trauma-informed and also meaningful and responsive to the diverse needs of students we serve.