Mayor Tory announces $800,000 for violence response and prevention measures
Community programs aimed at curbing youth violence and healing communities on the ground get much needed cash
Thestar.com
June 30, 2016
By Jennifer Pagliaro
New funding of $800,000 for both preventative measures and local programs to respond to violence will help “heal communities,” Mayor John Tory said Thursday.
The City of Toronto is establishing a new “intervention fund” with an initial $100,000 to be doled out on a case-by-case basis, paying for solutions communities design themselves in the wake of shootings.
It’s the kind of community initiatives former mayor Rob Ford slammed as “hug-a-thug” programs. On Thursday, Tory promised the programs, if proven successful, would see more stable funding.
“It’s going to be foolish for us to have these meetings and announce these initiatives if they’re meant to be kind of short term things that will disappear next March 31,” Tory told reporters at city hall, joined by federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi. “I think we’re determined to try to make sure that they stand the test of time and that they’re funded on an ongoing basis.”
The announcement follows a push from a police task force initiated by Tory to move away from the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), a much-criticized approach to neighbourhood policing that was meant to partner with communities to solve and prevent gang and other violence, but has left some communities feeling targeted by officers.
A provincial contribution of $300,000 will also go toward expanding a lauded joint effort between the city and police called Furthering Our Communities Uniting Services, or FOCUS.
Quietly launched in Rexdale in 2012, that program has brought community workers, city staff, local police, health and other support workers to the same “situation table” weekly to tackle specific cases where there is a risk of violence.
After expanding to north Scarborough in April, and with plans to co-ordinate downtown interventions, the provincial money will help see the program introduced in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood, in nearby Weston-Mt. Dennis and in south Scarborough.
Scott McKean, manager of the city’s community development unit who co-chairs FOCUS, said it is a “tool” to better co-ordinate and expedite existing services in the communities where they work.
“This is about immediate action by a collection of services . . . Local providers are really the champions here,” McKean said Thursday. “By the expansion we can do more sort of collaborative, risk-driven interventions to young people who are most at risk of serious involvement in violent crime.”
A study of the program in 2015 found FOCUS had “broken down long-standing institutional silos.”
“Most importantly,” the report found, “clients and families in high-risk situations have been connected to services that they might not have been otherwise and potential harm has been reduced.”
McKean, a veteran community crisis worker, said the city’s intervention fund will help provide much-needed cash for locally-designed solutions.
“Often residents come up with ideas because no one knows (better) than the residents and we find creative ways to fund them. This will be a more immediate way that we can put money into the hands of resident groups who are impacted by violence to do something in the community to respond,” he said. “Healing is as much a part of ongoing safety development and crime prevention as anything else.”
Tory also announced an additional $400,000 from three levels of government to help pilot a diversion program for youth under age 18 across the city.
The program is meant to prevent repeat offenders in largely non-violent and minor crimes such as shoplifting and to tackle underlying issues like mental health by giving them a choice to participate in rehabilitative community programs rather than be charged and possibly sent to youth detention centres.
The new money, Tory said, is meant to pay for staffing needed to get the program running citywide, a push backed by Chief Mark Saunders.
