Researchers at the University’s School of Social Work helped to develop a statewide violence prevention plan for 2025-2029. The plan was created in partnership with the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and uses a public health approach to address violence.
Rachel Garthe, professor in Social Work and director of the Violence Prevention Research Lab, was the principal investigator on the project. She helped write the first statewide violence prevention plan for Illinois, which lasted from 2020-2024.
The plan’s public health approach prioritizes addressing the root causes of violence in order to prevent it from occurring.
“If we put funding into preventing problems, then we don’t need as much money for those interventions,” Garthe said. “So it actually is in the better interests of society to really fund those prevention programs.”
The plan’s objectives are grouped into three main categories. The first concerns recommendations for nonprofits and community-based organizations.
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According to the plan, violence prevention programs should “honor people’s complex histories (i.e., multi-generational adversity and trauma, multiple victimizations and perpetrations) and provide holistic services that address multiple forms of violence.” Organizations seeking to prevent violence should “strengthen the capacity of providers to implement trauma-informed and healing-centered policies, training, and organizational practices,” according to the plan.
Secondly, the plan seeks to ensure equity and access to funding for organizations of all sizes. Haley Miller, project coordinator for the plan and a faculty member in Social Work, interviewed grantees from the last few years in pursuit of this goal.
Miller ran 12 focus groups, which comprised 29 total grantees from across the state. Grantees had the opportunity to openly express their experiences with the funding they had received and offer suggestions for the future.
“I learned a lot from those focus groups about what was going on, how the funding was not necessarily equitable,” Miller said. “I was able to have these CEOs and executive directors among people who were like mom and pops trying to start these community-based organizations because they had a personal stake in their community.”
Representatives from government and community-based agencies across the state formed a Violence Prevention Ad Hoc Committee, which analyzed the results of the focus groups and produced suggestions for the 2025-2029 plan.
The third goal aims to increase communication and collaboration between planners and stakeholders.
“A lot of times, violence prevention work is in silos,” Garthe said. “There’s the folks that do the criminal legal world … there’s street outreach, there’s hospital-based programs, and everyone’s kind of in their lane. So the plan really tries to encourage, how do we have more collaboration?”
Going into the next four years, Miller hopes to hear the perspectives of programs that did not receive funding. The team is also currently planning its first Statewide Violence Prevention Convention and developing a website that will include a public forum and progress reports.
Though the team hopes to improve the plan further for the coming years, the ICJIA saw successful results from the 2020-2024 plan. There was a large increase in the number of applicants for violence prevention programs across the state, according to Garthe.
“A key takeaway from our last plan was when we looked at rates of violence … there’s certain pockets in Illinois where there’s even higher rates than some neighborhoods in Chicago, and they don’t often get the same amount of attention or funding from the state government,” Garthe said. “The plan really tried to get that funding throughout the state.”
Other communities are encouraged to adopt the plan for their own purposes.
“The plan is something that can be used by anyone in the state of Illinois and is highly encouraged to be used for every nonprofit social service organization,” Miller said. “It’s open to anyone to view … I’m hoping that everyone will be able to know about it.”
