MILWAUKEE — The cycle of violence in Milwaukee continues to hit city’s children hard. Since the beginning of 2022, there have been three children killed, including 10-year-old Jada Clay on Thursday.
"A lot of times, when we get youth into Ujima, the stories they're telling, there's so much tragedy and death in some of the communities that a lot of the kids are numb,” said Dr. Mike Levas, medical director of Project Ujima at Children’s Wisconsin.
From February 2021 until today in Wisconsin, there have been 76,817 reports of abuse to Wisconsin’s Child Protective Services. Nearly, a third of those cases involved physical abuse.
"We also know there's lots of other families out there that never even received that report, but they have some type of stress going on,” said Rebecca Murray, executive director of the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board.
Murray says they try identify those families that are dealing with added stress and give their caregivers resources, such as parenting classes or counseling, to prevent violence from entering a family.
"Primary prevention is before anything were to happen so after something occurs that's when the county and the Department of Children and Families would get involved. We're trying to prevent that from ever even happening,” said Murray.
However, once trauma occurs, organizations like Project Ujima step in with crisis intervention, as well as social and emotional support.
"We measure our success on re-injury rates, and if you look at the national statistics the re-injury rate is 15-20-percent. For kids who come into Ujima, our re-injury rate is three-percent,” said Levas "We know that continued trauma, traumatic life experiences really are set up for repeat of those same trauma throughout generations. The main intervention is trying to break that cycle, trying to stop history from repeating itself."
Project Ujima says it offers its services to every homicide victim so Jada Clay’s family will be offered their services.
If you are a parent or caregiver who needs help call the Parenting Help Line at (414) 671-0566 or dial 211 after-hours. You can also go to the Parenting Network website for help.
